18 minute read
Feeding the poor enriches the lives of sisters
Kate Oatis is owner of Oatis Communications and has written for National Catholic Reporter. She is the former features editor for the Catholic Chronicle in Toledo, Ohio. She can be contacted at kaoatis@ yahoo.com.
SISTER SANDRA Lyons, O.S.F. (far left) and Sister Carolyn Muus, O.S.F. (far right) in front of the Bernardine Center with Nicole and Marten, two people who
Feeding the poor shared in a brunch at the center. enriches the lives of sisters
bykate OatIS
For two Bernardine Franciscan sisters, vocation has led to a long, rich life of service and prayer.
MOST PEOPLE ARRIVE to the Bernardine Center in Chester, Pennsylvania looking for help. Bernardine Franciscan Sisters Sandra Lyons and Carolyn Muus arrive there each day to give it.
Chester, part of the second-hungriest congressional district in the country, is home to the center, which offers supplemental meals and programs to low-income individuals and families. The sisters also provide classes on anger management, nutrition, and parenting. Their bigger work, though, is in food distribution. Lyons and Muus are the center’s director and hospitality coordinator, respectively.
The sisters provide nine days of meals per month—27 meals—to each fam-
LYONS DISTRIBUTES certificates to people who have completed the Bernardine Center’s anger management classes.
ily member they serve. On average, that’s 650 individuals a month and a total of more than 17,000 meals.
The meals are meant to be a supplement, not a family’s only food source, Lyons says. “People with low incomes can’t afford food for a whole month so we’re helping them.”
Dedication to poor
Helping people is something Lyons discovered she wanted to do back in high school in Philadelphia. She didn’t know it at the time, but her ninth-grade teacher, Bernardine Franciscan Sister Rose MacDermott, had a big effect on her. Lyons’ call to religious life was first awakened and nurtured by her teacher’s life of service, particularly her social justice and peace ministry.
The “spark” of a religious calling grew, Lyons says. “When Sister asked me if I’d ever thought of be-
coming a sister, I listened. It became a possibility.”
It wasn’t until she was a highschool senior in Hawaii, however, that Lyons told her parents during a discussion about college that she planned to join the Bernardine Franciscan Sisters, then based in Radnor, Pennsylvania.
“They were so surprised, they about dropped their teeth. They sent my siblings away from the dinner table to talk to me,” Lyons says. “They had thought, as I had for a long time, that I wanted to become a mother and have lots of children. That was
MUUS PICKS fresh produce from the center’s garden.
a reasonable expectation because Dad was in the Navy and Mom was at home and I was the oldest of five children.”
Lyons recently celebrated her 50-year Jubilee as a sister, and it’s still evident to her that becoming a
MUUS and volunteers prepare hoagies for a meal.
sister was the right decision. Helping Lyons discern her vocation wasn’t MacDermott’s only gift. She also founded the Bernardine Center in 1986, and Lyons became director in 2007, several years after the older sister retired.
The Bernardine Franciscans provide some financial support to the center. Other support comes from donations from churches and individuals and in-kind donations of food.
“The center is advocating for people who’ve had a lot of barriers put up for them—they find it hard to get jobs, they are angry, they don’t know how to parent. Advocacy for them is food and educational pro-
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AT A WOMEN’S Empowerment Dinner, two attendees receive Peace Doves for their windows at home. The Bernardine Center’s Women’s Peace Empowerment Initiative promotes personal and community peacemaking in one’s daily activities through peer support, prayer, and discussion.
MUUS and a volunteer prepare a meal at the Bernardine Center.
When I am serving people, they are God in disguise. When we open the door for brunch, we are letting the Lord in.”
grams that will help lift them out of poverty,” she says.
Lyons is also the chairperson for the Delaware County Interfaith Food Assistance Network, of which the center is a member. “We send letters to food stores to get donations and we request that they donate food to a local pantry in the area rather than to the big centers in Philadelphia,” she says.
Nurturing her own spirituality with prayer is as important to her as helping the poor. “After my shower and coffee each morning, I sit down for a 30-minute reflection and then my breviary prayers,” she says. “It gives me a grounding for the day. As the day progresses, I hope I can be receptive to whatever comes to me and to be available to people.”
Prayerful ministry
Service and relying on prayer to sustain her are also essential to Sister
Carolyn Muus, the Bernardine Center’s hospitality coordinator.
Muus was raised Methodist in Liberia and has been a sister for 52 years. As a student at the Bernardine
Franciscans’ boarding school in Liberia, she became very impressed by the mother general, whom she remembers as being very kind.
Muus’ mother was Liberian and her father Danish. “My mother did not want me to become a Catholic,” she says, but “I wouldn’t give it up. As I grew older, I would explore why I became a sister and why I stayed in the community and understood that God wanted me for something.”
Today, that “something” is serving the young, old, men, women, and children who walk through the door at the center. “You need to respect them and not preach to them. We offer them hospitality. We don’t make them pray before they eat. We show them respect,” she says.
