Nine missionaries visiting Detroit for three weeks make time to befriend, offer human dignity to the poorest of the city's poor
DETROIT — If loneliness is the greatest affliction facing Detroit’s oft-forgotten homeless population, then Christ in the City is providing an antidote.
Through the Denver-based apostolate, young adult missionaries seek out and find the friendship of homeless individuals in cities across the country by building a series of relationships as they walk the city streets.
From May 21 to June 11, nine Christ in the City missionaries have been living at the Our Lady of the Rosary Student Center and walking every Monday through Friday through Detroit’s Midtown and downtown areas for three and a half hours a day, encountering the poor and forgotten, reminding them of Christ’s love for them and their inherent human dignity.
“It’s giving us a chance to encounter the poor here and have that consistency, going out at the same time, to the same locations, seeing the same people over and over again, establishing that relationship with the poor,” Brogan McNease, a second-year missionary with Christ in the City, told Detroit Catholic.
There are plenty of ministries in Detroit that reach out to the homeless community to supply temporal needs, but Christ in the City is focused on meeting individuals' spiritual needs through what they call “genuine encounters.”
“Basically, when we use the term 'encounter,' how we picture it is sharing our lives with the poor,” said Helen Van Wijngaarden, a second-year missionary. "In training we learn what is the role of a case worker and what is the role of a missionary. A case worker offers solutions to problems and seeks material good, which are very good, necessary things. We focus on walking without material needs, sometimes with water or a snack, but basically all we have to offer is ourselves, our friendship and the love we bring to the streets.”
The group begins each day with prayer, using the Liturgy of the Hours to build a sense of community, before heading out from Our Lady of the Rosary. The group walks from Our Lady of the Rosary in Midtown to St. Aloysius Parish in downtown Detroit for Mass, and then take off in different directions, encountering the poor of the streets.
The Denver-based apostolate began 11 years ago by Jonathan Reyes, Ph.D., a professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, who wondered what it would look like to build a missionary organization focused solely on building relationships and being present with the poor.
“Dr. Reyes was a professor at Franciscan University who was teaching a course when he had a vision for Christ in the City and shared it with the class,” McNease said. “After the class, a student came down who said he wanted to start this mission with him. Dr. Reyes was very much influenced by Pope John Paul II, who came to Denver for World Youth Day, and Pope John Paul II saw a need for bringing this culture of encounter with the poor and also with the laity, specifically the youth of the Catholic faith.”
Christ in the City started with 10 missionaries in Denver, going out six or seven days a week, seven hours a day.
The mission has since evolved into a yearlong formation in which missionaries spend an entire year in either Denver or Philadelphia, plus eight summer locations, including Denver, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Gary, Ind.; Dayton, Ohio; Dallas, and Lincoln, Neb.
The mission is primarily a formation program for young adults in their 20s who want to spend a year serving the homeless, sharing the love of Christ with them, and reminding them of their inherent dignity as sons and daughters of God.
While in town, the missionaries strive to live simply in the community, undergoing spiritual and intellectual formation — through lectures from Sr. Esther Mary Nickel, RSM, director of sacred worship for the Archdiocese of Detroit — and spending as much time in community with each other as possible.
“We’ve been blessed abundantly with the support of the Detroit Catholic community, just with accommodations with providing air mattresses and being welcomed in the community with open arms," said first-year missionary Michaela Fullerton. "We wouldn’t have the opportunity to see and experience this city without a great dependence on the Lord and the generosity of the community.”
In addition to living in community, praying together, and journeying to encounter Detroit’s poor, Christ in the City missionaries take academic classes to learn about Catholic social justice and all the parishes and faith-based organizations established in the city.
“After hearing about the good work that Christ in the City has done in Denver and in other cities around the country, I knew we certainly needed their presence here in Detroit,” said Fr. Mario Amore of St. Aloysius Parish, who recently was named director of the Archdiocese of Detroit's Department of Evangelization and Missionary Discipleship. “St. Aloysius Parish and Neighborhood Services strives to be a place where our homeless brothers and sisters can have their needs met — most especially their need to know that they are loved by Christ — and I was excited that the young adults of Christ in the City could be an extension of that ministry in our downtown community."
The entire experience allows Christ in the City missionaries to be totally immersed in Detroit culture so they have a better understanding of who they are encountering.
“I wanted to be totally given to the poor, not something I did occasionally on the weekend. I wanted it to be something I did with my life, living my life with the poor and giving it to them." Van Wijngaarden said. "I applied, loved the work, the community aspect, and it’s been a really formative year the Lord has blessed.”
The missionaries were just getting their feet wet in Detroit when they spoke to Detroit Catholic, getting their feel for the town and overcoming initial stereotypes and first impressions.
McNease recalled a relationship he developed during his time in Denver that he hopes to replicate in Detroit, an example of the impact Christ on the City can have on someone’s life.
“I love to talk about my friendship with Mama Gerry, a longtime friend of Christ in the City,” McNease said. “It all started with a friendship cultivated with a long relationship and desiring good for her. She is now in housing, but I remember meeting her, a deaf, blind, wheelchair-bound woman. Most days she just listened to the TV, all alone. But our street team had the gift to go see her once a week, take time out of our day to spend with her. And over the course of the year, it took a deaf and blind woman to show my own value and dignity as a son of Christ, because she showed me who I was. That is what it means to be a missionary. You discover who others are, and who you are.”
It is those kind of relationships Christ in the City look to build in their brief, but impactful, three-week stay in the Motor City.
“One of our patrons is St. Teresa of Calcutta, and a famous quote of hers we turn to is, ‘Loneliness is the leprosy of the West,’” Van Wijngaarden said. “Our friends out there are lacking materially, but what’s most lacking is the deepest wound of loneliness, of being unwanted, unknown and unloved. So that is entirely our role, the spiritual side, tending that wound. To make sure they are seen, they are wanted, they are loved, that their life matters.”
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