NO HANDS BUT OURS
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EVERYDAY HEROES
WINTER 2018–2019
Our parishes and our communities are better places because of Catholics who devote their lives to service.
WE ARE SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE IN NEED. A mother and child are in need of shelter. A child with a crippling neurological condition requires 24-hour care. A family can’t afford school supplies or enough food to get through the week. A widow finds she just can’t get over the devastating loss of her husband. A teenager is depressed and suicidal.
The list goes on. An HIV patient needs long-term care. A father learns that his daughter is addicted to opioids. A man learns that his kidneys are failing. A husband recovering from a failed marriage feels that his life is over. It’s overwhelming – enough to make a person give up, or turn a blind eye to the suffering of strangers.
In the face of such suffering, New York’s Catholic faithful have stood up again and again and said, “Let us help.” Through their prayers, their contributions and their service, they reflect the words of Cardinal Dolan, writing about health care in 2014: “Forced to adapt to the new environment, many ... have said, ‘We can’t!’ We as Catholics say, ‘We can and we will!’”
“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on Earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which He blesses all the world.”
– St. Teresa of AvilaThose whose stories and images appear in the following pages are shining examples to us all. When they read this, they will protest that they don’t deserve to be singled out, that all honor belongs to Jesus and that many others, Christian and non-Christian, are engaged in remarkable works. And, full disclosure: There is considerable positive return, though not financial, for the ones who devote themselves to the service of others.
“You are the body of Christ. Each one of you is part of it,” Saint Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians (12:27). “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part shares in its joy” (12:26). Let us honor these Catholics and share in their joy by supporting their efforts and letting them inspire us to our own acts of mercy and compassion in our community and our world.
FEEDING THE HUNGRYIn this country, 16 million children go to bed hungry each night. Right here in the Archdiocese of New York, more than two million families live below the poverty line and cannot afford adequate nourishment. Many of us help with donations of canned goods or money. Some of us volunteer our time in food pantries or soup kitchens. Then there are those called to dedicate their lives to fighting hunger, who create and manage the pantries and kitchens, who evangelize and pave the way for others to join in the work. At every level, these workers, supporters and leaders are delivering something that business and government cannot: along with the sustenance of life, they offer the love and mercy of God.
Paul and Linda Zalanowski manage the Deacon Jack Seymour Food Pantry in Newburgh, distributing hundreds of meals a week to families in need and dozens of food-filled backpacks every weekend to schoolchildren who might otherwise go hungry. Working out of a transformed warehouse, more than 100 volunteers pool their efforts to transport, receive, unpack and distribute an array of nutritious foods every Friday and Saturday.
Students and youth ministers at New York Catholic Youth Day 2018, in White Plains, assembled and boxed for shipment more than 71,469 meals for hunger-plagued Burkina Faso.
GIVING SHELTER
Homelessness in New York has been rising steadily in recent years, and as winter begins, the needs of the homeless intensify. A real solution, if we can craft one, lies in compassionate public policymaking, including a less porous economic safety net and a cultural commitment to social justice.
Meanwhile, on our streets, people are suffering, and it is left to the more fortunate to reach out with direct aid whenever and wherever possible.This is a challenging mission: to provide beds and blankets and a welcoming, safe space to people who have no other place to go. Clients may be facing a spectrum of problems that shelter volunteers cannot address: immigration issues, physical and mental health challenges, family discord of various sorts. It’s a complex set of factors introduced into a setting designed to meet basic needs: a roof, a bed, a bit of food. What our homeless brothers and sisters can get from us that they cannot get from a city or county shelter are our prayers and the mercy and grace of our Lord.
At Ascension – Holy Trinity Shelter on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, parishioners provide a safe place to sleep plus supper and breakfast for up to 20 men each Saturday and Sunday night.
Jim Sherwood setting up beds at Ascension – Holy Trinity Shelter on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
MAKING THE BED
Every child deserves a bed. That’s a basic tenet of the Capuchin Youth and Family Missions, whose Family and Friends Service Retreat every November brings together dozens of volunteers, youth ministers and Capuchin friars and interns to make bunk beds for kids whose families can’t afford to buy them.
At the CYFM retreat center in Garrison, amid the autumn colors on the banks of the Hudson, teenagers work alongside parents to sand and stain bed parts. In the evenings, they participate in prayer, discussions and a presentation to inform them about the issues faced by families for whom the beds are being built. A week or so later, another team of volunteers delivers the beds and assembles them in the children’s homes.
“This mission provides comfortable beds for children who previously had none,” says CYFM Executive Director Tom Brinkmann, “and an essential experience of service and Gospel community for the young people who come together in behalf of needy kids. In the process, our teens begin thinking of their faith as their own, not just their parents’.”
Sanding bunk bed parts at Capuchin Youth and Family Ministries in Garrison.
BODY AND SOUL
For 40 years, the Terence Cardinal Cooke (TCC) Health Care Center in Harlem has been serving medically needy people who would otherwise have no place to turn. Managed by ArchCare, the health care service of the Archdiocese of New York, the center houses a 550-bed nursing home, a hospital for children and young adults with severe developmental disabilities, specialized long-term care for people with HIV/AIDS, and a 48-bed unit for care of people with Huntington’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
In addition to a dedicated team of health professionals, a platoon of volunteers helps make life better for the patients at TCC. Rory Kelleher is the coordinator for a group of 60 or so volunteers who pitch in over the course of each year as members or auxiliaries of the Order of Malta – a 900-year-old Catholic lay religious order – helping with Mass every Sunday morning by getting worshippers to the chapel, distributing communion, then getting patients settled back into their rooms again. “It sounds a bit mechanical,” he says, “but in addition to pushing their wheelchairs or steadying the walkers, you are bringing some social interaction to people who can feel very isolated. You very quickly get to know the residents. You’re happy to see them and they’re happy to see you.”
