C4C’s Katie Purple: Offering Meaning and Purpose

Story by Shelley Wolf

Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series based on conversations with each member of the Crossroads 4 Christ National Servant Leadership Team. Last up is Katie Purple, director of formation for Crossroads 4 Christ, a young adult ministry.

MANCHESTER – As the director of formation for the larger Crossroads 4 Christ organization, Katie Purple has the plum job of educating and shaping the faith of many young adults in the Archdiocese of Hartford.

“I’ve always had the desire to teach and I so enjoyed my classroom experience at St. Paul’s, but I always felt a deeper call to do something directly mission-minded with it,” Purple says. Among her many jobs, she worked as a religion teacher at St. Paul Catholic High School in Bristol from 2014-2016, and taught religion in Phoenix, Arizona as well.

“So when this opportunity came to really form our young adults – we use the word ‘form’ to mold the mind and the heart and to pursue Christ in a life of missionary discipleship – it just aligned with the desires that had been on my heart for a really long time. So I jumped at the opportunity,” she says.

At 31, Purple is now responsible for developing the 10- to 15-minute spiritual talks given at weekly Crossroads 4 Christ young adult meetings around the state. She’s also creating ready-made evenings focused on learning about the sacraments, Christ-centered friendship, and the saints – all to help the meeting leaders run their meetings. To help meeting leaders deepen their own personal faith, she has also contributed to a “Mission Mindset Program” with online content in the form of short videos, recently completing a series on the Eucharist.

Purple believes newcomers who turn out for the weekly chapter meetings especially need and appreciate catechesis in the Catholic faith.

“We all thirst for truth,” Purple says. “We all thirst to know ‘What is the meaning of our lives?’ We thirst to make sense of ourselves within the world, and there’s such a depth and wealth of knowledge within our faith to help us understand that.”

At first, a presentation on the saints might not necessarily answer those questions directly, she says. “But what we find,” she explains, “is that people hear a story about a saint and start to ask, ‘What does it mean to chase after a higher call?’ or ‘What does it really mean to try to pursue virtue with all that’s in me?’ or ‘What could a fulfilling life in Christ look like?’”

It all leads to the bigger question, Purple says, and to faith-based answers: “‘Where do I come from and where am I going?’ I think the formation that we do tries to form the head and heart in understanding that.”

Purple, who grew up in Avon and always had an interest in her faith, attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where she got a bachelor’s degree in English and later a master’s degree in moral theology and ethics.

She got her start with Crossroads 4 Christ as a meeting attendee in 2015. At the time, she was part of a group of about five young women who were meeting at Purple’s apartment for Bible Study. When they learned about Crossroads 4 Christ, a new young adult lay apostolate, they altered course.

“My friends and I cancelled our Bible Study and went to our first Crossroads 4 Christ meeting,” Purple says, which meant commuting to Columbia, Conn., where the ministry first got its start.

“The Bible Study blessed me a lot, and there was a way in which we were growing in God’s word,” Purple says, “but it was really through Crossroads 4 Christ that I found a deeper sense of community.”

What was so different? “The Holy Spirit was just very at work, with the ability to attend weekly adoration and with these friendships that were growing,” she explains. “I was finding people to go hiking with or go bowling with on the weekends. It set me up in a place where God could just reach me in new ways, and it felt like there was this momentum going forward and just propelling me into deeper relationship with Christ.”

After spending three years in Phoenix and returning to Connecticut in 2019, Purple was amazed at how Crossroads 4 Christ had grown with new chapters since those first meetings she attended at its infancy. She decided to become a Servant Team Leader for the Greater Hartford chapter that meets at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in New Britain, where she helped to run the meetings.

In June 2020, she stepped up to the National Servant Leadership Team as director of formation for the larger organization. On the basis of her positive experience from day one, Purple recommends other young adults who want to learn more about their Catholic faith drop into a meeting to check it out.

For more information on Crossroads 4 Christ chapters and weekly meetings, visit: crossroadsforchrist.org/chapters.

In case you missed it, click here to read more about Crossroads 4 Christ and its executive director Alex Soucy.