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Foot Crossing

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Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, March 2011
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Every weekday morning, more than 100 pairs of tired feet cross the threshold of our parish building. A newly homeless couple trying to find resources for survival stands on their weary, calloused feet, waiting to enter our hospitality center. A man drenched from the morning rain and reeking from alcohol limps into the familiar lobby, hoping to get a dry pair of socks and a jacket. A heavy Vietnam War veteran wearing an unbuttoned shirt and feathers tied to his long hair waits for a new pair of shoes to fit his swollen, infected feet.

People’s feet tell the stories of homelessness and disease. Some of our guests carry within them deep secrets of how they landed on hard times. Others may be silent about their past physical traumas or how they have abused drugs. They may even try to hide their need for food, companionship, or a new pair of underwear. Our volunteers and staff understand that people often do not want to admit their vulnerability. However, people cannot hide their homelessness, illnesses, and defenselessness when our nurses and volunteers deal with people’s sore, filthy feet.

Foot care ministry
Every Wednesday in our hospitality center at the Downtown Chapel Roman Catholic Parish in Portland, Oregon, the staff and volunteers provide foot care. This once-a-week offering affords people an opportunity to make sure their feet are given proper medical treatment. This ministry began not with the notion of medical assessment and management but with the ancient tradition of foot washing and welcome.

Roy contacted us nearly a decade ago from a suburban parish. He inquired about offering sessions on centering prayer for people surviving poverty. Roy told our staff that he had already facilitated groups in local jails and also various groups of people living with HIV/ AIDS. He wanted to pass on what he himself had discovered in his own life: the deep and abundant love of God. Roy quietly spoke his own story to our staff of his years of wretched anger and hatred toward family members. He told us that his hardened, heated life had been transformed with prayer. Roy assured us that God was still healing his relationships with his wife and children. He was also the foster father of more than a dozen at-risk children. So the members of the staff agreed to his request for offering a time of contemplative prayer among people who live outside and who suffer the many issues of poverty.

After several months of facilitating group prayer, Roy came back to our parish staff with another request. He and his wife longed to discover why Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. Roy said to our staff, “1 know that Jesus ate with his disciples everyday, but on the night before he died, he ate with them one more time and then washed his friends’ feet.” He said with an intense desire, “1 have to find out what that means.”

Thus Roy and his wife began our foot ministry. They welcomed people into a small room with gentle conversation and intentional hospitality. The couple was shy and intimidated at first as they provided soothing salts to soak putrid feet. They trimmed long, yellow toenails and provided clean white socks that they had purchased themselves. While they stooped before people with aching feet, they internally prayed for each person. Our foot ministry was born of a man who admitted to both his selfishness and to his life’s being completely transformed by personal prayer.

After several months of washing rank and sore feet, the couple came back to speak to our staff. The holy couple explained that they glimpsed a reason why Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. Roy quietly said to us, “I believe Jesus washed the feet of his beloved so to see their faces at a different angle, in a new light, in the intimacy of genuine humility.” Roy and his wife continued their service in their own lives by receiving two more foster children into their home. When the couple left our foot ministry, our parish nurse continued it. Today, Sharon and other volunteer nurses, student nurses, and other volunteers receive people on Wednesday mornings. Now the focus is not only to bathe people’s feet but also to provide more medical assistance.

Sharon provides soothing Epsom salts, healing lotions, and creams. The nurses look for deep infections and open wounds that will not heal. They know when to send our guests to a doctor or an emergency room. The volunteers fill plastic bins with hot water and sudsy healing salts. They invite people to soak their feet, and the volunteers enter into people’s lives through the stories of their feet. Sharon and others listen to the words people share and become attuned to their hope that someday homelessness, poverty, and addictions may also be soothed and cured. They wipe each toe with bleached towels, and each foot is examined and dried. They teach our guests how to care for their feet when disease and infection are present because of diabetes. They cut curly long nails and wipe scaly skin with care and concern. The nurses deliberately dress each foot with new white sweat socks.

We provide our foot ministry as an extension of our morning hospitality center because feet are the main source of transportation for many people living outside. Most of our guests cannot afford appropriate health care, and in most cases health care is not accessible to people living on the streets. We also provide this basic foot care because people live in the reality of Portland’s rain and cool weather all year long. Every day, people’s feet are not just damp but squishy wet. People come to us with prune~likeskin and yellow, tough nails. The rank smell of feet permeates our entire bUilding and lingers long into the day. People expose their secrets by crossing our parish threshold and offering theideet to be cared for by our volunteers.

Our volunteers and nurses enter into the mystery of Holy Thursday’s Mandatum every Wednesday morning. This ministry extends the mission of Jesus from the ancient liturgy of the Triduum. The Gospel of John reminds us that our foot ministry is not just a reenactment of the past but a vital ministry in our generation. The ritual gesture is neither fake nor meaningless in our community. Our foot ministry puts into daily action the call of Jesus to become people of hospitality, to enter into the mystery of people’s stories. Our foot care volunteers show us that intimacy happens when we see people’s faces from the perspective of love and service. People’s feet tell us stories, especially when we listen to them from the angle of looking up into their weathered, beautiful faces.

Holy Thursday foot washing
The liturgy of Holy Thursday invites people in every parish into the role of hospitality. The act of washing feet is still a sacred form of worship. Some parishes are quick to replace the foot washing on Holy Thursday with hand washing or shoe shining. These replacements seldom work; they do not bear the weight of the intimate act of exposing dirty feet to the community. Those other acts do not reveal vulnerability or suggest that people actually need God or the community for survival in daily life. Naked feet expose the Body of Christ in real need on Holy Thursday.

