As you walk through the doors of St. Anselm Church, your eyes as a Catholic are drawn to the altar and then something pulls them to the left. To the left of the pulpit is a majestic cross, embellished with the nails representing the crucified Christ. Yet, hanging from the arms of that cross are slips of purple, pink and blue paper, a set on each arm. As you walk up to the cross, the base of the cross is wrapped in a purple cloth. What is the reason for this cross, you wonder? This is the story behind “The Lenten Cross” project.

Our new Christian service coordinator, Karen Andrews, was encouraged to attend an area meeting of Christian service representatives in February 2014. She planned to report back to St. Anselm regarding new ideas and options for the Christian Service committee. The meeting was attended by about 25 people from parishes of all sizes. Many ideas for increasing and supporting parish participation for all ages were mentioned. The representative from St. Fabian Parish in Farmington spoke regarding the cross that their parish positioned in their “gathering room” during Lent. This sounded like something St. Anselm Parish could implement. Karen visited St. Fabian, took pictures and talked with the Christian Service representatives at St. Fabian, and the plan for the cross evolved from there.

She brought it back and presented to Kim Cwiek, parish secretary, and then the project began to evolve. We needed a cross, should we purchase one or maybe see if someone could build it? We knew of one of our parishioners who was a carpenter, Gary Jouppi. But he was very busy; would he be able to help us out? We approached him in the fall of 2014, presented him with our idea and he agreed to help us out. We were flying now, moving forward with what we believed to be truly the Holy Spirit moving us ahead. It was then presented to the whole Christian Service committee and accepted with a few minor tweaks.

The Lenten Cross -- new at St. Anselm

There are traditionally 40 days in Lent, which are marked by fasting both from foods and festivities, and by other acts of penance. The three traditional practices to be taken up with renewed vigor during Lent are prayer (justice toward God), fasting (justice toward self), and almsgiving (justice toward neighbor).

However, in modern times, observers give up an action of theirs considered to be a vice, add something that is considered to be able to bring them closer to God, and often give the time or money spent doing that to charitable purposes or organizations.

We are not asking people to stop what they normally do for their Lenten sacrifices; this was just another option. So, starting on Ash Wednesday and during all of Lent, the Christian Service along with the parish Worship Commission developed a different way of fulfilling the sacrifices of Lent.

The wooden cross next to the pulpit displays three different colored tags hanging on the cross arms. Each color represents the three different sacrifices or practices of Lent. Pink is for prayers, purple is for fasting and blue is for almsgiving. Parishioners were asked to pull the next available tag, rather than searching through to pick the one they wanted.

Prayers are for either a person’s name or a group of people who are requesting prayers. This would also be our shut-ins and for people who are on our list of sick. These people were prayed for and sent a card to let them feel that they were still connected to the parish community and that we are still praying for them.

Fasting and abstaining is all about sacrificing the food you would normally consume. These tags asked people to gather a meal for a family of six, place it in a bag and put it in the collection barrel in the church vestibule. For example, when we fast and abstain from meat, we would eat a meal of tuna noodle casserole, so we would purchase four cans of tuna, two bags of noodles, a jar of mayonnaise and a can of peas. Then round off the meal with crackers and applesauce and place all the ingredients in the bag and place it in the barrel when we come to church. These were distributed to the two food pantries and All Saints Soup Kitchen to support their programs.

Almsgiving is for charities, for those less fortunate than us or to help out groups who help the less fortunate. We will have listed community groups that are seeking specific items that would help them aid their group’s mission. Penrickton Center received gift cards to help pay for field trips for the children to a restaurant or the movies, St. Aloysius Street Ministry with hygiene packets, St. Vincent de Paul cash contributions, and Lennon Center Pregnancy Center with diapers, wipes, bottles, bibs or any new baby care item. Our youth group, led by Marcia Santostasi, works on four Christian service projects yearly, so they too were on the list to receive items to help them in the works for Children’s’ Hospital, Vista Maria, All Saints Soup Kitchen and COTS.

Yes, this is like the "giving tree" that many parishes set up at Christmas, but with a Lenten spin. Participation is voluntary only. The most important part of the St. Anselm Lenten Cross was the attached colored tags, with suggestions for the three traditional Lenten practices, pink for prayer, purple for fasting and blue for almsgiving as listed above.

We printed more than 1,120 tags and there was an overwhelming response. The Christian service committee placed bins in the vestibule for the collection and different members maintained the delivery of the items in the bins. We filled the food pantry bin up four times and are working on the fifth. Bins overflowed, and as the communication (through the bulletin and word of mouth) grew, so did the contribution. We live by this quote by Mother Teresa: “Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.”

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This article was submitted by Kimberlee Cwiek, parish secretary at St. Anselm Parish in Dearborn Heights. To contact the parish about this project, call (313) 596-4808.