Embracing the Other

St. Bonaventure youth prepare food to hand out on their poverty walk

Many of us are familiar with the story of St. Francis of Assisi embracing a leper. The story is a significant point in Francis’ conversion experience. It marks the moment when Francis began to accept all of humanity. Prior to this conversion experience, Francis avoided the lepers who because of their disease were cast out from society. They were forced to fend for themselves, away from settlements, hated and shunned.

Today in the western world, we also avoid certain persons who do not fit into our sense of what is “normal”. The homeless tend to fall outside of this category; and whether we live in Toronto, Los Angeles, London or New York, we all have seen homeless people on our streets. Generally as we go about our daily lives we tend to briskly walk past these individuals. Connecting with them does not seem like a possibility.

Getting ready to hit the streets of Toronto

In the middle of April, 2010, five members of the youth ministry program at the Franciscan Church of St. Bonaventure in Toronto, Ontario along with Rachel Nazareth, their youth minister and Jonathan Nix, a candidate to the Order of Friars Minor Conventual decided to embody that Franciscan ideal of connecting to the other by going on a poverty walk in downtown Toronto.

Rachel, Jonathan, Paige, Amber, R.J., another Rachel, and Jennifer – the last five of these individuals being members of the youth ministry - met after a Sunday Mass in the kitchen of their parish’s ministry centre. Here they made sandwiches which along with a clementine and a granola bar they packed in paper bags. These meals were to be handed out to homeless people whom the young Catholics would encounter on the streets.

Taking a break on Shuter Street

With the meals packed into their backpacks, the members of the St. Bonaventure group caught the 54 bus to Eglinton Subway Station and then traveled farther by subway to Sherbourne Station.

At Yonge Street Subway Station waiting for a train to Sherbourne Station

Excited and nervous about potential encounters, Rachel, Jonathan, Paige, Amber, R.J., Rachel, and Jennifer emerged from Sherbourne Station into a beautiful sunny day. The plan was to walk south along Sherbourne and in smaller groups offer the prepared meals to persons who needed them.

It did not take much time for St. Bonaventure’s young people to distribute the meals they had prepared. Their nervousness abated somewhat; the greatest thing of all however was the small exchanges that these young people had with persons who took the bagged meals. These verbal exchanges were full of kind words; they bridged the gap that had existed before and allowed the interlocutors to experience their common humanity.

(Source of all related photos on homepage and webpage: St. Bonaventure Youth Ministry and www.franciscans.org.)