Entering into the mystery of the Mandatum on Holy Thursday evening invites every person into the earthy, human need for Christ’s redeeming love. Our parish sets up chairs in our three aisles before the liturgy begins. After the Gospel and homily, the people designated for “foot washing go to their preassigned chairs and remove their shoes and socks. Every person who attends this Mass should see naked feet. People should be able to enter into the action of this rite. The presider and servers process around the chapel to hold, wash, and wipe the human foot. The feet of our people are seldom beautiful, and their nails rarely (if ever) receive a pedicure. The smell of sour feet needs to be part of the rite – not perfumed, perfect feet.

The Mandatuin tells the story of every worshiping community and reveals how each one listens to the Gospel during the entire year. The stories of vulnerability told in naked feet connect to the ways the parish serves people. The foot washing is linked to a young mother wiping the bottom of her infant after a bout of diarrhea. Foot washing connects to the middle-aged man who washes the aging body of his father after he has suffered a stroke. A mother holds the forehead of a grade-school-age daughter vomiting in the toilet. A wife washes the blood off her husband after surgery. A husband cleans up food from his wife’s body after feeding her stomach through a tube. The Mandatum on Holy Thursday connects the human vulnerability we all face in caring for those we love with the public ritual of the church.

Foot washing on Holy Thursday reminds every parish community that we begin each ministry from Jesus’s call to prayer and service. Many parish communities resist entering into such filthy concerns, but we are all called to enter local hospitals with prayer and willingness to be changed by the suffering of our friends and neighbors. We are challenged dUring the Triduum to get our own feet wet from sweat by building a home or painting a garage. We must walk the extra mile to support fundraising efforts for breast cancer or AIDS. On Holy Thursday, we are reminded that we do all of those things because of the intimate love of Jesus, who offered his life for each person.

I recently asked Gwen, one of our regular foot washing volunteers,to articulate how this ministry has changed her. I wish everyone could see her in action, using few words as she carries tubs of sloshing water in our basement to prepare for our guests. She washes and bleachestowels, wipes up floors, and invites people to experience foot washing. These actions go well beyond her words. She said to me, “I appreciate the trust our guests develop in our abilities as well as limitations to provide for what they need.” She also added, “The community helps me to maintain an attitude of grateful living, to not take things for granted, and to do what I am able.” Gwen does so much without the notice of so many. Gwen can also be seen on Holy Thursday serving the Eucharist or reading the Scriptures.

Gwen’s daily actions guide our Triduum. Her actions, along with those of all of our volunteers, speak the reality of John’s Gospel. She and the many nurses and volunteers live the Mandatum every week. The connection of prayer and service is lived on Wednesday mornings in our parish basement. I do not have to look very far to preach the Gospel on Holy Thursday. The feet that cross our threshold each day are signs of the crucified Savior. Their smell reminds me always to walk with people who suffer.

Food For Friday

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Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, February 2011
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I crave the Eucharist on Good Friday. Perhaps my hunger is most pronounced then because Good Friday is the only day of the year in which the celebration of the Eucharist does not take place. Nevertheless, my hunger grows strong. I intellectually realize that the Body of Christ is distributed on this sacred day consecrated from the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday. Even with that knowledge, my hunger pains cry out. These liturgical arguments do not take the longing away from my soul. Nothing really soothes my hunger on Good Friday.

I experience great hunger on Good Friday because I pray with people who feed only on their loneliness and suffering on most other days of the year. People stream into our chapel at high noon on Good Friday. Some cross the line from the business world to the world of poverty by simply walking across Burnside Street. Some people stroll into the chapel after spending the morning in our Hospitality Center seeking clothing, a new backpack or clean pair of underwear, or just to be acknowledged by name. Some people stroll in recalling childhood memories of kissing the cross, inhaling bellowing incense and humming long Latin chants. Still others are curious about what Catholics do on Good Friday since Jesus stays on the cross all year long in our sanctuaries.

No matter the curiosity of some people or the memory of others, there remains a collective hunger for God. For so many people the hunger is bone deep because they are crushed by relationships of abuse. Many of our worshippers hate themselves for how their lives have turned out from serving in wars or selling their bodies for drugs. The collective hunger in our worshipping assembly settles into our common songs and liturgical responses. People remain emotionally empty and are looking for a way out of the circumstances that have brought them down. We are all hungry for God’s love and compassion on the day when we remember the death of Christ Jesus.

Several years ago our staff tried to address this common hunger in a different way during the Good Friday liturgy. We looked to a common item that we distribute each day that comforts people, yet a reminder of hunger itself – a bag of food. On most weekdays, our community distributes food bags to people living in single-room occupancy hotels. These single rooms are no larger than a parking space. People need food to get by because the monthly rent remains outrageously high. So our community offers bags of canned goods and items that can be warmed on a small hot plate.

These food bags are a reminder of poverty itself. They speak volumes about our inability to feed people’s needs. We only offer them a few cans and packages to survive a long month of high rent and skyrocketing food prices. The presence of these brown bags reminds people of their own hunger as they also symbolize our help for them.The bags tell the stories of severe loneliness that eats away at those whose lives are so tenuous. Living alone in a bug-infested, noisy room destroys one’s dignity. The bags of food become a sign of hope even in the midst of poverty and loneliness, of hunger and broken dreams.

