"Carving Calvary"

Carving Calvary

Joppa Mountain, TN

Kamilla Kesto, B.S. Biology '23, B.S.N. '25

This past Spring, I embarked with Glenmary Home Missions and fellow students from the University of Detroit Mercy on a service immersion trip to Tennessee’s Appalachian Mountains. And, with faith the size of a mustard seed, we moved Appalachia.

Our trip started at St. Walburg Monastery in Villa Hills, Kentucky, where we witnessed a day in the life of the Benedictine Sisters. Ancient psalms echoed beyond the walls as we prayed the Liturgy of the Hours. And, after learning more about their hidden sanctity over a shared meal, we toured Sr. Emmanuel’s art studio. We didn’t just discover art pieces, but pieces of stories, testimonies—and essentially the face of God translated through them. St. Catherine of Siena, the only lay Doctor of the Catholic Church, is often quoted saying be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire. In that moment, secluded from the rest of society, I was eager to ignite the world with the fire burning bright within me. Starting off the trip with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit allowed us to be filled with tongues of fire, just like the disciples at Pentecost.

A principle of Benedictine monasticism is Ora et Labora—Latin for “pray and work”—and that motto foreshadowed the days awaiting us. Once in the mountains, we shared a house with students from Boston University whom we had never met. I can’t help but be reminded of St. Augustine’s words in which Pope Leo XIV’s motto is derived—"In Illo uno unum”, which translates to “In the One we are one”. One way we lived out these words is by taking turns cooking meals that reflected the community’s income. There’s a common phrase that goes, “Put yourself in their shoes”, but I’ll go a step further and say, “Put yourself in their eyes”. We may think we already do this when we see a homeless person on the side of the road and hand over a bill out of pity—or when we’re distraught to see—through a screen—children barefoot and limping through the rubble of third world countries. However, those are all reactions stemming from our eyes, not theirs.

I was overcome with this realization with one trip to the grocery store. As we walked through the aisles, the ingredients we selected quickly shifted from what we craved to what we could afford. In life, we either live in comfort or in compassion, even when it comes to charity; to offer out of excess is comfortable but to offer out of the essentials is compassionate. This act of sacrifice was a compassionate one because we chose to live under the same conditions. When Jesus asked Peter a third time, “Do you love me?”, he followed with, “Feed my sheep”. We fed his sheep, but we, too, are sheep of the same flock. We didn’t go on this trip because they lacked what we had, but because sheep graze as a herd. We are brothers and sisters in Christ nourished by the same life-giving pasture in the sheepfold.

The community had little to no control of their day-to-day, so we too stripped away from control and depended on God’s providence to tackle each project and its curveballs. Our first of many consisted of building a wheelchair ramp for a family living without access to city resources. For them, basic needs were burdensome or entirely out of reach and something as routine as trash removal required a hefty fee. Building that ramp was more than construction—it was communion. Although carrying wood or hammering nails were mundane tasks, they made me feel united to the Body of Christ, who comes to us in the faces of the poor, the vulnerable, and the overlooked. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches the Church’s love for the poor...is a part of her constant tradition and I saw that tradition come alive in moments where justice was served (CCC 2444). And, in choosing dignity over pity, I learned that serving is not standing above but kneeling beside.

At Kingswood, I experienced first-hand the difficulties of the systems within our society. If the property’s maintenance was not upkept, this local orphanage risked losing essential state funding, which ensured a home, school, and future to children who had already lost so much in life. However, with it run by people like Mr. Glenn, a former pastor, they heavily relied on extra hands from volunteers. In clearing the land of logs, weed, and fallen branches, we weren’t just beautifying the vicinity but protecting sacred ground. As we cared for the wellbeing of His children, we were essentially living out the words professed in Matthew 25:40, “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me”. We didn’t do this for something greater, but for someone greater.

Ash Wednesday was one of the most striking days of the trip. That morning, Lent began with a shovel at Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center, where we spent hours carving a new hiking trail. As sweat traced my brow and silence filled the air, labor became prayer—it became penance. With every dig into the Earth and every bend of my back, I meditated on His passion, imagining I was carving calvary. When I fell on the trail, I paused for a moment and reflected on His three falls, silently praying, “Lord, may this path lead someone to You”, “Lord, I unite these digs in the ground to the digs of thorns in your skin”, “My Jesus, I offer up this aching back for the aches of those in Purgatory”. Lent is a season of stripping away, and being in the woods gave me the space to do just that—to turn off the noise and open my heart to the stillness of the Holy Spirit.

We lived in RIM—relationship, identity, mission—ending our week the same way it started. We gathered for one last mass in the mountains, this time under the stars and around a bonfire. Peace be with you…these words exchanged during the mass weren’t just a ritual, but a reality. In a world torn by religious violence and division—especially in the Middle East—this moment felt like the Kingdom.

If peace were tangible, its skeleton would be the shape of a cross because peace is not the absence of misery, but the fulfillment of it. Peace is misery left in the hands of the Father, just as Jesus demonstrated in His last words on the cross: My Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. When Jesus fulfilled His misery on the cross, He met His disciples in their misery with, “Peace be with you”. And, when Jesus invited Thomas to touch His side—to touch His misery—he touched His peace.

One of Glenmary’s sayings is, “Peace came and stayed”, and as I prayed with this, I realized that peace comes when you meet people in their miseries, and it stays when you become a Simon of Cyrene—helping them carry their crosses and carving calvary beside them. We walked into this trip accompanying people in their sorrowful mysteries, and by the time sweat prayed and tears toiled, we walked out in the luminous ones. Service immersion trips are not merely acts of charity beyond the pew but acts in which sheep graze together in the universal sheepfold: the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.