Capuchin Prayer & Service Retreat
Saturday was the Winter Solstice & I was fortunate to
spend it at a Capuchin Prayer & Service Advent Retreat. The Capuchin Prayer & Service Days were
started in NYC after Hurricane Sandy, when many members of Capuchin Youth &
Family Ministries (CYFM) in Garrison, NY wanted to come down to NYC to help out
with relief efforts in the Rockaways. The Prayer & Service Days and Weekend
Retreats have continued ever since. It’s great to see this ministry of service
continue in the true tradition of CYFM which provides many opportunities for
youth and families to build and nurture relationships, grow spiritually, and to
share in the vision of St. Francis who followed the call from God to “repair my
house.” My cousin Colleen came this
weekend too which was great to get more family involvement in a ministry that
was designed for youth and families as a whole.
Dennis McCormack was also there with two of his children, Heather and
Kyle. A former Cap Corps from CYFM,
Mike, was there too. Together we helped (almost) put the finishing touches on
the new kitchen for the St. Francis Table ministry of St. Matthias Church in
Ridgewood, Queens.
The St. Francis Table is a feeding ministry of St. Matthias Church
that feeds hot meals to food pantry members on Saturdays, in addition to the meals
fed for the homeless & hungry during the week. For a long time they’ve operated out of a
smaller, outdated kitchen space around the corner from the church, but within the
past year Br. Michael and others have decided to renovate a former office space
which didn’t get much use anymore, into a brand new, larger kitchen to serve the
growing need and population in the area.
Recently there have been a lot of Coptic Christians from Egypt immigrating
to the US and landing in Ridgewood, as they are seeking asylum from persecution
of Christians. Br. Michael and St.
Matthias Church have been welcoming them with open arms, making sure they have
food to feed their families and also making sure the family members have
opportunities to be involved in the initiatives meant to help them, so they can
grow their skill sets and maintain a level of dignity that goes a step further
than basic charity might allow.
On Saturday, we finished cleaning the kitchen just in time
for the cooks (some of the very Egyptians who would be benefiting from the St.
Francis Table) to come in and prepare what was the first hot meal served in the
new kitchen! It is a tradition for Coptic Christians to
fast from meat during Advent, so there were two different dishes prepared for
the meal: fish (tilapia) with a fresh
vegetable salad with special marinade and rice, or chicken with rice and salad.
While the meals were served in Styrofoam take-out
containers, Br. Michael tried to encourage the Egyptians (via one of the cooks
who acted as the translator) to bring in their own Tupperware in the future so
they wouldn’t have to use the disposable containers. I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great to
do a screening of a film about the environmental impacts of waste from
disposable containers, and have the film subtitles in all languages spoken at
the church, to appeal to the multicultural and international culture of the
church. I also spoke with Angelique, the daughter of Norma (very active
parishioner) about the Franciscan Earth Corps and she had some ideas, such as
perhaps the teachers in the St. Matthias School could incorporate environmental
education into the curriculum. Maybe
they could also add vegetables to their flower garden too, we concluded.
In addition to addressing the immediate needs of hunger, Br. Michael is also interested in seeing how we can help get the families get the skills they need to make a life for themselves in New York City. Many of the new immigrants are living in “railroad” apartments in Queens, fitting a whole family in a small, narrow apartment where there isn’t space for much of anything. They have expressed to Br. Michael a need for beds for their families, and it occurred to him that with such small amounts of space they could really use some bunk beds. So some CYFM volunteers such as Dennis McCormack have offered to help build bunk beds for the families. Everyone has agreed that it would be best if the family members could participate in helping to put the beds together, to help the family members gain skills they might be able to put to use in a future job here in NYC. Br. Michael and Kyle helped put together one of these beds with a family today (thanks to Dennis who donated the materials & started putting some of it together), but there are still more beds that need to be made & the materials paid for.
I also had some interesting conversations back at the St. Michael Friary in Brooklyn, the host for the Capuchin Prayer & Service Days. Paul, a postulant at the friary, spent a number of years living at the Catholic Worker in Manhattan, and has some familiarity with Peter Maurin Farm in Marlboro, NY which is exciting because I think it would be great to organize trips up to the farm with groups from NYC and CYFM, where we could incorporate in a Franciscan spirituality component and talk about the importance of growing food and connecting to the land both as a spiritual discipline and also to help serve the practical needs of people who need to eat fresh food for health. Paul also organizes members of a soup kitchen he works with to go up and speak to state legislators in Albany about their experiences with hunger. I was very excited to hear about this because I have envisioned seeing something like this organized ever since seeing “A Place at the Table.”
I was also encouraged to hear that there has been some
movement on Br. Michael’s idea for a “St. Francis Farm” in East New York,
Brooklyn. He’s had his eye on a plot of land which is owned by a different
Catholic Church near the friary, which right now is a big plot of grass not
being used for anything. We are
envisioning this as a farm where fresh food can be grown to supplement the food
given out through the St. Francis Table food pantry program; there could also
be community garden plots as well. This
would be differentiated from many other community gardens in the area because
it would be distinctly Catholic, and coming from a Franciscan desire to care
for the poor and hungry while also caring for the land.
(Plot of land for future St. Francis Farm!)
CYFM has been known by many of its participants, including
me, as “a little slice of heaven.” I
look forward to seeing what we can do to expand this “slice of heaven” within
NYC so that it becomes not just a slice, but a larger piece of the pie of the whole
of God’s kingdom here on earth.