The Care Communities ministers to AIDS, cancer patients

The Care Communities, a Partner Ministry of SJN, provides practical and compassionate support, through volunteer Care Teams, for people living with serious illnesses, such as cancer and HIV/AIDS. Listen to Outreach Coordinator Roger Temme as he introduces the organization's ministry to you and invites you to learn more! If you find you do want more information after the video, please contact me.

Culture of Life Committee infuses community with respect for life

Since the parish's Culture of Life Committee was formed a little over a year ago, it has firmly established a pro-life presence in the parish community, addressing life from conception until natural death.  Through education, prayer and service, the committee has quite the list of accomplishments already!

Education:

• Sponsored a three-part class on "End of Life Issues," during October 2009's Respect Life Month.
• Dr. Cari Henry, parishioner, runs bulletin articles on Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae.  She's also working on chastity classes for teenagers, to be presented in fall 2010.  Cari has been interviewed on Relevant Radio regarding Catholic chastity and Natural Family Planning teachings.

Prayer:

• Developed a prayer for the committee.
• Coordinated Adoration on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in December 2009.
• Participates in the Diocese of Austin's Office of Pro-Life Activities and Chaste Living's Prayer Chain.
• Participated in the 40 Days for Life campaign.
• Prays regularly for Death Row inmates.

Public Policy:

• Worked closely with the diocesan Public Policy Committee by sending out legislative alerts and information that support life issues.
• Kevin Kerner, parishioner, facilitated the Diocese Petition Drive at our parish, against abortions funded from Travis Country property taxes.
• Attended the Travis County Healthcare District meetings to object to Travis County funding for abortions.

Gabriel Project:

• Visited the downtown Gabriel Project Life Center to better understand their ministry.  The committee has since adopted the life center as one of its own ministries.  
• Visited four pregnancy centers in Austin to understand how they operate, are supported, etc.  
• Met with a representative from the Texas Pregnancy Care Network to better understand how this government funding is used at the life center.  After learning there is no spiritual counseling made available at the life center, the Culture of Life Committee raised concern about not being able to pray with clients at the center and is awaiting a response from the diocese.

Congratulations to the Culture of Life Committee for an amazing first year of ministry at St. John Neumann Church!

The Culture of Life and the Church’s mission

Editor's Note: This is a guest post from Cari Henry, St. John Neumann Church parishioner and Culture of Life Committee education coordinator.

Joining the Culture of Life Committee has been a wonderful blessing in my life. In part, because of the work we do—with every action, we are helping someone rediscover his or her precious gift of life.

But also because the core message of the Culture of Life Committee highlights the Church’s teaching about hope for our own salvation. It says that anyone, regardless of the circumstances at birth, has the potential for greatness (and goodness). It says that anyone, regardless of the sins committed, can find redemption.  And it states that every person, regardless of the state of the body (or mind), has the same inherent dignity as others.

Thus, the participation in the Culture of Life Committee is a magnificent way to abide by the Church’s moral teachings as well as to be a living example of the Church’s fundamental theology! And, regardless of talent, there is a way for everyone and anyone to be involved. In our efforts to defend the unborn, the dying, the disabled, the condemned, the family and the sanctity of marriage, we need prayer warriors, educators, priests, political activists, crisis handlers, marketing gurus, scientists, ethicists, health-care professionals, theologians and anyone else in-between. Please consider joining our endeavor.

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Cari Worley Henry, MD, is a family physician who believes healing only occurs when the body, mind and spirit are fully integrated. She further believes the theology and teachings of the Catholic Church offer the best path toward this healing. She, therefore, spends her time educating on Catholic theology and its relationship to health care.  She has a special interest in encouraging holiness in our families and hopes that by targeting the hearts of women, this can be achieved. Her favorite topics are Natural Family Planning, Theology of the Body and The New Feminism. She serves as the education coordinator for the Culture of Life Committee at SJN as well as the secretary for the Catholic Physicians Guild.

