John Fraresso is currently in his second year of the Doctor of Ministry program at the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology (RSM) and is the Spiritual & Community Life Coordinator at L’Arche Hamilton.
I am very fortunate to be able to witness the blessings and miracles that happen when one more fully surrenders to the will of their soul, which for me is synonymous with God’s will for them.
I am of course far from perfect at this. But I am a case study of what can happen when one does slowly get better at this.
Spiritual progress, not perfection.
When I returned to school to do my Master of Theological Studies degree at St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology in 2019, I expected to complete this two-year degree and move on to the next thing.
Six years later, I have completed my Master of Divinity, am entering my second year of the Doctor of Ministry program at RSM, and witnessed my 100-hour field placement at L’Arche Hamilton transform into something far bigger. Firstly, I am still there. Secondly, I have the honour of being in service of the community’s spiritual & community life. Finally, my doctoral studies will focus on the challenge of spirituality in L’Arche, which has faced head winds with the Vanier revelations, as well as increasing secularization and pluralism.
This journey has resulted in pipe dreams coming true and has also been sprinkled with never-in-my-wildest-dreams moments occurring.
One of these such moments happened recently.
In the fall, I wrote a paper titled Charismatic Authority, Power, and Abuse in Jean Vanier’s L’Arche for Christopher Brittain’s Theology and Power course (which I highly recommend) at Trinity College. After receiving a pretty spectacular grade for it, I was encouraged by my thesis supervisor Jean-Pierre Fortin to submit it to the Canadian Theological Society for consideration to be presented at their annual conference, as part of the broader Humanities and Social Sciences Congress.
Lo and behold, little Johnny presented his paper to a bunch of academics at an academic conference.
What an amazing and humbling experience, something I never in my dreams thought I would do. Compressing a 20-page paper into a 10-minute presentation was a fun challenge. I was grateful that my presentation was so well received by those in attendance and I also got to see some old colleagues that I haven’t seen in a while!
I’m also grateful to Dr. Fortin for the nudge to submit the paper and for the CTS for allowing me the honour to present at their conference.
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