We stationed members of our staff carrying bags of food on each side of the cross as people came forward to reverence the cross. We then invited people to also touch the bag, to pray for our starving neighbors and the millions of starving people around the world. Since so many people count on our bags of food this was a simple reminder that the Cross of Christ is lived here on this block amidst great hunger. Many visitors ignored the invitation; some did not get the connection to Christ’s presence. However, for many people the Cross of Christ and the bag of food became the source of real and substantial nourishment.

I realize this gesture would not work for every worshipping assembly. I know it may even confuse many people. However, I keep trying to discover ways that people in poverty can find their home in any of our worshiping communities. I am at a loss to feed people’s unfathomable and lasting pain. This is Good Friday. Only God can restore people’s lives and feed their deepest needs. This is the place in which I learn to trust God. The Cross of Christ is the place for real, rich and sustaining food even though I remain so hungry on Good Friday.


Lenten Rhythm

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Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, December 2010
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Several years ago I sat around the kitchen table in the rectory with a friend discussing our upcoming Lenten discipline. My friend taught Scripture at a Catholic university and she had been received into the Catholic Church the previous Easter. She challenged me to look at Lent differently. We stumbled on an image of Lent being a delicate dance, a relationship with God who longs to offer us healing and love.

Our discussions led us into this unique dance of partners that Lent offers us, sacrifice and grace, sin and forgiveness, contrition and change, suffering and love. We discussed our need to understand the Scriptures differently than in previous years. We realized that we needed to go beyond taking the gospels for granted, beyond our automatic responses and our usual patterns of praying and living them.

We then tripped over the idea to actually take a few dance lessons for our Lenten offering. Somehow I agreed to sign up for Tango, the most complicated dance of all. All of a sudden I found myself in a downtown dance studio just after Ash Wednesday. The instructor assumed we were a couple and just could not quite figure our motives for pursuing dance since neither of us was at all a natural.

We laughed more than we danced, we tripped over our feet more than we felt the rhythm of the music and we embarrassed ourselves during the three weeks of lessons. Real dance is more complicated than we thought, the footwork, the balance and the emotions. Our insights and discouragements led us back to the Lenten gospels to examine the relationships that are crucial in this season.

Jesus encounters a delicate relationship with the temptations of the devil. The two tango with the scriptures and God who promises support even when we dash our feet against a stone. We partake in this sacred dance when our two left feet deal with our sin against helping people who cannot stand up for themselves or feed their children. In Lent our relationships with overeating, drug use and extramarital affairs stop us in our tracks. Our convictions must speak louder than the din of anger, rage and neglect. Lent must be centered on the real pain of our people, the disillusionment of our spirits and the temptations of our emotions.

Lent calls us to get a new perspective on our lives. This perspective is not from a high mountaintop, but an inner awareness that a new vision is possible even for the most stubborn among us. Fear is the culprit we must all deal with in Lent. Dancing with fear can lead us to self-absorption, lack of love and empty relationships. Taking fear by the hand can lead us all into the love that God has for even the most callused or confused partner.

The woman of Samaria danced around her past in the presence of Jesus. He knew her heart and the real person behind the water jar and the fear. He named her real thirst, gave her hope to drink and sent her on her way to set others free. This marvelous dance at the well at noontime still shows us that Christ is in relationship with sinners, doubters and outcasts. This holy dance is for everyone. Christ opens up faith to be about people, not certainty, correct rubric or dancing the tightrope of politics.

Jesus still spits on the ground making clay with saliva in order for us all to see. We are still blind to teenagers having sex in schools, adults shooting heroin in movie theaters and gangs murdering our elderly grandparents. We still do not think people suffering homelessness are our sisters and brothers nor do we really see that children need food in an era of severe obesity. The Lenten dance takes us by the heart, puts spittle on our ears and courage in our souls.

We also realize we cannot dance in the dark. Jesus finally goes to his friend Lazarus and teases him out of the grave. Lazarus slowly moved his body in a divine dance, being released from the burial clothes and the bonds of death. We too, shake ourselves from even the fear of death in order to live a new life in Christ. We wake up to life when the bandages of fear are slowly unraveled in faith, hope and love.

Lent beckons the soul in a dance of new life. We discover our faith again in the radical rhythms of Christ’s death and resurrection. These gospels of the Lenten season take us by the hand and form in us authentic life.

This is the beginning of conversion for us no matter where we worship. Even though my friend and I did not master the Tango, I entered that year more deeply into the invitation that God takes the lead of every aspect of my life. The task for us all is to keep dancing in the love God offers each person no matter our stumbling, no matter our falling and no matter our lack of rhythm.


Door Man: St. André Bessette

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Originally published by U.S. Catholic, December 2010
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Brother André Bessette didn’t need fancy degrees to know how to welcome the sick who came to the Holy Cross community. Now, he’s the order of educators’ first saint.

My path to the priesthood, as with all priests in the United States, involved many years of higher education. I earned two degrees from the University of Notre Dame before being ordained a priest in the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1983. Later I received yet another master’s degree from Notre Dame. I learned all the appropriate professional skills. I studied the correct rubrics from scholars of liturgical history. The vision of the Second Vatican Council prepared me for what I thought my work would entail.

The education that truly formed me, however, has been learning to pray through my own suffering and the inconsolable pain of others. I am now a student of an uneducated orphan and sickly man, Brother André (Alfred) Bessette, C.S.C., born 30 miles from Montreal in 1845. Ironically, the frail, illiterate brother is our first saint in the Congregation of Holy Cross, a religious order that is best known for our achievements in education.

