Connor McLaughlin
As someone who works in Catholic Ministry, I fall into a weird middle ground - I’ve never fallen away from Christ to the degree that I’d call myself a revert - but I’ve always been dissatisfied with my faith. I always knew the Catholic Church was the fullness of faith, and I would never leave, but the way the faith was talked about always felt lacking, usually leaning either intellectually theological or touchy-feely mystical. I tried to immerse myself in both sides; growing up in a very devout Catholic family, I was homeschooled and had to memorize the Baltimore Catechism. I also led praise and worship and retreats in high school and college. But both still felt wrong. Even as I built a youth ministry development company, published an international synodal response document, and started an independent film studio, this idea kept gnawing in the back of my mind.
If there’s a better way to live, and we call that way sainthood, then how do I be a saint?
This question became a borderline obsession. All I could think about was what it would look like to align my life in a way that didn’t leave me wanting more. I could answer every question about the church, but I couldn’t see what it would look like to live a life made in the image and likeness of God.
And then I realized how simple it was. I already knew that the meaning of life was to Know Love and Serve God; and that we humans were a composite being of mind body and soul. And when we combine those, we see how the saints lived. Their holy blend of self-help and spirituality was the answer to what I was looking for; a view of sainthood that wasn’t heady or floaty but able to be applied into my life..
This mirrored some of the hardest parts of my own life. When I was in college, I found out that I had a severe medical condition that left me chemically depressed. Once I began treatment, I realized that my feeling distant from God wasn’t a spiritual fault of my own, but manifested from a physical issue. Once the physical was treated, so too was the spiritual.
Now I have a new obsession: helping people find their own ”Practical Sainthood” and becoming who God made them to be.