Diocesan ministry opportunities, 5/24

Every Friday, the Diocese of Austin sends out an electronic newsletter called "The Friday E-Pistle," to which anyone can subscribe.  To subscribe, send an e-mail to Diocesan Director of Communications Christian Gonzalez at christian-gonzalez@austindiocese.org.

The diocesan ministry opportunities listed in last week's E-pistle include:

• Little Sisters of the Poor.  Catholic college-age women from anywhere in the United States are invited to serve the elderly poor with the Little Sisters of the Poor from Alabama to Washington as hospitality aides, activity aides, in kitchen and dining services or nursing assistants / nurses. Send a brief e-mail introducing yourself and request an application from Sr. Constance at serenity@littlesistersofthepoor.org, call (410) 744-9367 or visit www.LittleSistersOfThePoor.org.
• Gabriel Project Training.  There will be a Gabriel Project Angel Training on June 5 at St. William Parish in Round Rock from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. (lunch and refreshments will be provided). Registration is due by May 31. Space is limited. For more information, call (512) 949-2486 or e-mail Yvonne Saldaña at yvonne-saldana@austindiocese.org.

Diocesan ministry opportunities

Every Friday, the Diocese of Austin sends out an electronic newsletter called "The Friday E-Pistle," to which anyone can subscribe.  To subscribe, send an e-mail to Diocesan Director of Communications Christian Gonzalez at christian-gonzalez@austindiocese.org.

The diocesan ministry opportunities listed in last week's E-pistle include:

Diocesan Law Project needs volunteer interpreters
Spanish interpreters are needed to help people in the community get legal assistance. Two clinics a week are offered in Austin, Martin Clinic at 1601 Haskell St., on Monday evenings and Webb Clinic at 601 E. St. Johns Ave.; both are held in the school cafeteria. Many lawyers are donating their services for free but need interpreters to assist them. For more information, contact Linda Conway at (512) 949-2419.

Choir rehearsals
The following is the schedule for the rehearsals for the two upcoming ordinations. We invite all musicians to attend. E-mail Cheryl Maxwell at cheryl-maxwell@austindiocese.org if you plan to participate.

• May 15: Combined Transitional and Priest Rehearsal, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at St. Margaret Mary Parish in Cedar Park. Co-directed by Ren MacNary and Morris Stevens.
• May 20: Austin Regional Rehearsal, 7 to 9 p.m. at St. Edward's University. Directed by Morris Stevens.

Gabriel Project Life Center
The Gabriel Project Life Center is in need of gently-used maternity clothes. Thanks to St. Catherine of Siena Parish’s Pro-Life Team and G.I.F.T. for the beautiful and generous gifts from the baby shower you hosted for the Gabriel Project Life Center. For more information, contact Pamela Otten at pamela-otten@austindiocese.org.

Gabriel Project Training
There will be a Gabriel Project Angel Training on June 5 at St. William Parish in Round Rock from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. (lunch and refreshments will be provided). Registration is due by May 31. Space is limited. For more information, call (512) 949-2486 or e-mail Briana Feiler at briana-feiler@austindiocese.org.

How SJN volunteers are changing the face of Austin

Our 60+ ministries and 1,460 ministry members and volunteers are making a difference.  They are going out beyond parish walls and into the community, visibly changing the way Austin serves our own and helps each other out.  We do not sit around and wait for someone else to do something -- we go out and build the Kingdom ... one project at a time.

The Culture of Life Committee participated in this spring's 40 Days for Life Campaign, in which our city united with 211 other cities to fast, pray, hold peaceful vigils and reach out to the community.  The committee participated in the effort that maintained prayer vigils at two abortion facilities.  Through this campaign in Austin, 10 women have chosen life for children they were going to abort and three post-abortive women finally started to seek healing from having an abortion in their past.

The Habitat for Humanity Partner Ministry is part of the Catholic Build, which is building for the Valencia family right now. Manuel and Maria Valencia are from Tamaulipas, Mexico. They have been married 40 years and have nine children! Currently, they live with their daughter in a trailer where eight people share three bedrooms, and the children sleep on mattresses in the living room. Their 19-year-old and 17-year-old will be living with them in their new Habitat home!

