Every night this week, I have opened up a news source to check the latest updates on the protests at college campuses across the United States. I wait with baited breath to see if there are more arrests, any violence, or any updates from college administrations that the plea of the students has been answered. Then, I think about the students.

It’s finals time on college campuses. A time when many students are locked in the library, frantically writing papers or trying to memorize data. What a shift, from camping out in libraries surrounded by books and highlighters, to camping out on campus lawns surrounded by protests signs and megaphoned speeches.

While I’m not on a college campus, I am still in my “student era,” chipping away at an online doctoral program at Fordham University. This situatedness has sparked a solidarity in me, a recognition that those students standing on campus corners and quads, camping out in tents during finals week, could be me. Perhaps they should be me.

I’ve read a lot of warring opinions about the protests. Some support the students 100%, even showing up to encampments to aggrandize their efforts. others chastise them for disrupting classes and wasting their education. Like on most issues today, this country is divided about the students’ claims, as well as the effectiveness of protests in general.

I don’t know what will come of the protests across our nation. Will the students’ cries be heard, and will universities reconsider their financial ties? Will a larger police presence cause violence to escalate? Will those students finish their semesters, or even still be students when this is all over? I just can’t say. My hopes and my fears are at odds.

But this morning, as I work on yet another final exam with those students in mind, I am choosing to make my coursework my prayer. It is my prayer for peace, for an end to violence, for no more war, for seeking resolution with words instead of weapons. It is my prayer for the students, for the ones using their voices and their bodies to stand for what they believe in and the ones in the library trudging through their finals. I pray for this generation of believers, the ones who spent their high school years navigating a pandemic, and their college years navigating campus protests. May they continue to rise to face the challenges in front of them, and may creativity, courage, discernment, and compassion guide them to be our change-makers of tomorrow.

As we head towards the 2024 Synod, help us spread the word that women’s history is Salvation History and should be included in our lectionary by becoming a Mary Magdalene Advocate!

There is a lot at stake for women and for the Church as a whole in the choice of scripture passages we proclaim on Sundays. The ways in which we understand and know God are formed within the liturgy. What we pray and sing, as well as the stories we re-tell in public worship form and shape what we believe about God, ourselves, and our relationship to God and to one another.

Many Catholics do not realize that important stories of our foremothers in faith are excluded from or diminished in our lectionary. Catholics are deprived of learning about the gifts, grace, courage, leadership and ministry of women like Mary Magdalene, Phoebe, Junia, and Shiprah and Puah. Lifting up and telling the stories these faithful women will help Synod participants and all Catholics understand that women were and, should now be, leaders and ministers in our Church.