Living in community provides Muus with opportunities for communal prayer. “We make time in the morning for prayers together and for private prayers. Some of the sisters I live with now taught me in Liberia. It is amazing what God has in store for each of us,” she says.
Muus is glad she lives relatively close—just 90 minutes away—from her community’s motherhouse in Reading, Pennsylvania. “We all get together for fundraisers, community days, elections, and other events and celebrations.”
When she was a young woman, yearning to become Catholic and to serve God as a Bernardine Franciscan, Muus says she did not know, of course, what the future held for her
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LYONS (at left) with a graduate of the Super Cupboard Program, offered by the Bernardine Center. Super Cupboard educates and provides peer support to parents of young children who frequently use food pantries. They learn nutrition, food preparation, food budgeting, and other life skills.
or what God had in mind for her. About people today discerning their calls to religious life, she says, “They have to just keep listening to the call and God will do the rest. They should just do their best and leave the success to God.”
Blessing of service
Today, nearly 30 years after its founding, the Bernardine Center is blessing the people it serves through meals, classes, and programs. And it’s blessing the women who serve there.
Lyons is committed to making her ministry a prayerful priority. “I’m on a hospital board that wanted to meet on Tuesday mornings once a
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Each evening,
month,” Lyons says. “I couldn’t do it because of my prayer time, so I said no. I try to be physically and psychologically present to what I’m doing. And each evening, I review the day to see if there was anything I could have done better.”
As for Muus, she is grateful and pleased to have taken her own advice about doing one’s best and leaving the success to God because today she says, “I am very happy. God has blessed me.” =
FATHER JOHN HERMAN, C.S.C. gives a blessing to one of his flock during a Mass.
Father John Herman, C.S.C. was ordained in 1995. He is a Holy Cross priest and pastor of Our Most Holy Mother of the Light Parish in Mexico.
Startingtheweekoffright
by Father JOhNherMaN, c.S.c.
PHOTOS BY JOSÉ RODRIGUEZ
After 20 years of being a priest, Sunday-morning celebration of the Eucharist never gets old for this pastor. He loves even the challenges of being present to all his parishioners.
ILOVE BEING A HOLY CROSS PRIEST. I give thanks to God every day for calling me to the priesthood in the Congregation of Holy Cross, especially because this was not my original plan. In college I was certain that I would be a civil engineer one day and be married with a wife and several children.
One of the things that I love best about my life as a priest and pastor is Sunday mornings. My parish is la Parroquia de Nuestra Madre Santísma de La Luz, or in English, Our Most Holy Mother of the Light Parish, in Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon, México. After 20 years of being a priest, Sunday mornings and the celebration of
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the Eucharist still have never gotten old. I love it all!
Being present
I started in parish ministry as a deacon at St. John Vianney Parish in Goodyear, Arizona, with Father Joe Corpora, C.S.C. as my pastor and mentor. I learned many things from him during the four years we were together. One of the most valuable things that I learned was the importance of being present before and after the weekend Masses to greet and interact with parishioners. He taught me that it’s the one time each week that we can be, even briefly, with most of the people of the parish. Although offering this kind of
Being present before and after our Sunday Masses is one of the best “ possible ways for us to show the people that we care for them and are there for them.
presence can be tiring, I enjoyed it from my very first days in parish ministry.
Many people aren’t part of groups or ministries that meet during the week. Most don’t or can’t come to daily Mass, but many will come to Mass on Sundays. Being present before and after our Sunday Masses is the best possible way to get a sense of what’s going on with our people and one of the best possible ways for us to show the people that we care for them and are there for them. Frequently, it’s the time
HERMAN TAKES TIME for a “photo op” with children who have made their First Communion.
when people will ask me to hear their confession or ask for a blessing before they have surgery. Practically, as well, it’s often also the best way to take care of things face-to-face with parishioners that might otherwise require a phone call or a visit during the week. But most of all, I simply enjoy being with the people.
Getting to know people
One of the challenges that I have faced in being present to the people is the size of La Luz Parish. We have our main church and four chapels and a population of nearly 35,000 people within our parish boundaries—most of whom are Catholic and many of whom, unfortunately, don’t attend Sunday Mass. (Yes, we’re working on that all of the time!)
Unfortunately, I’m not able to be in each place every Sunday, neither to celebrate each Mass nor to greet the people before and after. I only
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see many of them once a month, which makes it more difficult to have continuity with them and learn their names. I’ve seen from the beginning how much learning names means to people, so I have to work even harder here to do it. I’m frequently embarrassed to have to ask certain people their names over and over before it finally sticks. I enjoy joking with the women whose names I don’t know by simply saying, “Maria?!” I’m right half of the time here when I do that!
We’re in it together
I feel blessed that I’m not here alone at La Luz and our four chapels. This is a ministry of our Holy Cross
community and there are four other Holy Cross priests as well as Holy Cross sisters who serve here as well. There’s no way that I could preside at our four Saturday evening and 12 Sunday Masses every week. Sundays are very busy for all of us, but I don’t mind because I know how important these celebrations of the Eucharist are for our people.
