Lighting the Torch in Mobile

Written by: Alec Torigian

The Olympics just wouldn’t be the Olympics without the lighting of the torch. It doesn’t just signify the return of the games — it signifies a light passed from athlete to athlete, from country to country. For the ACE bus team, it was also a signal of our return to the road and a symbol of the light we try to bring to each community we visit. Of course, as we have all come to expect, we continue to find that we were the ones receiving the light, and no stop has made that more clear than our visit to Mobile, Ala.

The light of Christ and the torch of the passion of service have been passed on in Mobile for all 20 years of ACE. As we look back at these last 20 years, we see a great case study proving that Catholic schools change lives. That is, after all, why we sign up to teach in the first place. However, there’s something magical about seeing a former student proudly wear the uniform of McGill-Toolen Catholic High School and profess in a speech to the whole community that her Catholic school experience has, in fact, changed the entire trajectory of her life. To hear that she, as a freshman, can already recognize that her teachers and classmates have brought the light of Christ to her — well, that’s just icing on ACE’s 20^th birthday cake.

But we say this bus tour isn’t about a celebration of our birthday, and that is completely true — we are celebrating light-giving communities like the one in Mobile. Archbishop Thomas Rodi also spoke of the light of Christ being shared within the beautiful community of Catholic schools. He is famous (in my eyes) for simply and accurately stating the purpose of our Catholic schools: to tell our students implicitly and explicitly that they are loved and that they can succeed. To see the McGill-Toolen Chamber Singers perform is to see a group of students from various backgrounds feeling (and being) loved and successful. Watching the faces of the entire community present for the celebration (we’re talking ACE Advocates, parents, folks from the Archdiocese in every office, Notre Dame friends and families and more) would show you that, by the very sharing of the gifts and opportunities they’ve been given, these students are passing the torch of the light of Christ right back to the very community built up to show them this light.

However, Mobile reminded us that it’s not just “the usual suspects” who bring light into the stadium. Our friends in the political sphere, like Representative Chad Fincher, are fighting to bring these incredible opportunities to share in Christ’s light through education to more and more students through the Alabama Accountability Act.  What an incredible gift it is to open the doors to this proverbial Olympic stadium for all of our children to experience its light.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention that we who are lucky enough to have been called teachers of these children receive the light of Christ from them much more than we are ever able to give it. It is our goal to share it with them, but words cannot describe the deep sense of Christ’s presence in seeing a student with life’s odds stacked against her in many ways shine as a strong student (by teaching herself Algebra in middle school,) a strong public speaker (after having at one point been reluctant to even speak in class,) and an example of living out Christ’s kindness her own teachers try to follow.

When students like this receive the torch, they use it to illumine the entire Olympic stadium, and that is what a community of sharers of Christ’s light is all about.