The JustFaith Ministries program I participated in ran, for 2 ½ hours, on eight Monday evenings between July 1 and August 26, 2024, in our parish rectory. The program is based on major themes from the Catholic Social Teaching of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. We were a group of ten parishioners from St. Francis Xavier Parish, including the two facilitators. You might think the group was small, but it’s intended to be so, to allow participants to get to know each other and thus facilitate deeper sharing on the topics proposed. This program was the first of a three-part series that tackled the issue of poverty through self-examination, and was entitled Faith and Poverty: A Biblical Response.
Over the 8 weeks, we read 2 books: Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, THE JOY OF THE GOSPEL, and POVERTY, Responding Like Jesus, edited by K. Himes and C. Kelly. Before each session, we had readings to do in line with the set theme, which were to prepare us for our group reflections. These readings helped us explore the Gospel’s call to respond to people facing poverty in our local community. Reflecting on the readings helped us to introspect and become aware of our own attitudes, actions and even words towards people living in poverty. Here’s a sample question: In chapter 2 of The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis spoke of the challenges facing our world today. Which of these challenges affect you most and why? It’s also important to be aware of the realities of poverty. One of the chapters in the book POVERTY is a questionnaire from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, consisting of eight questions about poverty in the United States. I confess that when I took the test, I only answered three of the eight questions correctly. This shows that I still have a lot to learn.
We discussed not only financial poverty, but also physical, mental and social poverty. Many of these life situations are notorious for driving people to turn to alcohol and drugs to temporarily forget the pain of their lives. We know that these are not solutions, and that without help and sincere compassion, most people simply sink deeper into the cycle of addiction and need. We also watched videos and listened to a guest speaker to stimulate our thoughts, feelings and reactions.
Between sessions, in addition to the readings mentioned above, we had a “spiritual practice” to do that began with a Scripture passage, a written reflection leading to prayer, questions to ponder and a short closing prayer. This was followed by an example of a call to action: Practice listening. Make a meeting this week an act of listening to another person’s story or experience without trying to remedy it in any way. Once the person has spoken, simply ask them what they need, without making any suggestions (unless they ask for them).
The format of each weekly session was generally as follows: Opening prayer and Gospel reading/meditation, introduction to questions based on the readings we had done and sometimes a short video, small-group discussions lasting about 30 minutes, brief report of the group discussion to the whole group, which usually led to further discussion, individual report on spiritual practice done since the last session and closing prayer. So the 2 ½ hours were well filled.
My personal assessment: I enjoyed the course, the sharing, the conviviality and I certainly wouldn’t have read the two books so quickly and attentively if we hadn’t been assigned readings as “homework”. In my opinion, there was too much material in the allotted time, as some discussions had to be interrupted to complete the session program. It was also obvious that some participants had never taken part in a discussion group and/or had not done the required readings, so small-group discussions very often strayed from the topic. How did the course affect/help me? I think I became more aware and sensitive to how different caring people can think, feel and react to people living in different types of poverty.
Other possibilities: A retreat day could also be part of the program, but our group has never been able to agree on a day for this, and there’s also an immersion experience (doing something with a group of poor people). A few members of our group went to bring dinner to a group of people living in a camp along the Winooski River. I regretted not being able to join them, due to a community responsibility.
As mentioned at the outset, this was the first JustFaith program in a three-part series entitled Faith and Poverty: A Biblical Response. The following programs are Faith and Poverty: A Solidarity Response and Faith and Poverty: A Justice Response. As I understand it, each program is designed to deepen the question of living justly in relation to poverty in our world.
Sr Francine Maas, MSOLA
