A Divinely Written Summer

For those of you who are interested in the spiritual fruits of this
summer, I think I found the perfect thing to share.

Before I share it, I want to clarify that these are the immediate
spiritual fruits that I recognize. I know that God is not limited to my
understanding of His grace, so perhaps another entry down the line will be
in order. God is not confined to Time, which He created anyway. :)

That said, around the middle of the summer, we had a “Day of Reflection,”
to help us refocus and recommit to the work we were doing. It was a
Thursday, which is important, because on Thursday nights Adoration is
available for parishioners.

At one point during the day, Rachel, the director, gave us one blank sheet
of paper and an envelope to write a letter to ourselves by the end of the
day. This is not an exercise unique to CUP, for I’ve done many “letters to
my future self.” Usually, when I write these letters and read them later,
I’m unimpressed with myself. Honestly, I have a hard time putting value on
such things, because often I write the letters under duress (i.e. for my
job or because I have to be a good example for someone else), so I end up
saying something snarky or sarcastic.

When Rachel asked to write these letters, then, I thought to myself,
rather apathetically, “eh.” Silly me, I didn’t realize that, when I
decided to hang out in Adoration that evening, the Holy Spirit couldn’t
care less for my less-than-enthusiastic response.

This is the long way of saying that my letter, which I just broke open and
read, sitting here in the Detroit airport, was perfect.

Perfect.

Divinely written.

It spoke to exactly what I’ve been reflecting on with God - new thoughts,
not old. I was not thinking about these thoughts on that “Day of
Reflection.” I was focused on something completely different. Yet, I still
wrote the letter. Well, that’s a bit of a stretch, actually. God wrote me
this letter.

So would you like to read it? Verbatim, I will share it. Remember, it was
written in Adoration, with my hand, and God’s thoughts. I absolutely
believe that.

...

Oh dear Heide,

I pray you will find your feet. Relax and let God reveal Himself as He
chooses. You are and have always been a strong woman... Sometimes, the
strongest thing you have, however, is your own will. Submit to the love of
God.

That is my prayer for you. You are so beautiful and I hope you have a
better understanding of that. Leave this project with a renewed spirit and
a renewed hope in the love of God.

Do not try to fill the emptiness. Let the One who made you do that.

These are all my little reminders. Hold onto all you can from this summer,
and let God change you.

Remember, your life is His... and you yourself know that you wouldn’t want
it any other way.

Love
yourself.
...

These are my reflections. These are God’s lessons for me. And perhaps, for
you too.

Pax Christi.
-Heidemarie

Danielle's Final Post

When I look at myself now, I know God has moved in my life this past summer. When I try to pinpoint exactly how, when, or even in what ways that has happened, it’s nearly impossible. Going into this summer I thought there would maybe be one person, one time, or one event that really hit me hard, but that never happened. For awhile, it disappointed me that this wasn’t happening. However, now it is clear to me that God works in small ways, slowly chipping away at me all summer to get me to where I am now.

Thinking about the people God has used to mold me this summer, there are countless. I expected to be impacted by the people I served and I definitely was. What I didn’t expect was to be blown away by the people I served with. Living in community with seven others helped me grow in my faith more than I could ever have imagined. Sharing lives and seeing God’s love in each and every one of them was such a blessing this summer. Besides the missionaries, there were random, or not so random, people God placed along the way. Sometimes I would find myself serving with these amazing people or sometimes it was just a single conversation with them that would open my eyes to something brand new.

Some people can tell one story about a time God really moved in their life. I don’t have one big story. I have a lot of little stories that somehow add up to something big. I can’t even say which little stories to include because I’m still discovering which ones they are and I will probably never know all of them. I’m sure God used every person I spoke with, child I helped, and door I knocked on in some way I’ll probably never know.

Through all these people and events in the past 8 weeks, I know God has changed my life, although I have no idea in what way. I only know that He has. I’m sure we can never fully grasp the ways God is working in our lives. We just have to trust that He is.

Like the underside of a beautiful tapestry (threads hanging, knots), we know that if we entrust all of this to God, God weaves it into something beautiful whose pattern we will only see fully in the next life.

