Newsletter for November 2005
Dear Friends and Family,
We need to give and expect a very high degree of love and not settle for anything less. By searching in this way, we come to God. Somehow we innately know that our inner secrets, our body, and our love should not be sold for any price because they are valuable beyond price. But we are told to confess our inner secrets to each other (James 5:16) and to give all of these things in marriage for free (1 Cor 7:2-5). When we give what is priceless for nothing, we are God-like.
The world describes someone as God-like if they seem to be all-powerful, all-knowing, or have physical perfection. Christianity turns this idea on its head. The defining attributes of God are his immeasurably generosity, complete forgiveness, and total love. God created us in his image and likeness, and after the fall, we are relearning to be God-like. God inspires and reinforces this journey.
Nicollo Machiavelli declared the world’s logic when he said, "There is nothing so self-defeating as generosity, for the more generous you are, the less you are able to be generous." The Christian knows that there is nothing that requires more practice than generosity. If we are ever to be greatly generous, we must first be a little generous. To be God-like is to let our finite charity approach His infinite charity, and our finite resources will miraculously approach His infinite resources.
Pursuing charity requires faith, and faith is a necessary ingredient in all miracles. Miracles likewise reinforce and strengthen our faith. We must be aware, however, that sin also has a reinforcing factor. Sometimes it is called a darkening of the intellect, addiction, or habit. With every sin, we have more reason to escape God, and this desire to escape is behind the reinforcing spiral of sin. If we choose to sin for self exaltation, our situation will be lower and sinful exaltation will be more tempting when we finish. If we sin to escape from despair, the situation will be more desperate when we return. Problems get worse when we escape from them.
Our challenge is to reach out and help others break from the road of sin, and become established on the road to God. We do this by sharing our relationship with Christ. All true Christian missionary activity is merely this: introducing Christ to our neighbors and helping them enter into a transforming relationship with Christ. This transformation involves good works, and the mark of true knowledge about God is good works. (Matthew 7:15-27) The inverse is also true. Good works can school us in knowledge about God. Love is only an idea until it is applied. It would be shameful to arrive at heaven with only a theoretical love and not a living love.
The Real Big News
We are opening a new house! The new house will be called A Simple House of Sts. Teresa, Therese, and Teresa (the House of the 3 Teresas for short), and it is located in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC. The house was founded by Michael Kirwan as a Catholic Worker shelter for homeless women and has been run by Connie Ridge and the Kirwan family. We thank God and the Kirwan family for this remarkable gift and opportunity. We will be moving into the house this January, and we hope to use the house as a home for female volunteers and temporary missionaries. Please pray that God will send us the right volunteers, and that He will bless all of us with the necessary sanctity and grace for His work. Please also pray for the new projects this house will make possible.
God’s ways are making headway with a group of individuals that we did not expect to focus on, 17-20 year old males. Some young men have been coming to church with us, and they show a sincere interest in discussing the basic questions of life. They are coming from an environment full of drugs, shootings, sexual exploitation, broken families, and unfinished educations. This environment usually leads young men to prison. Please pray that all of them will become saints! We need them, and they need God. This is an exciting new area of the ministry, and Fr. Pope of St. Thomas More Parish has suggested that we start an evening meeting for people who are coming directly from the streets. At the meeting we would discuss the good news, morality, and God in a flexible but direct format depending upon the needs of those attending. Please pray for this endeavor.
On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we distributed 190 Thanksgiving baskets. Visitation High School helped create the baskets, and the Our Lady of Mercy Young Adult Club helped distribute them. The baskets went to the families we already work with and two new neighborhoods. This was our first outreach to the families in Condon Terrace and the Geraldine Apartments. It is our hope that this outreach helped many families have a happy Thanksgiving, and that it will be the beginning of many new friendships.
We are also planning two Christmas outreaches. The first outreach will involve delivering 150 Christmas baskets to our original neighborhood and the two new neighborhoods. For the second outreach, we hope to angel gifts for almost 100 children of the families we work with most closely.
On September 30, twenty people gathered in the small Simple House kitchen to hear William Gorman of the Archdiocese of Washington speak on evangelization. Given that we have had only two speakers, we don’t pay them, neither of them have Nobel prizes, and both of them have wowed their audience, this has been the best speaker series ever, and we have decided to call it ‘The Best Speaker Series Ever.’ The next speaker in the series will be Fr. Charles Pope on Friday, March 24. We hope to have the event at the House of the 3 Teresas. Everyone is invited, and dinner will be provided.
If the people we serve named us, we would probably be called ‘A Simple Mini-Van of Christian Guys.’ It would be a tragedy, if at midnight on Christmas Eve we had to push our van full of toys through the projects. We are looking for dependable transportation for ourselves and a few families we serve. Please keep an eye out for us.
Thank you for making this ministry possible and reading our letters. Merry Christmas,
Clark Massey with board members: Luis Cartagena, Kristina Massey, Michael Ortner, Richard Realbuto, and Fr. Adam Ryan OSB, and full-time volunteer Jim Hardcastle. 