My parents and I ran into Father Leahy after the parents' weekend mass Freshman year. I asked if I would be able to meet with him to talk about entering college, and he said that he would. So he gave me his secretary’s contact information, a kind lady named Maureen, and I sent the email to grab coffee.

Father Leahy and I ended up meeting at least once a semester for each semester that I was at Boston College. I so enjoyed those conversations I had with him. We usually would talk about Christianity, what it meant to be Christian, and why he was a Jesuit. We also spoke it is hard to keep faith when things don’t go your way, and dealing with pressures to fit in. Our most frequent subject of conversation was on how to enter a world that oftentimes seems so weird, and unforgiving, and how to come back from when you mess up, which happened to me in a comical, almost once a day type schedule during my time at Boston College. 

More than anything, Father Leahy, who does actually go out of his way to meet students, helped me understand that people in positions of power are just people who have jobs, and there isn’t really too much more to it than that. Fr. Leahy actually happened to be quite nice to me, and was someone who would make an effort to build me up. Big lesson in life, whenever someone builds you up, without a ulterior motive, value that person.

It is safe to say that if it wasn’t for Fr. Leahy I wouldn’t have graduated in four years. This is primarily because when things got bad at BC, which they did several times, I would often think that “this place isn’t that hard, there’s no mystery behind it, I know the guy who runs it. An essay is just an essay, and it doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be done. Just cross the finish line.”

Quotes:

”Your deep desires are God’s invitations.”