Doing the Catholic Urban Project this summer has been a huge grace and I thank every person who has supported in any way!

God bless!

Danielle

Tony's Final Reflection

This is it. Catholic Urban Project: Summer 2011 has come to it's conclusion. What am I going to do? Sure, I have a semester of school to prepare for, some Latin I need to brush up on, perhaps a room to clean. But the calendar seems empty compared to the schedule I've been used to for eight weeks. This leaves me lots of time to mentally and spiritually unpack everything that has happened this summer. What has happened this summer? What did I learn? I've learned...

Going to bed exhausted every night is a great feeling. Especially on Thursdays. I would have the extra benefit on that day of being dirty, sweaty, and smelly, thanks to the afternoon fix-up. Knowing that you gave everything you had that day is incredibly satisfying. I believe that this is because I would wake up and pray that God would give me what I needed to get through the day. I would go to bed knowing that God did give me just what I needed.

The "look of love" (Deus Caritas Est paragraph 18) happens when you trust God completley. There were days I would head off to my non-profit or outreach, and I would think to myself "I don't know if I can do this today". I would then ask God to take over and keep me going. These days became some of the better days. On outreach, people would begin to tell us all about their lives, even the things they would not normally tell a stranger. I know that wasn't because they saw me, but because they saw the look of love. "Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave".

Being dependent on prayer is humbling and also the best thing ever. There were many days that I needed to spend time in prayer because I was on empty. I had nothing left to give. Through the prayer, God filled me up with just enough strength to get through the day, or until I had another opportunity to pray again. I have never been so dependent on God before, and I don't want to be so independent that I feel like I don't need it. I think that makes sense, if not, take my word for it.

I am really going to miss the community. I learned a lot in this community. I was humbled many times. We had many, many laughs. But a love for God brought us all together and kept us together. We all had the same end in mind, to serve God to the best of our ability, even if that meant giving everything we had every day. Now the new challenge is to bring what I've learned in community back to my home, my friends and my family.

Catholic Urban Project taught me much more than this, and I could keep writing on and on and on. I want to thank all those who made it possible for me to spend my summer in Ypsilanti. This has been, without doubt, the best summer I have ever had.

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever

-Anthony Smela

Final Reflection: Become Like the Poor

Now that our 8 weeks of service in Ypsilanti has come to an end, it is time to process what we have all learned this summer and figure out exactly what God wants us to take away from this experience. For me, it has been a summer of tremendous growth in many different aspects of my spiritual life. My openness, trust, peace, comfort, faith, hope, and love have all grown as a result of the service I’ve done this summer. In the last few days that I was in Michigan, God gave me such a strong thought-provoking idea during an hour of adoration. I believe that this idea truly captures the message He was trying to convey to me about this summer. This idea began by reading a sentence out of a book that I had picked up to read. The sentence immediately made a powerful impact on my heart. It said: “It is the people that are poor in worldly terms that are truly the blessed indeed, for they rejoice and exalt in their sufferings.” I just kept repeating it over and over to myself. I realized that this is how a lot of the people that we had been serving live their lives. They are extremely poor in worldly terms, and they go through a great deal of suffering. Yet, several of them live their lives in exaltation of the Lord, despite the horrible conditions they live in. They view and cherish their life as a gift from God. If they can have so little, yet allow their hearts to belong fully and completely to God, then we should be able to do the same. From my experience I have found a whole new meaning in serving the poor. It’s not just a call to serve the poor anymore; it’s a call to become like the poor in spirit as well. We all have a lesson to learn from the poor, because the truth is God wants only our hearts. He doesn’t want our things, or our accomplishments and successes, or our talents. He simply wants all of our love, focus, and attention to be on Him. Thus, the poor have served me in a way I could have never imagined.

In Him,

Desirae Wieseler, Catholic Urban Project Missionary 2011

4 Days Left

There are only 4 days of service left in our summer. While we are here until Sunday, we are saving the last few days for retreat and clean up. It's crazy to think how fast the summer has flown, how quickly all of us will be getting back to our 'normal' lives. However, the idea in God bringing us here is not for us to have a nice eight weeks and then head back relatively unchanged. His purpose is always greater, especially when we give Him our time.

