A few months ago, Mike and I, took a drive to Las Vegas, NM. I had an appointment with the campus minister at Highlands University in Las Vegas, NM for my job at Catholic Charities. I had decided to ask Mike to join me because at that point I knew I was already pregnant with baby Sofia, it was the first trimester, and there were times during that trimester where I was feeling nauseated. Anyway, during this trip there were two goals for me when meeting with the campus minister: 1) to listen to their, the college students and the local communities, needs, 2) to tell them what Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe already does. In the end I was eagerly surprised that there were many things that came from the brief one hour meeting. In Albuquerque, from my experience of living in Albuquerque (five years), there are several social justice issues that are prominent: poor school system that translates into poorly educated people, immigrant rights, lack of housing for low income individuals which then leads to homelessness, and working with people who are homeless to get them the services they need to get them into a home. (Homelessness occurs because of a variety of different reasons; lack of affordable housing being one of them.) In Las Vegas, the needs, from the people I spoke to sounded similar yet different. According to the people I spoke with the city does a good job of providing people housing, so much so that, they rarely see someone who is homeless. Even though people are not "homeless" many people in Las Vegas don't have money for utilities and for food. When I came back to Albuquerque after that trip I did some research and found some local Las Vegas, NM, food pantries. I gave this resource to the campus minister to share with her college students so that they can distribute this information to those struggling to feed themselves and their families.
The campus minister was wanting to integrate social justice and Catholic Social Teaching with Lent and the students she works for and with. Together her and I came up with a Lenten journey that students and others can partake in that includes the pillars of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. As you can see from the image on the left hand corner of this blog, the idea was formulated in Las Vegas, NM to come up with a resource for people to use on their Lenten journeys to bring them closer to God. When I came back from Las Vegas, NM, I created a the Lenten Calendar resource that can be found on the Catholic Charities website: http://www.ccasfnm.org/ Besides fasting and praying, what the students and community members that are involved at the Newman Center in Las Vegas are going to do is use these calendars to collect cans of food for a local food bank (almsgiving). Each time the person uses the calendar they will fast and give a can of food to a box they have laid aside for the food bank. By the end of Lent each person participating on this Lenten journey will have gathered at least 13 cans to give to their local food bank, directly impacting their communities.
After the creation of this calendar the Executive Director of Catholic Charities, Jim, loved the resource so much he made sure they were inserted in all of our Lenten appeals. Also I have distributed over 600 copies to local parishes.
If you would like a copy of this Lenten Calendar please feel free to contact me and I can either mail you a copy of it and/or I can email you a copy (I still have about 1,400 copies sitting in my office). I hope that this resource can be used by many so that everyone has a fruitful Lenten season.
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