We All Need God's Mercy
Welcome to Real Presence on the Streets!
This newsletter features two stories from our missionaries doing street evangelization on the Northside of Milwaukee and our reflections on our experiences as well as some ways you can pray for us and those who are growing closer to Christ through our ministry. We hope this encourages our readers to grow in their faith and grow in zeal for the work of the salvation of souls.
In this newsletter
By His Wounds We Are Healed
Encountering Myself on the Streets
Prayer Intentions
By His Wounds We Are Healed
Reflection from Griffin Rain, In-residence Missionary
This month, Willis, a man who lives across the street from the Church that we have been talking to a few times a week for the past five months finally came to the church after consistently making the excuse that he is not in the right place now because of his alcoholism. He saw the church as a place for those who are good and he was not good. We continually try to share with him that the Church is for him and that healing starts there. It is where healing started for us missionaries and it is where he can find healing. Finally, he came into the church and we knelt down in front of the altar to pray. I started leading a prayer and after a short while he broke down sobbing and pouring out all of his brokenness and prayed the most sincere act of contrition I have ever heard asking for God's mercy and to give him the grace to stop drinking. After praying there in front of the altar, he wanted to pray in front of the tabernacle and crucifix. Willis is not a Catholic, but he knew Jesus was present there in the Tabernacle and prayed a beautiful prayer of thanksgiving and adoration in front of our lord. After this experience in the Church, he said to us that he has always done things his way and that has led him down a path of sin and despair. Now he wants to try coming to the Catholic Church and doing things God's way instead of his way or the way of his childhood Baptist Church.
As missionaries, we often see people at some of the lowest points in their lives and they see the church as a place for good people and so they don't think they belong here. Pope Francis refers to the church as a field hospital for the weak. We are all weakened by sin, but when we allow our wounds to show and unite them with Christ, then healing can start. when we hide our sin, people buy the lie that they aren't good enough for the church or for God. When people see the church full of "perfect" people, they don't belong. Instead of building up a façade that looks good, we need to show others our wounds and how Christ is healing them. When we can be open with others that we are struggling, but Christ is healing us through the Church, it gives hope that they too can be healed. In the Gospel, when Thomas saw the wounds of Christ, he believed. The people we meet can see our wounds and believe!
But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed We had all gone astray like sheep, all following our own way; But the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all (Isaiah 53:5-6)
Encountering Myself on the Streets
Reflection from Steven Kehoe, In-residence Missionary
When I first began walking with the Missionaries of the Real Presence, I had a profound realization of my own vice and the necessity of the gospel being proclaimed. When you first walk around, you attempt to accustom yourself to the new environment. You don’t need to look long before you find people in deplorable conditions due to their decisions. The drunk with no change of clothes, that hasn’t showered for several days, and is angry at your mere presence near him. Seeing this, there is a distancing between you and them that can happen, and did happen in my head. Something like, “wow, do they not see their own condition and how miserable it is? Do they not realize I am trying to help them? How did they let themselves get to this instead of breaking their bad habit?”
Perhaps these thoughts would have stayed in my own mind but they were dispelled after we talked with one drunk who had had a normal job that he worked seven days a week. He said he would come home from work and have a beer, somewhat to unwind and somewhat as a reward for working hard. He continued this habit until he had accustomed himself to drinking alcohol every single day, and he soon found he could not go a day without it. It then became an increasingly pronounced habit until he couldn’t work anymore.
Hearing his story of immoderation and its similarity to my intemperance regarding video games when I was in college, made me realize how easily I could have been a drunk on the streets too. After all I couldn’t maintain control over my passions just as he had been unable to. I remember coming home from classes and playing video games for several hours every day and spending more time than that on the weekends. His intemperance was a vice same as mine but mine didn’t have as encompassing and extrinsic effects as his. You could say my intemperance was a ‘cleaner’ intemperance, it wouldn’t put me out in the street but it could still put me in hell. Honestly though, how much better it is to end up on the street so that your need of salvation is so much more visible and your opportunity for encountering God is greater! Vice is vice. When we tell ourselves we are not the same as the drunk on the street, we are only trying to pretend our ‘clean’ vices are not vice at all. Drunks may devote great care to the idol of alcohol but surely, we do the same thing with our jobs, our twitter accounts, our leisure, and everything that is not God.
Truly, every person has sinned and needs the redemption, every person devotes themselves with greater care and devotion to some part of the world that is not God, and every person has received the wages of devotion to an idol, which are misery and death. But God has freed us in the redemption, He offers our recompense in confession, and awaits every person with His mercy. Must we not invite, encourage, and direct every person to partake in the mercy of God, to throw off the world and all that is in it, and live according to the spirit which gives joy and eternal life? I know I would want such an invitation if someone recognized my need of it and I am incredibly grateful for God extending the invitation of mercy to me. There really is very little difference between the drunk on the street, the rich businessman who cheats on his wife, and ourselves with our vice. How broken all of us are and how quickly we forget our misery when we cover up its misery with the comforts of life that the drunk just doesn’t have the luxury to afford.
Prayer Intentions
We would encourage our readers to pray for those who we have been working with in our outreach ministry. There is much fruit happening at St. Rose of Lima and we need your prayers!
Please keep those who have expressed interest in becoming Catholic
Jay, Willis, Scott, Derrick, Romie, Vera, Jeffrey, Deborah, Mario, Vygar, Taylor, Sharon
Please keep those who are in RCIA classes in prayer
Marcus
Please keep those who are fallen away Catholics that have expressed desire to come back to confession and church in prayer
Blanch, Yvonne, Julian, Wayne, Dave, Jeff, Christine, Kris
Please keep those who have recently come back to the church after encouragement from missionaries in prayer
Kurt, Steven, Allen, Jodee
Please pray for any men who are discerning becoming a missionary
About the Missionaries of the Real Presence
The Missionaries of the Real Presence are a group of lay men who live in common at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Parish in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We are dedicated to prayer through daily recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours in the church open to the public, Evangelization to the neighborhoods surrounding our parish and assisting in parish ministries.
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