Brother André dedicated his life to St. Joseph and to people suffering from spiritual and physical illness. He convinced the Holy Cross community in Montreal in the early 1900s to build St. Joseph’s Oratory. Today, the oratory houses the many crutches, canes, and wheelchairs left behind by healed pilgrims who prayed to St. Joseph upon Brother André’s request.

Because of his ill health, members of Holy Cross did not initially want Brother André as a member of the Congregation. His novice master begged the community to allow him to stay because of his intense prayer. He professed vows and was assigned as porter at Notre Dame College in Montreal, the only formal ministry he held his entire life. He began to welcome the sick and the fragile, the ill and the outcast. His door became his entry into people’s deep suffering and isolation. André’s formally educated confreres quickly became displeased with so many sick people congregating around the schoolyard.

Brother André persevered in his devotions. He told people who were ill to pray to St. Joseph, to rub oil on their wounds, to believe in the miracles of Christ Jesus. He experienced God’s healing of thousands of people. He became known as the “miracle worker of Mount Royal.”

Now that I have come to the doors of the Downtown Chapel in Portland, Oregon, I have learned to pray and serve from Brother André’s example. These red steel doors open every day to hundreds of people who cry for help dealing with mental illness or who are consumed with unending loneliness.

Our parish staff and volunteers welcome to our daily hospitality center people struggling to get off drugs, the recently unemployed, and those who have spent their entire adult lives living outside. We welcome people who lash out at others because they cannot heal from their own sexual abuse. We welcome people with gangrene and people who have just been released from jail. Every day we are confronted with our insufficient answers to unsolvable problems.

I arrived here at the red doors of the Downtown Chapel more than eight years ago disillusioned with many aspects of the church. I arrived here in great need of spiritual healing. I turned to Brother André to welcome me, just as he welcomed others in need of healing and consolation in Montreal. Now I experience what André encountered, the inconsolable pain of people. People living in poverty are now my teachers.

Because he could not read, André memorized the Beatitudes and other passages of scripture that offer hope to people in pain. He believed that faith alone was the answer to real human suffering. Confronted with hundreds of people each day waiting to speak with him, André often lost his patience. He was often rude and curt with people who did not want to pray. His curmudgeonly style did not deter people from wanting to be physically touched and emotionally affirmed by God.

I lose my patience as well when I realize in recent years the church has moved away from its healing mission, relinquishing many hospitals, nursing homes, and orphanages. The personal touch of healing has been replaced by large corporations and impersonal technology. At our parish doors, I realize that faith alone can motivate people to give of themselves when other people hurt in so many ways.

Brother André died on January 6, 1937. More than a million pilgrims streamed to Montreal for his funeral. In those days before jet planes, the Internet, and cell phones, the real communication of faith and gratitude spread rapidly among believers.

The Catholic Church canonized Brother André Bessette in Rome on Sunday, October 17, 2010. On that day, I unlocked our red doors in Portland and praised God for André’s example.

Blessed

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Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, November 2010
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I regret many of the words that fly out of my mouth. The sarcastic one-liners, the zingers and the offensive phrases that effortlessly role off my tongue. I catch myself only when my comments have already hurt another person. I hear myself and then realize I had better options. I could have used words as precious instruments of blessing. Rather than being put-downs or the continuation of gossip, my words can build up people from their hurt or misfortune.

I often fail to connect the daily words I speak with the gesture of prayer I model at the end of Mass. My hand rises up in the sign of the Crucified to bless people in all aspects of daily life. My fingertips reach for my forehead and then touch my chest then rest on my shoulders. I understand in my heart that God wishes to transform every aspect of my life and relationships as well. This blessing is not just a perfunctory gesture, an empty ritual or an ancient archaic rite, but the reality that God has already marked us with blood in Christ’s death and resurrection. This intention to offer ritual blessing on the community is simply expressing our true identity.

This holy gesture shelters nameless sinners, defiant unbelievers, stubborn children, rowdy teens and helpless elders in God’s forgiveness and mercy. The blessing reminds us how Jesus lived out his Father’s mission to offer welcome to outcasts, kindness to the weary and acceptance to the undeserving. The words of blessing invite our worshipping assemblies into living out God’s plan for all people. These words consecrate people’s lives, bridge relationships and invite people into the community as God’s beloved.

As I listen to the liturgical gospels from the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time until the Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, I am reminded of Matthew’s desire to bless the meek and lowly. John the Baptist points us into the direction of the Lamb of God. Jesus will bless us not only with water as John did, but with the Holy Spirit. This blessing will bring fire and compassion to peoples’ lives.

Jesus then calls the disciples out from the ordinary means of life. No longer will they haul heavy nets of fish, but they will carry the burden of fishing for believers. These days of heavy work will only be carried out by the grace and blessing that is offered them from Christ’s life and example.

Jesus also calls his new followers to a mountainside and he begins to teach them about how to continue this message of blessing, healing and love. These words of beatitude, of extraordinary blessing come directly from Jesus’ mouth. These words come as a shock, so much so that to this day we have yet to put them into practice. The people who will fall under the arms of Christ’s blessing are the poor in spirit. They include people who mourn the loss of a loved one in death, the meek who cannot inherit land by law and people thirsting for the springs of righteousness. Jesus names those whose intentions are honorable and whose hearts are clean of anger, hatred and violence. He calls peacemakers those who will be blessed by God. These people stand in the shadows of any culture, yet are called into the light of God’s rich blessing.

