Last winter, I was invited to tour an institution called the Catholic Theological Union (http://www.ctu.edu) by the president of this school. This organization is the largest Catholic divinity school in the United States, and is located in Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago, on the southeast side of the city, for those not familiar with the area. The school, which now trains mostly lay people for both domestic and foreign missionary duty, was co-founded in the late 1960’s, interestingly enough, by the chief Rabbi of one of the local synagogues in the area, to foster the study of Catholic-Jewish relations–a subject which interests me greatly.

At any rate, on the ground floor of the school is a map of the world, with two groups of colored dots. One color denotes where the students who attend the school are drawn from. The other color indicates where the graduates of the school are performing their work around the world.

I was particularly impressed by the simple, yet eloquent, message that the map relates. It is a message that we all, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, should remember as we go about our daily lives. God calls us to do His work, and then sends us out in the world to do it. Nothing complicated about that–pretty straight forward. Yet, somehow, that profound message seems to get lost in the cacophony of the temporal world in which we live.