It is 3,386 miles to Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala, the site of our annual international service trip.
It is 4 miles to the Amazing Grace Food Pantry in Middletown, which is to say the need for service, to help people, is everywhere.
Our backyard is no exception, so the Ryken Service Society has a monthly canned good drive at school for the food pantry. In some years, more than 10,000 items have been collected.
Xavier students have required service hours but what happens is they get an acquired taste for serving those less fortunate. So many go well above and beyond the needed 65 hours. So many serve in a variety of ways, here at school or in our many communities.
“It feels good to do something for other people instead of doing something for yourself,” is how one student characterized his affinity for service.
So many Xavier students have gone on to a career in service: priests, ministers, firefighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, EMTs, the military, you name it. And so many have gone on to volunteer their time in so many other ways. It can start right in our backyard.