Remember
Father Vincent DeRosa, who served here from 2009 until 2012 as Parochial
Vicar? Now he is Pastor of St. Francis
Xavier parish in Southeast DC, and even though I had enjoyed lunch with him
only a week earlier, I recently received a letter from him. In it, he explained some of the hardships he
faces to respond to the needs of people in his parish. They serve their wider community by providing
job fairs, a food pantry, counseling and family programming, and housing other
emergency assistance, but the parish has precious few resources themselves.
All
of it sounded very familiar to me, because we do keep in touch, and he often
shares stories about his challenges and joys as Pastor there. However, he had written to me and a number of
his other priest friends not simply to share his adventures, but to let us know
how few resources he has to meet so many very great needs. It was an explicit request for help.
One
of the hazards of being Pastor, rather like being dad, is that I am always
aware of the first rule of economics: resources are scarce. Making sure that this parish pays all of its
personnel and all of its bills means being very careful about what obligations
we assume. Yes, there are some things we
just cannot afford, just like in your families.
However,
we are all blessed here to have more than an abundance of what we truly
need. The evidence of that appears as
soon as a true need emerges. Witness our
recent response to the hurricane victims!
We are all willing to give, but weariness and wariness set in as we are
bombarded with pleas and petitions from causes and campaigns of more or less
humanitarian urgency. Yet we do not want
to lose the healthy habit of giving.
Our
monthly Community Fund collection is always dedicated to helping the poor in
our area. You know there is no shortage
of poverty right around us! In order to
discern how to match our giving with authentic needs, our parish has the
Allocation Committee, long led by the indefatigable Ruthann Arnsberger. I shared Fr. DeRosa’s letter with the
committee members, and the quickly achieved consensus was that we should do
something about it.
Our
next Community Fund collection, the weekend of November 11-12, will be
dedicated to assist St. Francis Xavier Church in her outreach in Southeast DC. I let you know in advance so that you can plan
now how you will respond to this plea for help from Father DeRosa and our
brothers and sisters in the city.
In
recent weeks, I have begun the work of our Capital Campaign, asking
parishioners to help in an extraordinary way that is additional to all they
already give and do. The response has
left me agape, so willing and eager people have been to contribute. This weekend, and over the coming weeks, you
will hear me ask you and everyone else to take up your portion of this
remarkable response. It strikes me as
somehow appropriate, even essential, that as we set about the work of gathering
our resources to put our own house in shape, so to speak, we simultaneously put
aside what some of our neighbors need to get by. This is one way we can make sure we remember. God bless you!
Monsignor Smith
