By Gerard O’Connor

Each Sunday at Our Lady of Lourdes Church the Gospel is proclaimed from the altar. Every, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday the Gospel is put into action and lived at the back doors of the church. It is here that some members of the parish have started a grass-roots soup kitchen for the homeless.

To say ‘soup kitchen’ is to use poetic license. It is, in fact, a soup table, yet it is the noon meal for over 130 women and men who live on the streets. Rain or shine, cold or heat, they eat in the open air. It is the hope of Jeanette Callahan, one of the organizers, that the table will grow into a soup kitchen where there will be some shelter for the hungry.

It is also more than a coincidence that this outreach is only feet from the Dr. Martin Luther King Center for nonviolent change.

The women and men who facilitate this ministry are doing their part for non-violent change. Each day at 11:30 a.m. the meal begins with a prayer by all who are gathered. On Jan. 26, the prayer was the Lord’s Prayer led by one of the men waiting for his daily bread on the street.

The cook was Mark Wyzalek, who said that usually whoever cooks also buys the food and pays for it out of his or her own pocket. The menu, that day, was to be of beans and rice with bread and a dessert of custards that someone had donated.

The other supplies are paid for by contributions. One example, Wyzalek said, was ‘an angel’ who came by in the form of the owner of a dry goods business who offered to donate all the paper and plastic products that were needed to keep the ministry going. Driving by he had seen the people gathered waiting for the food and felt moved to do something.

Mrs. Callahan could not emphasize enough the need for more people like this to offer their goods, money or time to this cause. The need is tremendous and it needs “serious regular commitment” even if it is only one day a month from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., she said.

The project began when the former pastor, Father Henry Gracz, would feed those who came knocking on his door in hunger. Last June, when the Capuchin Friars took over the pastoral care of the church on Boulevard, six lay people, along with Brother Efrain Sosa, OFM, Cap., decided to organize this distribution of food. Until this time there was no other service of this sort in the area and the need goes far beyond the supply.

Sue Said, Carol O’Hearn, Margie Vicknair, Ruby Palmer, Lethia Odum and Nancy Jameson, along with others, decided to “serve simple food with dignity and respect to others.” Wyzalek quotes Archbishop James P. Lyke OFM, when the late archbishop said that “we are evangelized by the poor.”

According to both Mrs. Callahan and Wyzalek they experience that evangelization each day on the street. They both noted that Archbishop Lyke brought the Capuchins here and Mother Teresa’s sisters to the West End thus showing his concern for the inner city.

They are trying to follow the witness of their spiritual shepherd as his spirit gives them strength to reach out. Mrs. Callahan recalled how worried she has been about the need for more people to help them. She went home a few days ago to find a message on her answering machine telling her not to worry: The archdiocese has a special messenger in heaven now to catch the attention of God. Just before she left to clean a 24-inch stock pot in a small sink, she said, “People who hear the Gospel call and see what is going on will find a way to serve.” “The Lord is calling his people more and more to take care of the poor.”

If there are people who would wish to help in any way with this ministry please contact the parish office of Our Lady of Lourdes at 522-6776.