Desires + needs = ministry

By Jim Davis - Florida Catholic

FORT LAUDERDALE | In middle school, Rachel Alston was fine with making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the poor. And she willingly helped clean a shelter for the homeless in Miami this year.

What got to her was the sight of cribs at the shelter. That drove home for her the human need.

"You usually think of men being homeless, but the cribs showed that it's women and children, too," said Rachel, who went along with 15 classmates as part of an innovative community service program at St. Thomas Aquinas High School.

"I saw (the situation) for myself," she said. "It's real. It exists."

That's what they wanted to hear at the school, after retooling its community service program to blend ministry with theology.

Called Faith in Action: A Deepening Call to Service, the new program is meant to broaden and deepen the concept of community service. In the Archdiocese of Miami, all high school students put in at least 100 hours over four years. St. Thomas Aquinas wants them to grasp why they're doing it.

"It's meant to answer the important question of how we live what we believe in everyday ways," said Ian Robertson, chair of theology and director of campus ministry at St. Thomas Aquinas. "Literally, are we doing what we say? That's what young people judge us adult Christians by."

At John U. Lloyd State Park, the Aquinas students cleaned up trash after learning about the environment. At the Miami outpost of the Missionaries of Charity, they fed the homeless and cleaned the onsite shelter and chapel.

The good works themselves have been a staple for years at St. Thomas Aquinas. Students have long done tasks such as running toy drives and painting walls for a school and daycare in Hollywood. Seniors have also done Thanksgiving drives for the poor, typically delivering 125 food baskets each year.

But Faith in Action is geared toward weaving a Catholic service ethic into the deeds, said Jane Curry, a theology teacher, who developed the program.

"Sometimes I've heard students saying, 'How many service hours do I have to do?" Curry said. "Being Catholic shouldn't be about numbers. It should be about building relationships."

 

Learn it, then do it

In the Faith in Action system, the students start with a "pre-reflection" period: learning about issues surrounding an upcoming project.

Before the beach clean-up, they watched a video on Laudato Si', the 2015 encyclical by Pope Francis on the environment. Before visiting the Missionaries of Charity in Miami, they saw a slideshow on the late Mother Teresa, foundress of the India-based order.

The students then do the fieldwork of the actual community service. Afterward, they discuss and write about their experiences in a "post-reflection" phase.

About 50 students hit John Lloyd Park in November. They found an amazing variety of trash: forks, toothbrushes, bottle caps, even used diapers. Fortunately, they were given gloves for the job.

They were especially sad to learn that seabirds often pick up bottle caps, thinking the objects are food.

"It opened my eyes," Kenya Warner said of the beach clean-up. "We need to take better care of the environment."

Even stronger were their memories of their September visit to the shelter run by the Missionaries of Charity. Under supervision of the sari-clad sisters, the students helped serve two simple meals of chicken, rice and pastries.

Some of the students took off their shoes and dusted the chapel, where the sisters pray for the homeless. Others went upstairs to the shelter area, where they took off the window screens and washed them. Still others washed plastic chairs outside.

Andrea Chacon smiled as she told of her experience. "A friend said she did this kind of service, and I said 'Cool,' but I didn’t know how to get into it," she said.

Grateful to serve

Zariah Samaroo was struck by the air of gratitude at the shelter � not only from the homeless, but from volunteers who were serving them.

"The helpers said they were grateful to be there," Zariah said with surprise. "One woman said she and her daughter come at least once a month. She said it's important to give back to the community."

Robertson was the first to propose blending theology with ministry at St. Thomas Aquinas. "We want to get the students to want to do it again, not just satisfy the hours," he said.

He was affected by a quote from Dominican theologian Thomas O'Meara: "When our natural desires meet the needs of this world, ministry happens."

Recalled Curry: "He showed me the proposal, and I said, 'We need this.'" It even dovetailed with her own studies: She's a Ph.D. candidate at St. Thomas University, specializing on teachings of the late social activist Dorothy Day.

Good thing she liked the idea, because Robertson appointed her to head the program.

The challenge was to make it work in a school of 2,200 students. They decided to start with freshmen, then continue the emphasis as the students rose through the grades. By the fourth year, according to the plan, the new service ethic will permeate the whole school.

But students like Rachel Alston already get it.

"People often get stereotyped, but we all have a place in God's heart," she said. "We all deserve to have food, water, safety, shelter. We should develop mercy and compassion."