Partner Ministry Mobile Loaves & Fishes, which began out of St. John Neumann Catholic Church, provides food, clothing and dignity to the city's people in need by making daily truck runs on trucks loaded with food, clothing and volunteers.  This year, they will have served over 2,000,000 meals since their inception in 1998.  They currently have a large-scale campaign going on, called "I Am Here" that seeks to solve the problem of people ignoring the homeless because they don't know how to help.  The campaign encourages text donations to Mobile Loaves & Fishes so that any moment someone feels moved to help, it’s as simple as sending a text message.

The Summit and Querencia Communion Service Teams regularly bring Holy Communion to homebound Catholics living at the Summit at Westlake Hills and Querencia at Barton Creek.  If they can't make it to Mass at the parish, we go to them!

Our Society of St. Vincent de Paul Partner Ministry has helped family after family in need with rent, utilities, food and emotional support.  Our particular chapter also helps out the SVDP chapters of Sacred Heart Church and St. Paul Church, both here in Austin.  Their slogan demonstrates the ministry they so love to serve, "Thank you for helping us help others!"

There are so many ways our parishioners seek to make a change, whether it be formally in one of our ministries or informally in the ways in which they try to live their own everyday lives.  We take to heart what it means to serve as the hands and feet of Jesus Christ today and pray that our efforts might be enough to win a few for Him.

"I have become all things to all, to save at least some." ~1 Corinthians 9:22b

Who is really hungry?

Editor's note: This is a guest post from Alan Graham, president of SJN Partner Ministry Mobile Loaves & Fishes


This year Mobile Loaves & Fishes will serve over 500,000 thousand meals and will probably exceed having served over 2,000,000 (yes! Two million!) since our inception in 1998.  This is incredible, but what is astonishing is how many people it took to deliver those meals to the streets directly where people are.  Today we have nearly 13,000 volunteers in six cities throughout the United States, dedicated to serving these meals with love.  Every night these 17 catering trucks loaded with food, clothing and volunteers head out on to their respective streets to serve these meals.  With such a large army it begs the question of who is really hungry.




Although Mobile Loaves & Fishes is known as a feeding ministry, what we really do is to empower people into a lifestyle of service to our brothers and sisters who live on the streets.  This is really important on a number of levels.  To have thousands of people working every month donating their time in service to others is really something.  I read once where each volunteer hour has an economic value of about $17!  WOW!  When you empower so many people in service the way we do, paradigms and stereotypes change.  When paradigms and stereotypes change, you suddenly find yourself with an army of advocates.  This is one of the powerful resource engines for Mobile Loaves & Fishes.

Now we can advocate for homes.  Go to www.mlfnow.org/HOW to take a look at what we are doing to make people “homeful.”  To make people “homeful,” we really need to understand what home is.  In the recently published groundbreaking book, "Beyond Homelessness," the authors identify eight characteristics of home:

1. Home is a place of permanence.
2. Home is a dwelling place.
3. Home is a storied place.
4. Home is a safe resting place.
5. Home is a place of hospitality.
6. Home is a place of embodied inhabitation.
7. Home is a place of orientation.
8. Home is a place of affiliation and belonging.



Who is really hungry?  We all are!  Food is merely the conduit to connect human to human, heart to heart.  Some will be nourished physically, while others will be nourished spiritually.  If you want to become a part of our army, go check out www.mlfnow.org or e-mail us at info@mlfnow.org.

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Alan Graham is the president and founding member of Mobile Loaves & Fishes. He is married (since 1984) to Tricia, and they have four children; Decker, Taylor, Marlee and Keaton as well as a niece, Samantha, whom they have raised. Alan formerly was in the real estate development, investment, management and brokerage business in Austin, Texas, having founded Trilogy Development, Inc. and co-founded The Lynxs Group, developers of on-airport air cargo facilities. It has been through the love for Jesus Christ that Alan is called to serve in this ministry, enabling others to serve their brothers and sisters in need.

