I’ll be the first to admit that it’s extremely difficult to get myself out the door and into Mass after being completely spent from rehearsal. Still, as ironic as it sounds, by going to a public school I realized that there is so much Christ everywhere, even in the places you wouldn’t think.

I remember at the career fair in Grade 6, we learned about different vocations. I saw a local judge, our ward councillor, a pediatrician and, of course, the priest of our local parish. 

At his booth, he gave us a little pamphlet on vocations and what God is calling us to do with our lives. I distinctly remember reading on the pamphlet, “Anything can be your vocation.” 

Right now, I think I have two vocations: one is the one we all have to be servants of Christ and the other is to find myself in my passions. And that is what led me to study the arts in the last place my parents thought I would end up — public school.

But even in a public high school for the arts, there is still so much Christ. 

There is Christ-like generosity in the charity efforts Cawthra students take the time to support. There is a camaraderie that can be found during late-night rehearsals that echoes those we have as brothers and sisters in Christ. 

And as I play my character — who goes from enemy to friend of the main character over the course of the play — I realize that there is Christ to be found in her, too. 

One of my favourite lines is a quote she draws from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that reads, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man.” 

I love that same message of being true to yourself and  who God made you to be echoes throughout the Bible. 

Our show is opening soon and I can’t tell you how shocked I am that is has come together in the way that it has. That too, in a sense is also Christ in action. 

I never really noticed before, but it does take a Christ-like attitude to be involved in something bigger than yourself. There is definitely Christ-like patience found in a director like ours and Christ’s grace that led me to a place as wonderful as Cawthra, when I started out at a small Catholic elementary school, far away from the place I get to call home for the next three and a half years. 

And though I drag my feet to get to Mass after a weekend spent in school instead of sleeping, it’s really through the everyday actions of Christ that I find myself in church week after week, feeling so lucky I found my vocation for now and a place I can openly pursue it, in a true Christ-like fashion.

(Henricus, 15, is a Grade 10 student at Cawthra Park Secondary School in Mississauga, Ont.)