In fact, it’s a great privilege and blessing to be able to celebrate the Eucharist with and for the people of La Luz Parish. I don’t feel worthy of this blessing in so many ways. Me, a sinner, preaching the gospel and praying the words of institution and calling down the Holy Spirit to change simple gifts of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus? Nonetheless, God has called me to this, and now here I am, serving in northern Mexico.
FIRST COMMUNIONS (above) are always important celebrations for Herman.
HERMAN LEADS a Palm Sunday procession (below).
As Catholics, we believe, as the Second Vatican Council told us, that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life.” Sunday Mass offers us all the opportunity to encounter Christ in a profound way in the Eucharist and to be strengthened by Him in our efforts to live our faith with joy, gratitude, and fidelity.
Unified at Eucharist
One thing that helps me feel very grounded in celebrating the Eucharist here is the connection that I’ve developed with the people after being here for more than four years. I see Imelda out there and know that she’s suffering greatly from the sudden, tragic death of her daughter. I see Oscar and Marta, who are expectantly and anxiously awaiting the birth of their child after recently suffering a very painful miscarriage.
I see Alfonso and know how he is struggling to turn away from sin and be faithful to God and know how important the Eucharist is for him in doing so. I see Santiago and Norma, who are on fire for their faith after they were required to attend a retreat as parents of a child who would be confirmed and to their surprise had a powerful and life-changing encounter with Christ. I see Gregorio, who’s struggling to find a job that will allow him to support his family. I see David, who is discerning a possible vocation to religious life and priesthood in Holy Cross with a mixture of excitement, anxiety, and wonder.
All of our people bring who they are and what’s in their minds and hearts to our celebration of the Eucharist. I do as well. Somehow we are all drawn more closely together in the Body of Christ through what we celebrate together each Sunday in the Eucharist. Through the grace of God, we’re also drawn more closely to the kingdom of God through our participation in the sacrifice of Jesus in the Eucharist.
I love Sundays, not because it’s the day for NFL football (I’ve often
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suffered through Sundays as a Detroit Lions fan!) or because a family will likely invite me to their home for carne asada for a birthday celebration or because it’s the day for free rides here on the Metro. I love Sundays because we all get to come together and encounter Christ in our celebration of the Eucharist. Does it get any better than this? =
JOSEPHITE PRIESTS and their parishioners took part in the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, an important event in the civil-rights movement. It was during this march that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech. The men in the background wearing clerical collars are Josephites.
Josephites have a dream
For nearly a century and a half, Josephite priests and brothers have served the African-American community through education and pastoral care.
ROM THEIR BEGINNING in 1871, Josephite priests and brothers ministered exclusively to African Americans. They are the only men’s religious community with this singular mission. F
An interracial, intercultural community, their members are black and white, American-born and African-born. There are 78 Josephites who serve in 41 parishes and four schools in several states. In addition, they run the Josephite Pastoral Center, an education, publishing, and research ministry in Washington, D.C. that specializes in resources for black Catholics. Josephites—and their lay companions, parishioners, and students—have been part of the ongoing American struggle for civil rights and racial justice. Their efforts have ranged from activism for voting rights to a commitment to nurture African-American spirituality within
FATHER MICHAEL K. Okechukwu, S.S.J. blesses a couple at his 2011 ordination to the priesthood at Holy Comforter-Saint Cyprian Catholic Church in Washington, D.C.
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a largely Caucasian church. They have helped nurture and develop gospel choirs and other Catholic liturgical forms with multicultural traditions.
“Today when black youth continue to be an endangered species, when we are still struggling to pass a Voting Rights Bill, and when almost 50 percent of black males drop out of high school and feed the prison pipeline, we Josephites are made keenly aware that our mission is not over,” writes the congregation’s general superior, Father William Norvel, S.S.J., in the Josephite quarterly Harvest. “Indeed our mission is more vital today than ever before.”
Read on to see images of the Josephites in action. =
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FATHER MICHAEL THOMPSON, S.S.J. (right), vicar general of the Josephites, at a liturgical ministries workshop at the Josephite Pastoral Center in Washington, D.C.
FATHER ANTHONY Anichukwu, S.S.J. (below) talks with children after Mass at St. Peter Claver/St. Pius V Catholic Church in Baltimore, Maryland.
FATHER CORNELIUS Ejiogu, S.S.J., pastor at St. Luke’s Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., enjoys a moment with a parishioner.
AN EMPHASIS of the Josephite community is to nurture lay leadership. Cheryl Holley, director of the Josephite Pastoral Center in Washington, D.C., staffs a display table of resources specifically developed for the AfricanAmerican community and made available through the center.
PERMANENT DEACONS worship at a Josephite-led Mass on the 40th anniversary of the permanent diaconate. The Josephites led the way in preparing the national deaconate formation program. The Mass was held at St. Joseph Church in Largo, Maryland.
SHARING the triumphs and difficulties of their ministries—and sometimes laughing about them—is part of religious life. Pictured here are Father Donald Fest, S.S.J.; Father Thomas Frank, S.S.J.; and Brother Marx Tyree, S.S.J.