Jesus blesses his believers to become salt and light for the forgotten and the doubtful. He tells us still that no light can ever cast a shadow over this bright light of faith and goodness. He continues to tell his followers that real blessing comes in authentic forgiveness even when wronging a brother. He commands followers to turn the other check when wronged, give the extra coat to warm a stranger, walk the extra mile for the needy and give something worthwhile to the beggar.

Jesus also tells us that we cannot receive such blessings by serving two masters. If we all in fact give ourselves to God then worry shall be stripped from our hearts. This blessing will enable us all to have adequate clothing, enough food to eat and be sheltered from the cold and even our sorrows.

Every day I feel my fingertips at my forehead and my hands on my shoulders being blessed under the love God has for every person. I know from my ministry among the marginalized that today brings many problems. Blessings of food, shelter, kindness and companionship become real miracles. Reaching out to bless the lowly, the ill and impatient become the reasons why any Christian community exists. The blessing that Christ offers us transforms not only our thoughts about what we own but about other people who long for us to serve them.


Advent: A Housing Project

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Originally published by Celebrate! Magazine, November 2010
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My parents decided to sell our family home in Edwardsburg, Michigan the year after I was ordained a priest. Even though I had not lived in the cozy house for ten years prior to that decision, the news of my parents’ move devastated me. I was an adult having made decisions about my future, but my past seemed to be slipping out from under me. This charming white, renovated home sitting on the edge of Garver Lake was not just a commodity; it felt as if it were at the core of my identity.

I did not realize the emotional power of this piece of land and the house with the open view to the lakefront until I visited my parents just before they sold our home. I walked into the familiar setting to see cardboard boxes being filled with family heirlooms, everyday items and simple gifts I had given them. I saw antiques that my mother and I purchased at flea-markets through the years being carefully stored in bubble-wrap. The setting in which I felt safe, comfortable and protected from the world was being torn up and being sold to strangers.

I felt so alone walking through once-familiar rooms. I strolled through the home one last time before saying goodbye to my past and my parents. I ambled out of the house being stripped of so much of what I thought was important. Part of my angst was that I was being transferred for the first time as a new priest to a different state in the western part of the country. Not only could I not visit my old house, I would be living even further from my folks.

I stood on the driveway looking back at the house and wept like a baby. My mother held me and I felt my father’s arm on my back. This moment was a clear transition into adulthood. There was no going back on my decisions or my parents’ choices. At that moment I was a lost child, a homeless adult.

I remember my fear on the driveway especially during another transition into a new liturgical year. I hear the gospel writer Luke tell us again that people were speaking of the temple adorned with costly stones and votive offerings. Jesus explains that a day will come when there will not be one stone left on another at the temple site. I can imagine the fear people felt hearing these words. The temple was a place of security, community and faith. The panic of change overwhelmed many believers. Saying goodbye to my family home that last day crushed many stones in my memory of what I thought was secure.

As Advent unleashes its prophets’ voices, I hear Jesus spearheading the end of time. He commands our wakefulness. He cuts our ties on earth telling us that two men will be out in a field, one will be taken and one will be left. Two women grinding at the mill will be separated, one taken and one left. If the master of the house would have known when the thief was coming, he could have saved the home from robbery.

Panic must have been written on their foreheads and fear inscribed in their hearts. The one who was to come, the Messiah, first separates us from people we love. I still sleep with one eye open remembering the day that Jesus invited me to let go of the home of my youth.

John the Baptist insists that good fruit must be born in us from our change of hearts. This conversion remains costly as we try to adjust our attitudes about our human priorities and cling to God alone. The Advent wake-up call challenges even the most dedicated believer and the most sophisticated parish assembly to let go of earthly ties of safety and familiarity. This challenge for every individual and community comes at the time of year when we prefer to focus on our cultural nests of financial security, family relationships, warm memories and stable futures.

As I got into the car at my parents’ old house after saying goodbye, I wondered why I was really leaving. I questioned God’s plan for me to move, to live a vocation that would always separate me from my family and my past. I hear again in Advent the reasons for my growing up.

John the Baptist’s followers see that Jesus is healing the sick, getting the lame back on their feet and cleansing the lepers of all disease. They witnessed deaf people hearing and friends being raised from the dead. Jesus also preached news that the poor should always be housed in our concern and love.

I left the security of my childhood home to find my real shelter in God. Finding my life in God enables me to provide a home for others. Now I experience the need for people suffering poverty to always have good news preached to them. I see in other adults the devastation of childhood abuse and the deep grooves of generational poverty and loss. I let go of my childish ways to teach the illiterate, welcome the outcast and befriend the sinner.

Advent calls every worshipping community into adulthood.Our faith cannot remain in cozy corners of sentimentality or in rooms locked in the past. Our common faith is not a dusty antique packed away in our history. God calls our generation to open our eyes to people suffering mental illness and those who make their homes on the streets. We must show our children the real reasons why the Church exists. Advent calls us again to step into the unknown, to cling to God and to embrace people living on our cultural margins.

I celebrate now the gift of being an adult and leaving my hometown so many years ago. I still miss my deceased parents every day and I hold tight to the support they instilled in me as I left home.

As we enter into a new year of grace, some memories still stick to the pavement of our family’s former home. However, now as an adult I do not weep for my loss but instead grieve for people who have never known the security of love, self-worth and family integrity. I now understand my real home in Christ Jesus. He was born humbly on earth so we will know our relationship with heaven. Now I minister among God’s fragile who teach me to wait for a new earth where everyone will find our true home in Christ Jesus.

