By Daniel Stara
Seminarian of the Diocese of Lincoln, Propaedeutic Stage
at St. Gregory the Great Seminary in Seward
The summer before my propaedeutic year, a friend recommended that I spend it volunteering with the poor. I declined. I knew it was a good thing, but I couldn’t see how volunteering somewhere would develop my spiritual life and prepare me for seminary. Looking back on my propaedeutic year, I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong.
A few seminarians and I have the incredible opportunity to participate weekly in street ministry alongside Alexis Brouillette, an outreach coordinator at CSS. Throughout our walks, one question we ponder as seminarians is, “Where have we been a bridge to Christ for others, and where have we been an obstacle?” It’s a thought from Pastores Dabo Vobis, a document on priestly formation promulgated by Pope St. John Paul II, and it says, “The human personality of the priest is to be a bridge and not an obstacle for others in their meeting with Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the human race.” In our street walks, we focus on being a bridge to Christ for the poor we meet. Sometimes this gets flipped, though, and the people we came to serve are the bridge to Christ for us. This happened when we encountered a man named James.
James has late-stage cancer all around his neck, has suffered a stroke, which affects his ability to think clearly, and he struggles to speak above a whisper. He has a bleeding wound on the side of his neck, is in nearly constant pain, and he told me he spends most of his days alone in his apartment. When we were visiting him, he called me down to him and, with my head next to his, he whispered in my ear, “You know you shouldn’t say ‘heck’ because it’s another word for hell and, you know, God is so good that you shouldn’t consider heck, even in a passing word.” I was speechless. I was thinking, was it Jesus or James talking? It couldn’t be James. He is in constant pain, alone, and dying of cancer, yet he’s whispering to me how good God is and encouraging me to seek Him. I couldn’t make sense of it.
In serving James, I encountered Jesus. James was the bridge to Christ for me. It was a real experience of Jesus’ words, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40). The reality, though, is that I was the poor and the least one in this moment. James had the profoundly deep union with God that I was seeking. I had come to serve James and bring Jesus to him, but James saw my poverty and served me. It was totally flipped from what I expected.
This was clear not only with James, but also with a man named Billy.
The first time I met Billy, he told me that he had died three days earlier. His heart had stopped beating, and he was resuscitated by paramedics. It was incredible news that he was still alive, and it felt like a perfect opportunity to share the Gospel. However, our conversation lasted only a few minutes and didn’t get very deep.
We didn’t see him for a few weeks, and I wondered how he was doing. Doubts and questions such as “Is Billy still alive?” and “Should I have tried to say more to him?” crept into my mind. I felt helpless and wondered about what I could have done better.
A few weeks later, though, we ran into Billy, and he was glowing. He excitedly told us that he decided to start taking care of himself. He was 41 days sober, and was going to meetings. Billy was doing better than ever! This was a man who was once dead and now is alive, and he was filling me with joy and hope. My expectations were flipped again. I was the one experiencing poverty and my own powerlessness to help Billy, and in my weakness, I saw that Jesus was working the whole time. I was poor and Billy was the bridge to Christ for me.
I thought our street walks were about being a bridge to Christ for those we encounter. What I didn’t expect was to experience my own poverty and have Christ heal me through those we came to serve. It’s incredible. If I had another free summer ahead of me, I wouldn’t hesitate to spend it volunteering with the poor.