The busy Catholic's volunteer regime

Your goal Volunteer for a short time a week and still have time for your life outside church.

Your plan Pick any ministry opportunity weekly to be a good steward of your time and talent.

Your payoff You'll do your part to build the Kingdom of God here on Earth, however crammed or crazy your schedule is!

No time?  No problem!  Whether you've been involved in ministry life before or you're set to get involved today, you can volunteer anywhere with this easy plan.  I've included opportunities for volunteering from home for weeks when you're too time-crunched to make it out somewhere.  Get involved, easy!

Christian Life
Coffee and Donut Social Hosts (While you're already at church for Mass)
Host the coffee and donut social after 9 a.m. Mass on Sundays.  Go to Randalls or HEB before the first of the month to get orange juice and order donuts.  Pick up donuts and set up in Morris Hall on the Sunday you volunteer.  Serve water, orange juice, coffee and donuts to parishioners, and clean up afterward.

Faith Formation

Children's Special Event Volunteers
Plan or lead activities for the parish's special events for children, including Vacation Religion School, the Christmas Pageant, Stations of the Cross, Our Lady of Guadalupe Festival and others.  Short-term projects!

Liturgy and Sacred Music
Altar Ministry (Serve from home)
Care for alter linens by laundering and pressing the linens used during the liturgy.  Pick up linens at the church then return them after Mass on weekdays or after the Sunday 5:30 p.m. Mass.  With the current amount of volunteers, you would only do this once every two months.

Altar Servers (While you're already at church for Mass)
Children in the fourth to 12th grades assist the presider during the celebration of the liturgy on Sunday and holy days.

Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion (While you're already at church for Mass)
Those who've been confirmed in the Catholic Church assist with distribution of Holy Communion during the celebration of the liturgy on Sunday.

Readers (While you're already at church for Mass)
Those who've been confirmed in the Catholic Church proclaim the Word of God during the liturgy.

Ushers (While you're already at church for Mass)
Assist the assembly during the liturgy with greeting, seating, collection and answering questions.

Social Outreach

Christian Medical Missions
Accompany medical teams to Central America to minister to indigenous people on one-week trips offered throughout the year.

Habitat for Humanity
Assist in building one to two homes per year for people in the Diocese of Austin by providing labor and / or food for the laborers.  Short-term project!

Mary and Martha Guild (Serve from home)
Provide hospitality and food for parishioners for special occasions and events.  Assist families with meals in their home when needed due to illness.  Cut, embroider and sew baptismal garments and prayer shawls.

Mobile Loaves & Fishes
Several opportunities for the busy person to volunteer with MLF exist.  Pick up Great Harvest Bread and Starbucks treats various times during the week.  Breads must be sorted and stored.  Purchase eggs once per month (more if you like), boil them at home and bring them back to the commissary.  Help with various aspects of the Annual MLF Wine Tasting and Auction (late April or early May), including soliciting donations, handling auction paperwork, and staffing auction tables and check-out at the event.  Every four to six weeks,  go to the Capital Area Food Bank to pick up a food order of free or low cost food.  Care for various commissary landscaping areas.  The list goes on!

Stewardship

Special Events Volunteers
Assist in planning and organizing special parish events throughout the year.  Short-term projects!

SVDP Society serves poorest of the poor

Editor's note: This is a guest post from Julie Benkoski, St. John Neumann parishioner and member of the SJN chapter of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; for He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor.”  (Lk 4: 20)

During this sacred season of Easter, we are reminded of the Lord’s gift of Himself on the cross made present in the Eucharist and which is the foundation for every act of charity.  Listening yet again to the words of the Passion, we are reminded of the intense suffering that our Lord Jesus Christ endured for all of mankind.  After having called the 12 to follow Him, Jesus kept them at His side and lived with them, imparting His teaching of salvation to them through word and deed, and, finally, He sent them out to do His will.  But before they were sent out to do His work, He made it quite clear that, “you will always have the poor with you” and that any act of charity in His name would bring His healing presence there in the midst of them.