Advent Alarm

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Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, October 2010
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I wake up every morning to the sound of a dozen or more people talking as they line up around our parish building. Some people are still sleeping in the shelter of the inset near our front door. Others pack up quickly to claim a place in line for our morning hospitality center. Still others will sleep off the cheep booze from the night before.

Waking up to this reality wears me down, especially during the Advent season. Sleeping in a heavenly peace seems like such a dream. This reality seems more like nightmares for people carving out a warm place to be safe under mounds of damp cardboard. Others go weeks without slumber because of drug overuse. Other people sleep all day long due to deep depression. A few people sleep at our door with no blankets, no possessions, no cardboard box or coat or hat, just the concrete for a pillow.

The issues of sleep and waking up create real problems for our parish community. Every morning members of our staff come to work and nudge people out of sleep who are blocking the entrance to the building’s door. During the noon Eucharist when our offices are closed, other people obstruct the exit trying to catch a quick nap. Some people fall asleep in our pews during the noontime Mass – especially the corporate executives.

Advent is the time for people in every parish community to wake up to the reality that surrounds us all. Stay awake! This command in Matthew’s Gospel challenges us to wake up to our timidity toward people’s needs. Advent instills in our communities the deep passion for why Jesus came into the world in the first place. We need to get off our common couches and do something about how people are living in the world.

Advent calls us to claim the dignity of all people. We do this by waking up to the real paradoxes of our day. In this time of year when we overeat, we are called to acknowledge the billion people in the world starving for basic bread. In this time of buying, accumulating, fussing over the correct gifts, Advent scriptures should claim a new awareness of our possessions no matter in which community we live.

No believer wears camel hair and feasts on locusts anymore, but the Sunday gospels need to capture our imaginations about whether or not people have decent clothing. We need more than ever in a downward economy to rouse new attitudes about how we care for elderly people or the mentally ill person who needs a community in which to rest. As members of any worshipping community, we need to find new ways to welcome our homosexual children back from college, our cousin who lost everything gambling on the Internet and our uncle who walked out of his marriage. We all need to come to grips with our real possessions, our relatives and friends.

The Advent Gospels proclaimed in every parish shake us up to see that the lame walk, lepers become cleansed, the deaf hear and the poor have good news proclaimed to them. This is the time to rouse communities from the sleep of apathy and complacency. We need to preach about the needs of people living in poverty even though other people do not want to hear about it. We need now to invite our children into real and dedicated service so that they can witness the parish community doing something worthwhile. We need to invest not only in people who cannot make ends meet, but also in our children who are walking away from our worshipping communities.

Waking up is never easy, but the issue of our sleepy attitudes is the core of the Advent season. We open ourselves to real people because Christ became flesh and invested himself humbly in our human world. He took on the humility of flesh so that we could see all people as divinely loved.

A couple of Christmas’ ago a strong-willed, homeless woman, Bonnie, blocked our only doorway during Christmas Eve Mass. She piled up blankets and carts in a matter of minutes by our red doors. She opened containers of food and invited street people to join her. She smoked a few cigarettes and spoke loudly to passersby. She prepared a place to sleep while members of the parish sang carols and broke bread and shared the cup and proclaimed that Christ is born for people.

I walked out into the lobby as Mass ended and could not believe my eyes. No one could exit the chapel. I scurried to persuade her to move her belongings. Some parishioners helped her move her camp to the side of the building. Knowing Bonnie and seeing her bright eyes, I am convinced she held us captive in the chapel so we could wake up to the meaning of the Incarnation, the Body of Christ in our real world.

A Foot in the Door: A Community Modeled after Brother Andre Bessette, CSC

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Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, October 2010
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The only outside doors to our parish building symbolize welcome and hospitality to our neighborhood in downtown Portland, Oregon. Members of our pastoral staff and volunteers tell stories of homeless people recommending the “red doors” to other people living on the streets. Many among the urban poor people in our neighborhood do not realize we are a Roman Catholic parish, but the bright red doors are known by everyone as the place to receive many of the essentials of life.

People queue up to receive clothing once a month or a laundry voucher once a week from our daily hospitality center. Some residents of the single-room occupancy hotels enter our doors to seek money for non-narcotic prescription medications, or stand in line for a flu shot clinic. Others wait at our entrance for coffee and donated food, excess from local restaurants and grocery stores. Some homeless women may sleep at our red doors during the night. Some drug dealers may urinate on our doors during any hour of the day. One local newspaper even shared a picture of someone who had vomited on a competitor’s newspaper at the entrance to our building. Our doors were then named the “Best Place to Puke” in Old Town, Portland, Oregon.

These sacred doors also lead to the chapel where we celebrate Eucharist every day. When we celebrate Eucharist we all realize the importance of our community so people may find hospitality and healing. Last February we announced to our Sunday assembly that Blessed Brother Andre Bessette, CSC will be canonized in Rome on October 17, 2010. The congregation applauded and cheered. Nearly everyone here knows that our community is a community that Brother Andre helps build.

I was standing at our open doors after that Mass and one of our parishioners came up to our pastor and said, “This is where we find Brother Andre, at these doors, in this community!” Indeed, we rely on the intercession of Blessed Brother Andre, because each day we are faced with undying suffering, with questions no one can solve and with ingrained pain that has not healed for generations.

I remember when I first stepped through our steel and glass threshold. I was overwhelmed by the body odor that had clung to the inside of the building. There is no pine-scented chemical that clears away such an odor. I do not even notice that smell anymore after nearly nine years at the parish. There are so many more important aspects of people’s lives to consider.

