CV NEWS FEED// Seminarians in Wichita, Kansas, recently participated with the “Christ in the City” ministry in serving people suffering from homelessness.
Five Christ in the City missionaries from Philadelphia stayed in Wichita, serving the homeless alongside the seminarians, as well as providing formation and community for three weeks.
The male missionaries stayed with the seminarians at St. Joseph House of Formation, while the women stayed with a convent in Wichita, Adorers of the Blood of Christ motherhouse.
The missionaries gave training sessions to the seminarians on topics from their ministry to the spiritual life. One of the missionaries, Michaela Fullerton, explains,
“The missionaries all gave different trainings. Some of them focused on ministry – we have street ministry training where we talk about the experience of homelessness and how we approach homelessness as a mission. We had trainings on life, the formational side of Christ in the City: a talk on personal prayer, a talk on community life, and different things like that to kind of like set the tone for the program for the three weeks.”
Christ in the City is a ministry dedicated to serving the homeless in Denver and Philadelphia. Its mission is “rooted in drawing its participants into an intimate relationship with Jesus, touching what it means to be human: being loved by God in the midst of our own poverty and being called to love those around us in the midst of their own poverty.”
Founder Dr. Jonathan Reyes explains how the ministry is a response to the prompting of both Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Francis. Christ in the City was founded in Denver after Pope John Paul II’s visit, which “changed everything.”
“I came to Denver after he had been here and people kept saying, John Paul, he changed everything here,” Reyes remarked. “So in a certain way it was the perfect place to start Christ in the City.”
The founder also explains how the ministry responds to a challenge from the Holy Father: “Pope Francis calls [the homeless] the invisible ones. Part of what we recognized was the need to actually make the invisible, visible.”
Fullerton explained how making the invisible visible played out during her stay in Wichita:
“When we go to places to bring this mission of bringing the love of Christ to our friends on the streets, we know that there are people still there who have grown in their love of the poor and will continue encountering the poor. We hope and pray that in our three weeks there we were able to lay the foundation for that to continue in Wichita.”