I often hear people complain that they don't experience God, or that He doesn't speak to them. Often, God speaks to us in a way that we need to grow in. His language changes our hearts. One thing that has struck me again and again this summer is that God really is in His creation. It's not just a nice saying, it's real. Recognizing Him in others is always a gift of grace. We can't do it on our own. However, many times in order to find Christ in other people we have to seek Him out. By serving the poor and assuming that Christ is in them (because he says so) we then experience Him.

We recently had a difficult fix-up in which the resident was displeased with our work. Nothing we did that day was good enough, in addition we were told that we were lazy and weren't putting real effort into the work. As you can imagine this was not easy for us to listen to. It was clear there was something else going on and the resident was taking it out on us. It is very easy to not really love someone like this. We could have said we were going to practice tough love and left the house. We could have called it unfair and been more forceful in verbally defending ourselves. However, while we were there taking the criticism, many of us had a deeper sense of God wanting to love this resident and not give up. While we were in the house cleaning and I was trying not to get annoyed, I had this sense of Christ on the cross, just taking it. Accepting it. Loving us anyways. This is what He wanted for this resident on this day. This was a day to accept what we were given and love. God in His goodness gave us the grace to do it. I don't know why the resident reacted that way, but I know Christ is in that person. Because He said so.

-Sarah Downes

Murder at Tall Oaks

My name is Simone Carlton, and for the jury, I will recount the events of the last 30 hours. At approximatley 10:30am on Saturday of July 23rd, 2011, the Ypsilanti Catholic Urban Project missionaries joined the Flint CUP team for a fix-up project in Flint. At approx. 4:42pm, the group came together for prayer and then relocated to the Saint Michael rectory for what was supposed to be an evening of merriment and leisure. What they didn't know was that Mr. Reginald Ascain had been MURDERED. Of the eight Ypsilanti missionaries, one of us did it. But who? It was up to us to tread through lies and grimdark secrets to find out whodunit.

Last night, the Flint missionaries hosted a Murder Mystery dinner for us. In the end, I was revealed as the murderer, and we had a wonderful evening.

Earlier that day, we were indeed at a fix-up project together. By the end of the fix-up, we couldn't help but be pleased at all we had accomplished that day. Tom rented a 30 yard dumpster for us to use that day, and we needed most of it. I started in the basement, carrying things to the dumpster and then sweeping up behind us. Then, I moved to the garage. The garage was like a very large dumpster. We ended up moving about 95% of the contents of the garage into the dumpster. The garage went from nearly full and awful to nearly empty and clean. We then put up new lights and house numbers on the front porch and repainted it. A lot of work was done, and we could see the difference it made. One of the granddaughters of the homeowners came home and said in delight, "We have new house numbers! I can't remember the last time we had all four numbers up!".

Although all the physical work was great, we knew that the most important thing we do at fix-ups is to pray. Tom offered another great reflection. People ask why we go into Flint to work. There is so much work needed in this city, why even try? Tom responded "I think we made a difference to you and your family." as he motioned to the homeowners. All we have to do is worry about the little things God gives us to do, and he will handle the rest. God made an impace in their lives. Let us pray that He continues to make an impact in ours.

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.

-Anthony Smela

The Home Stretch

How you finish says a lot about the person you are. A strong finish reflects a person who perseveres, who works hard, and who relies not just on themselves, but on others. The opposite is also true. With only two weeks left in Ypsilanti, this pervades my thoughts. How do I want to finish? Do I want to cruise through my last days here and look ahead to August, or do I take these next two weeks and give everything I've got?

Obviously, I want the latter, but practically it is quite difficult. Giving my all when I am exhausted at kids camp is difficult. Giving my all when the kids at my non-profit keep wetting themselves (and the bathroom floor) or directly disobey you for attention is difficult. Finding the strength to get up and go to Outreach or fix-ups with Jesus is difficult. Sure, it's easy to say I'll give it my all, but it's a daily (or hourly) decision. And most of the time, I am not naturally disposed to choose to finish strong. But all these choices make character.

Pray that we choose to finish these last two weeks strong.

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.

-Anthony Smela