Blessed Brother Andre, CSC was a member of my religious community, the Congregation of Holy Cross. He died on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1937. His service to people long ago in need of healing, comfort and consolation continues in our parish as we welcome people living outside or who do not know where to turn because of their mental illness or in their inability to find sufficient health care.

I do not look to Brother Andre for simple solutions to the problems we face at our door. However, his life tells a tale of great faith and dedication. Alfred (Andre) Bessette was born thirty miles from Montreal, Quebec, in Canada on August 9, 1845, the eighth of twelve children. He was always sickly. His mother instilled in him a great love of prayer and dedication to Christ and a special loyalty to Saint Joseph.

Alfred grew up in poverty, especially after his parents died. As an orphan he never finished school. He was illiterate but memorized many passages from Scripture, especially the Passion narratives of Christ. The superiors in the Congregation of Holy Cross did not want to accept Alfred into the community because of his frail health and lack of education. A local pastor, Father Andre Provencal, convinced the Holy Cross superiors to accept Alfred Bessette as a member. He added a note saying, “I am sending you a saint.”

It was through great prayer and the help of friends that Alfred became Brother Andre. He desired a life of poverty, celibacy and obedience. His sole assignment within the community was to serve as the Porter at Notre Dame College in Montreal. His ministry at the door of the college became his path toward love and holiness. He never imagined or dreamed how his life would change or how others would respond to him.

Almost immediately, people were drawn to Brother Andre. He told many who were sick to ask Saint Joseph for help, or to attend Mass. He anointed the sick with special oil found in a lamp near the Saint Joseph statue. He rubbed people’s wounds with a blessed medal of the saint. People were cured of many ailments, diseases and sufferings. Many people began leaving their crutches, canes and prostheses at the college. Brother Andre believed strongly that God’s healing was available for every person surviving poverty.

Some members of the Congregation of Holy Cross criticized Brother Andre because of his ministry of healing and his devotions. Parents at the college feared that sick people would get too close to their children. Brother Andre never saw himself as a healer nor was he concerned in the slightest about his reputation. Andre recognized that healing happened not through him alone, but because people believed in the works of Christ and the intercession of Saint Joseph.

Several years ago a young Jesuit novice entered through our red doors to volunteer in our hospitality center. He noticed Brother Andre’s image hanging on the wall. The novice immediately recognized the image and told us that Brother Andre was his great-great-uncle. He told us a story of a relative going to see Brother Andre. She stood for hours in a long line. Finally she got the opportunity to hold Brother Andre’s hand and tell him that she was a relative from the United States. He told her to move along; his time was for people who really needed him. This story has stayed with their family for years. When relating the story, his relatives told everyone that Brother Andre was a curmudgeon, a cranky old guy who did lots of good things.

Indeed, Andre did not have time for people who were merely curious about him. His single-minded devotion to suffering people was evident well beyond the borders of Canada. He became friends with many people who believed in him and his life was rich with friendships even when he was exhausted from speaking with the thousands of people every week that wanted to see him.

I continue to learn much from the small-framed, pious man who was poor, orphaned and homeless. Our shared religious community, the Congregation of Holy Cross, is best known in the United States for higher education among the privileged. We are priests and brothers, educators in the faith, known for outstanding college football and living comfortable lives. That the frail, illiterate doorkeeper and barber, Brother Andre will become our community’s first official saint, is a great paradox. I pray that we all have the courage to understand his life and celebrate his sainthood.

The poor believed in Andre because he too was poor. He did not see his religious life as an opportunity to escape from poverty or from hard work. Andre’s hospitality was a lived example of Jesus’ desire to run after the one lost sheep even when he was exhausted and afraid. Christ’s command to search diligently for the lost coin is seen in Andre’s acceptance of people. Jesus’ request to ask for what you need, knock on the door with faith and seek always was the total life of Brother Andre.

I am challenged by Andre’s legacy as I stand at our parish doors. I am not economically poor and my faith often wavers from hearing stories of traumas I cannot heal. My greatest poverty comes in my sheer loneliness and deep sadness that I cannot heal the abuse people have suffered as children. I cannot mend their horrific memories. I do not have the power to repair people’s ability to keep a job. I possess no answers when people weep because they do not have love or intimacy in their adult lives. I have only the profound example of Brother Andre as he lived Christ’s invitation to welcome people into community.

People often bend my ear at our parish doors, arguing that if the homeless would just get jobs they would not be a burden on society. I have not read any description of Andre yelling and screaming at passersby, but I often want to shout at people when I hear their judgments. People come to us abused, addicted, and mentally ill and possessing no self-esteem. In this economic recession even the most educated and the most beautiful find employment difficult to attain. We welcome people living in poverty, following Brother Andre’s example, and do not blame people for the struggles and challenges of their lives.

Many church doors are still locked and some of our communities remain inaccessible to certain people within our Church and society. Some doors are barred to children of gay and lesbian parents. Many doors are closed to pregnant teens. Doors are bolted shut to recovering drug addicts who try to heal from multiple abortions. Other doors are closed to the elderly who seek help after being abused. There often seems to be no one on the other side of parish doors to help in times of deep depression, bouts of lashing out from mental illness and landing in jail or even for former clergy seeking help with alcohol addiction.

These are the parish doors that worry me, that keep me awake during the night. Our answers rest in the models of service and hospitality that Brother Andre still shows the Church. I must believe that Christ’s love is the cure for such loneliness and despair among so many people living on the margins of our culture and Church.