Emulating the Lord’s humanitarian acts of charity, St. Vincent, the patron saint of the Society of St. Vincent De Paul, made it his life work to bring the kingdom of Heaven to all those in need here on earth, the essential plan of God.  Our SVDP ministry brings spiritual and corporal healing to the working poor and poorest of the poor right here in our own community.  Providing basic living necessities such a rent, utilities, food, clothing, prescription medications, we serve over 50 families each month.  And because of the generous support of the parishioners here at SJN, we have been enabled to reach out to more of those we are called to serve:  the abandoned, neglected and forgotten.

And so God continues to challenge us all to take up His cross and do His work.  Scripture tells us that it is in giving that we receive but never more so than when bringing the healing of our Lord to those who are so vulnerable…those close to losing their homes, those without electricity, parents unable to feed their children, those who are ill and without prescription medications…  As a member of SVDP and following our Lord as a true disciple, you will be blessed and enriched beyond all imagining.  The joy and happiness you will feel when you know your actions have made a real difference in the lives of those who suffer will surpass all other temporary, materialistic producing forms of happiness.  The intense, spirit-nourishing goodness that will flow into your soul is just as passionate as the pain that we felt when listening to the words of the Passion.  The Lord told His disciples to “come, follow me and I will bring you light.”  The lightness of God’s work will fill your entire being when acting on behalf of the ministry of SVDP.

Finally, as we come to the end of our annual SVDP Lenten Food drive, we ask everyone to remember those who hunger and struggle each day to feed their children.  Truly, hunger pains are painful to the 18,000+ children in our community who suffer from ‘food insecurity.’  The San Francisco Javier Catholic Church food pantry will receive our donations.  Serving a large, low income populated area; this tiny pantry struggles each day to provide the needed food.  Please, remember the poor as we celebrate the goodness and promises of our risen Lord Jesus Christ, and return your nutritious, nonperishable food to the hallway past the church offices in the pastoral center by April 11.  If you don’t have time to shop, financial donations are gladly accepted; just indicate that the funds are for the Food Drive.

We are all challenged to bring the love and hope of our risen Lord Jesus Christ to the poor; please prayerfully consider becoming a member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.  It is only in giving to others that we can find that special, spiritual happiness that is rooted in and through our union with our sweet Lord Jesus Christ!

Thank you for helping us help others!

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Julie Benkoski is the immediate past president of the SJN conference of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and has been a Vincentian for over 10 years.  She is a board member of the Austin diocesan SVDP Council and vice president of the SVDP South Austin District Council.  Julie has been an SJN parishioner for the past 23 years and has served on the Parish Council and on countless parish committees and organizations, including the Lay Missionaries of Charity.  She is married to Harold, who is a past grand knight of the SJN Knights of Columbus council.  Julie has her own law practice, which focuses in the areas of estate planning, probate and mediation.  Besides her church work and career, she loves riding and jumping her horse, Raphael, and enjoys her Catholic dog, Dixi, and three kitties.   

Upcoming seminar on service based on pope's third encyclical

The Texas Catholic Conference Charity and Justice Department is sponsoring an upcoming seminar based on Pope Benedict's third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate.  The event, Charity and Truth in Ministry: Our Call to Service, will be April 30 - May 1 at the Hilton Austin Airport Hotel.

Caritas in Veritate links charity and truth in the pursuit of justice, the common good and authentic human development.  In doing so, the pope calls all men and women to think and act anew.  This seminar is an opportunity for volunteers in church ministry to gather and reflect on our common call to service.  Participants are also offered workshop choices to hone skills in specific areas relevant to their ministries, including fund raising, volunteer retention, Hispanic outreach, legislative advocacy, re-entry services and wrap-around services for families of the incarcerated, and more.

For more information, call (512) 339-9882 or visit www.TXCatholic.org.