Delivering food, shelter, and hope to the poorest of the poor
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Sister Brikti Tesfay of the Daughters of Charity sends us thanks from Ethiopia, where Cross Catholic Outreach is funding a project to help vulnerable women attain financial stability.
Confirmation of a student living at the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary boarding house in M’Lon, Vietnam. Cross Catholic Outreach is helping cover expenses for food, board and tuition for Vietnamese girls who would otherwise be unable to go to school.
When Pat was a teen, he was kidnapped, taken to an island and forced to serve a warlord. Six grueling years later, a voice whispered to him in his sleep, “Your hungers are rewarded. You are going home. Look, your ship is ready!” Pat soon escaped to a ship and made it off the island.
Jesus comes to us every day in every encounter. Do we recognize Christ in the person next to us, wherever we go? Christ is at our sides every moment. If our heads are full with worries and difficulties and tasks, we miss Christ next to us, or in the people, or even as we pray.
While we may often reflect on the virtues of the Virgin Mary, we seldom reflect on her mother, St. Anne, except during the upcoming Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It must have been quite special to raise a sinless little girl. Surely St. Anne gave Mary a loving home, where she in turn learned to provide a nurturing home to her child, the Son of God.
Today, as American Catholics commemorate the first Memorial Feast of Blessed John Paul II today, I’d like to reflect on his view of poverty.