Before I open our church doors, I must become vulnerable to God. As I step into the unknown of people’s lives, I remember that only God can reconcile the broken, heal the sick and feed the hungry. There are days when I cannot come to God with anything but fear and a deep knot in my chest. On these days I try to be counted among the disciples who scurried to a dark room, locked the doors and wondered what to do next. Then I search for the words the resurrected Christ offered to them and now offers to everyone, “Peace be with you.” In these words I turn toward Andre’s legacy of living each day in deep prayer and rich satisfaction of the peace and joy offered by God alone.

I admire Brother Andre because he lived his life with passion. He lived an utterly simple life. Other people had to force him to wear a warmer coat and to replace his worn-out shoes. I am deeply changed by this man who simply lived what he believed, that the love of God would be enough for him. God’s love, as it turned out, was more than enough for him.

Every Friday night our parish doors are opened for a meal of soup and sandwiches. People eat seated in chairs stretched along the sidewalk after receiving the meal in our small lobby. We name this soup line “Brother Andre Café.” Simple food becomes the message of hospitality and an extension of the Holy Eucharist. We offer this community event even in the pouring rain or when few volunteers come downtown to help. We welcome people from local low-income housing apartments and people who live under Portland bridges. This is people’s Friday night out, a time to relax on plastic chairs and converse with new volunteers and friends. Brother Andre’s spirit is with us even in the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Through Andre’s dedication, hard work and endless prayer, the Oratory of Saint Joseph in Montreal, Quebec in Canada, stands today as a place of devotion and prayer for many pilgrims from around the world. When Brother Andre died, over a million people fought the frigid weather and deep snow to get a brief moment to view his earthly remains. I truly believe that Brother Andre Bessette, CSC still opens doors for people surviving poverty and living with the consequences of physical pain, mental illness and devastating emotional disease.

Saint Andre of Montreal, pray for us and welcome us home.


Preference for Pink, and Perserverance

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Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, September 2010
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I caught the shade of a large tree as I waited for people to arrive at the cemetery. A gentle breeze blew through the branches of the oak. We gathered on the sunny July morning to commit my mother to her grave. Her sister and brothers and their spouses sat in the folding chairs near the large hole in the earth. Large bouquets of white flowers were propped up against the casket waiting for us to say goodbye. My stoic body straddled the green artificial turf covering the mound of dirt that created the opening for my mother’s grave.

The warm breeze felt refreshing after wearing heavy vestments during the funeral at the church some miles away. The moment caught me in a loneliness that I will never forget. Here, in this time and place, this cemetery, I had to say a last goodbye to my mother, the person who birthed me into the world.

After praying the rite of committal, we all waved to my mother with both hands. This was a gesture she used in all her goodbyes. I stood silently in this solemn moment that connected heaven and earth. I tried to feel the light breeze on my skin, the fake grass under my feet, and the ancient prayer book in my hands. I absorbed the vision of her siblings’ aching faces and the empty expressions of my brother and his family.

In that quiet second, something amazing happened. An African-American woman wearing a bright red dress darted up to me. She grasped my right hand and took my arm to her breast. Looking me in the eyes, she told me that she was a seer. She whispered in the breeze that she felt my mother’s passing. Holding tight to my arm, she told me that my mother told her two things to pass on to me.

The stranger told me that my mother enjoyed the white flowers, but she preferred pink ones. She then bent even closer to my face and said that my mother wants me to persevere in my priesthood. The strong-gripped sage told me that I did not need to know her name or anything about her. She let go of my arm and drifted into the crowd, got into her car and drove out of the cemetery.

I could not believe my ears or my eyes. No one overheard that she felt my mom’s passing and no other mourner experienced her grip or felt her words. When I arrived at the luncheon after the services I asked everyone if they knew the red-dressed guest. My relatives and friends assumed she was another friend of mine especially after hearing her sing during the rite of committal.

I reminisce about my experience in light of the gospels proclaimed during the last weeks of our liturgical year. As I look back on that sacred moment, I feel deeply the promise of Paradise. Standing on artificial grass that morning I experienced the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth. The line between this world and the next blurred with the words of a stranger. I never try to guess the sage’s identity or wonder from where she came. I take her at her words. I want to live in the mystery that I do not have all the answers nor can I control how the end of life will take place.

Standing under the shade tree at the cemetery also takes me to the time of Zacchaeus risking his life climbing a tree to glimpse Jesus. Instead, Jesus tells Zacchaeus he wants to stay at his home. On that July morning, I felt the invitation of Jesus to feel the shade of the oak and know that all of life was in his hands. I believe on that sunny morning salvation came to our family’s house.

I felt the humility of the tax collector praying in the temple. He humbled himself and was exalted. He knew his place in prayer in light of his life and sinfulness. Leading my mother’s funeral was indeed a humbling experience, especially hearing the red-dressed woman remind me to persevere in priesthood in good times and bad. Her words were especially humbling knowing that they reflected my mother’s intentions.

I do not know the real identity of the woman at the cemetery or the legitimacy of her words. However, I do know I always sent my mother white flowers, but in fact her favorite color was pink. I always felt my mother’s support and love in my priesthood when she was alive, even on days when I wanted to give up. In these November days, I carry myself back to the moment under the shade tree and remain grateful for my mother and my conversation with a red-dressed stranger.

Albert John Raab, Jr., Ronald Patrick Raab, C.S.C., Bishop William McManus, Rosemary Raab