By Victoria Fassett
Campus Minister
UNL Newman Center
I love that at the Newman Center we kick off the month of November with HuskerCatholic Live!, our biggest fundraiser of the year and an impressive gathering of faithful and generous people. There is something beautiful about bringing together the people that make all the work we do throughout the year possible and celebrating with them what the Lord is doing in the hearts of so many college students across the UNL campus. The night was full of stories, from individual students’ conversions, to our growing OCIA class, and the countless students met during Fall Outreach by our FOCUS team and student leaders. The Lord has clearly been moving in a powerful way this year.
One of my favorite ways I’ve seen Jesus work this year is the new partnership between our Volunteer and Missions team and Christ in the City. Many of the students we meet on campus are interested in volunteering and giving back to the community, but may not be involved in Newman in any other way. We’ve been looking for something that has a low barrier to entry, with very little training or prep work required.
Through a series of conversations, we were connected with Christ in the City in Denver, an apostolate existing to encounter the homeless community in their city and restore dignity to those who are often ignored through conversation and friendship. In the past few years, they’ve begun partnering with teams in other cities across the country to train them to encounter those living in poverty in their own hometowns.
Over the summer, our student leaders were trained on how to lead a street team and how to teach others to do that as well. Almost immediately this fall, we had about 30 students sign up to go on a street walk every week, which means 10 times a week, students are going out with the intention of talking to the people who most people make a point to avoid.
Mother Teresa once said, “Many people talk about the homeless, but few talk to them,” and that is precisely the experience that our students have had this year. As I talked to one of our leaders, Kate, she shared that the value of a conversation has been reaffirmed over and over again.
Often when her team goes out, the first time they meet someone, they’ll be asked for money or food because that’s usually the extent of interactions that these men and women have with those walking by. But Kate said that the atmosphere often quickly shifts as they realize that the students are there not to treat them as a project and give them something and walk away, but rather they want to get to know them and hear their story and genuinely care about what’s happening in their lives. While not every encounter the students have on their street walks is positive and filled with joy, Kate said that often, as she and her team stand up to leave, whoever they were talking to is overcome with gratitude for the time and attention and conversation the students offered them.
There is clearly a real physical need for those who are living on the streets, but there is almost always an even deeper human and relational need—to be seen and loved. Isn’t that what we all need so desperately?
Kate continued her reflection on the past couple months by speaking about her own poverty: “To be poor is to be reliant on others,” she said, “...and it’s just shown me how poor I am spiritually and how much I need my Father to provide for me… Every day they wake up and they’re poor and everyday I wake up and I’m poor.” This reflection is a common one: often in meeting those in physical poverty, we are awakened to our own deep need for love and communion and connection.
In this month, set apart as a time for gratitude and looking out for those who are less fortunate, I think there’s a profound truth to be found in this unlikely place. While students go out to meet the physically poor, they in turn are shown their own lack and in that place of mutual poverty there is communion.
As Father Ryan Kaup mentioned at Husker Catholic Live!, these students have very little materially to give, but they do have their time and their very lives and their generosity with what they do have is inspiring.