Volunteers also serve an early Thanksgiving dinner and hold a Christmas party for residents. Once a month they host a musical gathering singing children’s songs to the kids, and once a year a circus for the children and their families. The TCC team works with the volunteers to organize a band, balloon makers, games, clowns, musical chairs – “or musical wheelchairs,” Kelleher says.
“These children have severe disabilities,” he notes, “and they can’t necessarily show you their response. But once in a while you can see a sparkle in the eye or another barely detectable reaction that makes it all worthwhile.”
To volunteer at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center, contact Tom McDonald ([email protected]; 212-360-1099). To learn more about the Order of Malta or inquire about volunteering as an auxiliary member, contact Rory Kelleher ([email protected]; 917-602-7885).
Volunteers with a patient at the annual circus for severely disabled children at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center in Harlem.
EMOTIONAL HEALING
For a Catholic, the failure of a marriage can carry not just a devastating sense of loss but also shame and guilt, compounded by the notion that they may no longer be allowed to take communion. “This is not true,” says Jane Dunn, who started a support group for separated/divorced people at St. Paul the Apostle on Manhattan’s West Side that is now in its 20th year. “Jesus still loves them and the Church still welcomes them. In the support group they learn that they are not alone.”
Dunn now leads support groups at a second parish – St. Thomas More on the East Side – while continuing to lead the ministry at St. Paul. “I started in this ministry because I believed I could turn the pain of my own divorce into the joy of helping. It’s a great way to transform and give meaning to your suffering.”
In Orange and Putnam counties, Helen Piltman has also led separated/divorced groups for over 18 years. In 2017, her pastor at St. Thomas of Canterbury / St. Joseph Parish in Cornwall-on-Hudson asked her to start a bereavement group, so she went for training and led her first such group this past summer. “We became a little family after eight weeks. They opened up in ways that really touched my heart,” Piltman says.
Meanwhile, Helen continues to minister to the separated and divorced Catholics at St. John the Evangelist in Goshen. “So now both missions are calling me,” she says. “After so many years, it would be very easy to say I don’t need to do this anymore. But God calls.”
Training for bereavement and separated / divorced ministries is provided by the Family Life Office of the Archdiocese of New York. For more information, visit their website at nyfamilylife.org.
Jane Dunne at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan.
FAMILY SUPPORT
Families are the heart of the Church. Starting one is among the great joys of life, but there’s a lot of effort involved – and inevitably some heartache, too. Volunteers in the family ministry help to fill in the gap when a couple needs help.
Arielle and Lorenz Oberhauser are mainstays of the Archdiocese of New York’s marriage prep program, which guides engaged couples to an understanding of the spiritual, emotional and financial issues that they can expect to face in their marriages. Several times a year they lead daylong Pre-Cana sessions for the Family Life Office. “It’s very satisfying to watch couples learning to talk to one another about issues like mutual trust, appropriate sharing and conflicting expectations,” says Arielle. “It has made our own marriage stronger, too,” Lorenz adds.
“A first-time mom is often nervous and afraid she’ll do everything wrong,” says Denise Matranga, who has been leading weekly sessions for the Parenting Center of Our Lady of the Assumption in the Bronx for 12 years. “We have presentations about things like how to handle a tantrum, how to make sure your child is eating nutritiously – and the parenting group also works as a network for comparing notes and offering mutual support.” The group meets in the church basement, where kids are cared for in a separate play area while the moms and dads and caregivers get a break. “The parents learn they are not alone in their struggles. They actually learn as much from each other as they do from the presenters,” Matranga says. Every December she leads the group in a service project to provide gifts for children at Good Counsel Home, a Bronx shelter for single mothers. “It’s completely voluntary, but I’ve never had a family that didn’t participate. We buy the gifts and wrap them up with the kids’ names on them. It’s something that makes our families feel great – and it moves them toward a life of service.”
For details about marriage preparation or parent care, visit the Family Life Office website at nyfamilylife.org.
Denise Matranga guides parents and caretakers at the Parenting Center at Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx.
GUIDING THE YOUNG
The next generation of Catholics will have to maintain and strengthen the faith against an ever-intensifying onslaught of technology and negative peer pressure. They are going to need help.
Fortunately, there are dedicated teachers and youth ministers at parishes and Catholic schools around the archdiocese. Parish youth ministers and catechists (religious education teachers) devote themselves to leading the children and teens of a parish toward service and spirituality and away from materialism and self-indulgence by emphasizing the teachings of Christ and modeling loving Christian behavior.
We can all find inspiration in Sr. Alice Marie Giordano. After more than five decades in education, she continues to inspire the girls of the Academy of St. Ursula in the Bronx as social justice minister. Once a year, she takes the students in her UN Connections group to the United Nations for the International Day of the Girl and for the weeklong meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, where they meet girls and young women from around the world. These are eye-opening gatherings that help them put their own lives in perspective, offering a glimpse of a world filled with poverty and injustice but also a sense that they have the power to stand up and make a difference. Group discussions led by Sr. Alice Marie help the students process the experience. “I will never forget what I’ve learned at the UN and in this club,” one of the students says. “It has given me confidence to step up and speak out.”
For details about the Office of Youth Ministry of the Archdiocese of New York, go to oymny.org. For information about Catholic schools in the archdiocese, visit catholicschoolsny.org.
Sr. Alice Marie Giordano with members of the UN Connections club at the Academy of St. Ursula, Bronx.