Last Wednesday, August 30th theology professor Bill Cavanaugh brought a class of incoming first-year students from DePaul University to visit our parish. In the morning, the group volunteered at the St. Thomas of Canterbury Food Pantry and Solidarity Gardens and the St. Francis Catholic Worker. After lunch, James Murphy from Canterbury House — a ministry of Mary, Mother of God Parish — spoke to the students about the parish's outreach efforts in our soup kitchen, food pantry, and hospitality hours at Canterbury House. Mark Franzen, director of St. Gregory’s Hall, led the students on a tour of the three parish churches focusing on the unique story each building tells about the faith and of the generations of immigrants who worshiped there. The afternoon was capped off with a tour of the studio of artist-in-residence Sarah Crow, who talked about her work and the relationship of the contemporary art world and sacred art. On Monday, August 28 Canterbury House (a ministry of Mary, Mother of God Parish) hosted 25 first-year DePaul students as part of their orientation week. Students gathered with their professors in the St. Thomas of Canterbury Soup Kitchen along with Kathy Kelly — a renowned peace-activist, Catholic Worker, and writer — and Workers from St. Francis Catholic Worker.
After the discussion, the DePaul group finished their day with a tour of the parish's food pantry, soup kitchen, and one of our new solidarity gardens. Read past issues of our parish's outreach newsletter which focuses on the Food Pantry and Soup Kitchen at St. Thomas of Canterbury Church. If you'd like to get involved with our outreach ministries as a volunteer, email our Outreach Ministries Manager at stcfoodpantry1@gmail.com.
If you'd like to support these ministries as a donor, please email our Director of Stewardship Dorothy Julian at djulian@archchicago.org. On Sunday, June 11 (Corpus Christi), we had a formal blessing for Solidarity Gardens at St. Thomas of Canterbury - and some of our neighbors asked for blessings of their gardens as well!
Solidarity Gardens is a collaboration of Mary, Mother of God parish churches and St. Francis Catholic Worker. We are gardening together in our community to provide food for our Soup Kitchen, Food Pantry, and people in our neighborhoods in need. Parish communities can be creative communities. Our Eucharistic faith calls us to make the land fruitful and offer our gifts to God. In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis draws our attention to the concept of Integral Ecology– the idea that the health of our church and community depends on the health of the land around us. If you are interested in gardening, have experience (or none!), have always wanted to garden, like being outside then we're looking for you! Contact James Murphy at jamesjmurphy004@gmail.com with questions and to get involved. Canterbury House is a ministry of Mary, Mother of God Parish based at St. Thomas of Canterbury in Uptown. We are a Eucharistic community in service to the parish through prayer, outreach, fellowship, and Catholic social thought. Canterbury House is building community through Eucharistic adoration, which feeds the soul, and relates to feeding the body through the soup kitchen and food pantry. We draw on the heritage of Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin and the Catholic Worker movement, following in the steps of the Catholic Workers who founded St. Thomas of Canterbury soup kitchen over thirty years ago. Our community is rooted in the Eucharist and service to the poor, recognizing the presence of Christ in both. Canterbury House Schedule: Morning Prayer: Monday & Wednesday Join us for morning prayer from 7:45-8 AM at St. Thomas of Canterbury Church. Coffee and fellowship follow at Canterbury House. "My strength returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the psalms." Eucharistic Adoration We purposely schedule adoration on the days the St. Thomas of Canterbury soup kitchen serves. Adoration is from 9 AM- 7 PM every Tuesday, ending with Vespers and Benediction. To learn more about volunteering at the soup kitchen, contact Jennifer, coordinator of outreach volunteers. Roundtable Discussions Every other Thursday at 6 PM, Canterbury House opens its doors for a community potluck meal followed by discussion as we work towards what Peter Maurin called "creating a new society in the shell of the old." Some nights we will invite expert speakers. Other nights, we may have a topic with a reflection for reading and discussion. We finish the evening with Compline. "I want everyone to set forth his views. I want the clarification of thought." No signup is required! The purpose of our gatherings is to gain a deeper insight into our faith and how we respond as Catholics to contemporary issues in our community and beyond.
James Murphy is the director of Canterbury House, a parish ministry based at St. Thomas of Canterbury that will enhance Eucharistic community in the parish through service, prayer, fellowship, and study of Catholic Social Teaching. He comes from New York where he spent 8 years with Catholic Worker houses of hospitality. He looks forward to combining prayer and outreach for the parish and the neighborhood. If you have questions or would like to learn more, feel free to send him a note at jamesjmurphy004@gmail.com. 'God is telling me we should start a soup kitchen' The origins of the Soup Kitchen at St. Thomas of Canterbury are murky enough that a flier for the 10th anniversary featured “To Tell the Truth: Who Started the Soup Kitchen?” as part of its entertainment. But whatever the specifics, most agree that Terry Gates, who lived at the St. Francis Catholic Worker House in Uptown in 1978, was the one who first had the idea. The Catholic Worker Movement was founded by Servant of God Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, designed to facilitate direct practice of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy by sharing the lives of the poor, most notably in houses of hospitality that provided shelter for those in need. Terry had originally come to the house in Uptown as a guest after a car accident and family estrangement, and in the words of Jim Eder, who was also living at the Catholic Worker house at the time, “she became our poster girl, as she healed physically, spiritually, mentally.” She approached Jim with the idea for the soup kitchen first, arguing that it was in the tradition of soup lines begun by Catholic Workers during the Great Depression. He pointed out that the house already had about 20 guests to its five members, who could “barely keep [the house] open.” “She said, ‘No, Jim, you don't understand, God is telling me we should start a soup kitchen,’” Jim recounted. “So in my great love for the poor and my kindly spirit and my wonderful nature and my generous spirit, I said, ‘Well, you and God are going to have to do it, because it's a dumb idea, and it'll never work. And you can't do it.’ And then she said, ‘Well, I'm going to go down and ask Fr. Rochford if we can use the [St. Thomas of Canterbury] church basement.’ And I said, ‘Good!’ because I figured: Oh, the priest'll kill this.” Fr. Rochford, who was pastor at St. Thomas of Canterbury a couple blocks north of the Catholic Worker House, did the opposite; he opened the basement for operations. |
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