I belong to Saint Joseph the Worker Parish, a name chosen for us when several parishes were combined. My church is Annunciation, which can easily be seen as one more magnificent jewel in the crown that is the Historical District. Indeed it is a structure that can fill one with awe anytime you are privileged to enter it. Yet it is something more. Our community has more than its share of the poor and the meek. Who could not hear the cadence of the Beatitudes as one wearily walks along West Edwin Street!

Here’s some of what St. Joseph the Worker and the Parish’s Social Justice Committee do to minister to our community. We support a Food Pantry. Located in a building that once was a school, our pantry distributes non-perishable items on Wednesday afternoons. For some time now supplies have been thinning out; recipients, however, are growing in number. We used to put on a holiday dinner in the Parish Center on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. In a burst of practicality someone noticed that a number of organizations provided meals that week.(It’s true that most of us—faith-based community included—think of the unlucky and unloved about two weeks out of the year. Aside from that they’re on their own.) Last year it was moved to Valentine’s Day.

The parish is gearing up to play a part in Family Promise, a program designed to aid homeless families. Thirteen churches in the area will be responsible for providing overnight shelter. A number of us helped out in the United Campus Ministry effort to bring in Father John Dean, a peace activist and author, to speak at both Lycoming and Penn Colleges. Both the power of his story and the people who turned out made the evening exhilarating.

All these efforts seem modest in both aim and scope. When I was at Notre Dame, our Campus Ministry joined in a nationwide effort and organized boycotts of non-union grapes and lettuce to support the United Farm Workers. In Washington, DC, I see people from Pax Christi and the Catholic Worker Movement at anti-war marches. Yet we must bloom where we are planted—or, in the words of John Kennedy, “Here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”