On February 16, the time-honored series of Agape Latte lectures returned to Boston College for Valentine’s Day. The featured speaker was Melodie Wyttenbach, Executive Director for the Boston College Roche Center for Catholic Education.
The event was held in-person in front of a limited audience chosen through a lottery system and simultaneously live-streamed. All who attended in-person received a complimentary “Agape Latte” t-shirt while those viewing online were entered into a raffle for one.
The talk itself focused around love, though “not the kind you might be thinking,” as Wyttenbach put it. She began the talk with a brief explanation of her own background, an interesting aspect being the past nature of her parents, her mother being a former religious sister and her father a seminarian when they met.
She then went on to describe her own experience going through college and her decision to major in Geology and Environmental Science at Saint Louis University. This she attributed to her love of the outdoors.
She recounted her mother’s worry over her college major choice. This was the start of when she began to honestly think about her future career and came to the conclusion that “God will provide… trust in Him.”
Nearing the end of one of her years of study, she was trying to decide what to do that summer. She met a Jesuit Scholastic, one who is preparing for ordination after his novitiate, who encouraged her to try something new and outside of her comfort zone. This, she said, is when she vowed to “always be in service for others.”
When looking for alternatives to her “comfortable job” working at a retirement center in her hometown, she stumbled across an opening for a counseling position for a five-week Catholic middle-school boy’s retreat. She jumped at this opportunity since she had always had a love for campus ministry. Describing her decision to take on this role, Wyttenbach said this job allowed her to “be vulnerable” in a way she hadn’t before.
She found this idea of vulnerability especially beautiful amongst the boys she was serving on this retreat. She described how “if they wanted to survive… they had to form bonds [with each other].”
It was due to the experiences and interactions with these children that she realized that she would “have to rely on God to fall in love.” This was because she allowed God to move her in a direction and into a situation which she had not previously predicted, or even felt entirely comfortable with, but was able to affect her deeply.
This retreat environment and these interactions she described as “thin spaces,” a concept which describes a place where heaven and earth are not as distant, but spiritually interact to bring people towards God. She was able to experience a new kind of love while seeing these young boys have “new and beautiful experiences.”
When the five weeks were up, and they were returning home from the wilderness campgrounds on the bus, she realized her love for teaching. Her new and at-first uncomfortable experience had drawn her towards the realization of her great love.
Closing her story, Wyttenbach remarked that to love is “to live out a life of service,” and that we ought always stay attentive to God’s calling in our lives as He speaks through numerous and varied means.
James Pritchett is a Sophomore studying History and Classics with a deep affinity for his native land, the Golden State. Despite being the most recent lover of Catholicism on the Torch staff, he is the C101 editor and his main interests consist of reading Dostoyevsky, playing devil’s advocate, and correcting people on niche theological heresies.
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