After months of being quarantined at the motherhouse through the spring and summer, we have ventured into familiar territory but in an unfamiliar way. Familiar territory, because we are a presence in downtown Steubenville again (read more here). Unfamiliar, because we don’t have our central location anymore where people knew where to find the sisters and where people felt welcomed and at home (read more about Samaritan House closing).
I feel, in a sense, homeless—if home is a building, a sanctuary, and a safe haven—at least downtown. I can relate more to many of our friends and former clients who roam the streets. One of the reasons people felt so at home in our former location was that they encountered the love of Christ there and felt loved and accepted. This is because we made a home for them in our hearts and brought them to the heart of Jesus. We don’t need a building in order to do this.
Now we are prayerfully roaming the streets, being seen and making ourselves available to people. There is a freedom (albeit a little insecurity) in being a wandering presence in the streets of downtown, but I have felt privileged to go out to our people to meet them in their stomping grounds rather than having them come to us. We had created a sense of family with the local population at our store, and that sense of belonging to the same family, our brothers and sisters in Christ, still continues.
One time, I was walking around the blocks praying the rosary. I passed a small square park and one of our former clients, who is a regular presence on the streets, beckoned me over to inform me that his best friend (also a former client to whom we used to give a weekly outfit because of his homelessness) had died.
After he told me the details of his loss, he put his hands together in the gesture indicating for me to pray for his deceased friend. We made a triangle: he, myself, and a buddy of his. They held hands, bowed their heads, closed their eyes, and shed tears as I prayed aloud for the repose of the soul of Harry* as well as for the two of them in their personal loss. It was a beautiful sacred moment of continuing a sense of community. The buddy told me he was currently homeless. I felt helpless, as now I didn’t have access to amenities since I had no building filled with resources as we’ve had in the past. But the Lord saw to it that I could still be used as an instrument of His providence through the goodness and generosity of others.
Shortly after this encounter, I was at the Urban Mission pantry drive-thru. Every Wednesday, we attempt to make the grocery pick-up experience more personable for the people who come, by greeting them and starting conversations as they wait in the line. One older woman told me she and her friends made mats for the homeless, and she asked me where she could bring them. Because they didn’t have church services anymore, due to COVID, she and her church friends used their time to crochet sleeping mats out of plastic shopping bags for the homeless and foot mats for the soldiers!
I went with her to the homeless shelter and, as we unloaded, I was so edified by the beauty, thoughtfulness, love, and care that these women put into making things for people they didn’t even know. I felt privileged to have met her and to have witnessed this act of kindness. I asked her for a mat to give to a homeless man. I put the mat in our car and drove around, asking the Holy Spirit to guide and direct me to find that man again. I didn’t drive long before I spotted him and his friend, with whom I had prayed earlier. I got out of the car and brought the mat over to him. His eyes lit up, he smiled, and he received it with gratitude.
I thanked the Lord for directing my day. I feel privileged to be among those who do little things with great love and to be used in continuing to develop a sense of family in our local area.
*Name changed for anonymity
-Sr. Joan Paule Portenlanger, T.O.R.
