Following Mary's lead

Mary’s story began with a simple “yes.”

In Christian tradition, Mary’s willing acceptance of God’s call — known as her fiat, Latin for “let it be done” — has long served as a model of faith, trust and service. This spring, four University of Dayton students traveled to Hawaii through Campus Ministry’s LEAD with Mary program to explore what that same spirit of openness might look like in their own lives.

Joining students from fellow Marianist institutions — Chaminade University of Honolulu and St. Mary’s University in San Antonio — the Dayton students spent a week exploring Marianist spirituality and discovering what it means to belong to a wider Marianist family.

For Arumi Ortiz, campus minister, that’s exactly the goal.

“I love to see how the students see themselves as a Mary model and what it looks like for them to bring Christ into this world,” Ortiz said. “That’s one of the things that gives me hope — to talk about the Marianist charism in a way where (students) can take it as their own and live it in their own lifestyle.”

Throughout the week, students reflected on LEAD with Mary’s four pillars: listening to the Holy Spirit and one another, encountering the Marianist family, acting for the common good and deepening their call to serve.

It was an experience rich with community building, prayer and fun, said senior Daniela Mata, a nursing major from Chicago.

“Right when we landed, it just felt like a warm hug,” she said.

Students began each morning with prayer and reflection before gathering in the kitchen for perhaps the ultimate exercise in building community: cooking breakfast together. Preparing the meal each day quickly turned strangers into teammates.

“That just showed the kind of community that we were able to build with each other — through those shared meals,” Mata said.

The group spent each day serving alongside the local community, assembling meal kits for residents in need and working in a nearby lo'i patch, a traditional Hawaiian taro field.

“The woman leading us told us about the origin of the land and what it means to the Hawaiian people,” said Christian Concepcion, a junior electronic engineering technology major from St. Louis.

Alongside the service projects, Ortiz led conversations about faith and Mary, organized prayer groups and attended daily Mass with the students. For Concepcion, who attended a Marianist high school, the experience rekindled a faith that had taken a backseat to college life.

“The program definitely helped me to regain my faith a little bit and to grow,” Concepcion said. “It was maybe God’s way of showing me something different.”

“The program definitely helped me to regain my faith a little bit and to grow. It was maybe God’s way of showing me something different.”

One lesson from Ortiz about Mary’s example of saying “yes” — including God’s call to be mother to his son — especially resonated with Mata.

“I definitely started putting into practice just saying ‘yes’ to things, like Mary. It’s something I’ve always struggled with. I’m starting to be more comfortable saying ‘yes’ because you never know where it’s going to take you.”

“I definitely started putting into practice just saying ‘yes’ to things, like Mary. It’s something I’ve always struggled with,” Mata said. “I’m starting to be more comfortable saying ‘yes’ because you never know where it’s going to take you.”

During the program, Concepcion said he came to understand the many perspectives within one Marianist family and, after returning home, began to see Mary’s presence in his daily life — in the people he meets and the places he goes.

“We practiced Mary every day in Hawaii,” he said. “Each day was a new experience of how we could view and see Mary.”

As their time on the island came to an end, each student carried home something different. For all of them, though, the week offered a renewed sense of what it means to answer God’s call with a simple “yes.”

Photographs courtesy UD Campus Ministry. 

A version of this article appears in print in the Autumn 2026 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 18. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE