Oct 18, 2018
Human Development Fund Application
Missionaries of the Precious Blood, Kansas City Province
Fr. Joseph Uecker, C.PP.S., HDF Committee Chairperson
Dear Fr. Joseph,
Just wanted to update you on how we used the funds from the grant your congregation so generously gave us.
You will remember that we asked for funds for the following: obtaining IDs including IDs and birth certificates; help with rent and utilities when other agencies no longer have funds; gas and maintenance for a van which provides transportation for clients; and bus tickets to return home. I am pleased to report the following:
- We helped 105 people get birth certificates and IDs;
- We facilitated 102 people in securing safe housing;
- We assisted 14 people to return home to their support system;
- We provided transportation — picking someone up every fifteen minutes four days a week; and
- We arranged rides for 3,500 people so they could access essential services.
We were able to achieve these results because we have a small but dedicated staff and a cadre of over 200 volunteers. And, of course, we have the support of people like you who help us reach our goals each day. Thanks for helping Carol, Jason and Ed and the many others who come to us each day wanting a hand up not a handout.
We are grateful for your support. Knowing you care is truly encouraging for us.
Many blessings on your continued ministries.
Sincerely,
Sister Vickie Perkins, Executive Director
Leavenworth Interfaith Community of Hope
Oct 17, 2018
by Gabino Zavala, Justice and Peace Director
In her article “I’m Precious Blood, and I Vote!” in the October 2018 issue of the New Wine Press, Companion Maureen Lahiff shares her experience with the voting process. What I find most important in her story is that she takes the responsibility of voting seriously. She studies the issues, brings her faith and Precious Blood Spirituality into the process. And she votes!
The election season is upon us. I hope all of us will take this responsibility and privilege seriously. Study the candidates and all of the issues. Spend some time in prayer as you ponder your decision. Vote your conscience that has been formed by the Gospel, Catholic Social Teaching and Precious Blood Spirituality. Then Vote.
As we prepare to vote let us pray also for all those men and women who are presently elected to serve us in government. Let us pray for those women and men who will be elected in November.
I offer you the following prayer from Sister Joan Chittister:
Prayer for Our Government and Political Leaders
Give us, O God, leaders whose hearts are large enough to match the breadth of our own souls and give us souls strong enough to follow leaders of vision and wisdom.
In a leader, let us seek more than development for ourselves — though development we hope for — more than security for our own land — though security we need — more than satisfaction for our wants — though many things we desire.
Give us the hearts to look to the leader who will work with other leaders to bring safety to the whole world.
Give us leaders who lead this nation to virtue without seeking to impose our kind of virtue on the virtue of others.
Give us a government that provides for the advancement of this country without taking resources from others to achieve it.
Give us insight enough ourselves to choose as leaders those who can tell strength from power, growth from greed, leadership from dominance, and real greatness from the trappings of grandiosity.
We trust you, Great God, to open our hearts to learn from those to whom you speak in different tongues and to respect the life and words of those to whom you entrusted the good of other parts of this globe.
We beg you, Great God, give us the vision as a people to know where global leadership truly lies, to pursue it diligently, to require it to protect human rights for everyone everywhere.
We ask these things, Great God, with minds open to your word and hearts that trust in your eternal care.
Oct 16, 2018
“Let us allow the plant to set its own roots and then we shall reap the fruits. Sometimes the inclination will be in harmony with the vocation, and other times the vocation does not agree with the inclination. You know that vocations demand courage and firmness. Vocations come from God.” These words of St. Gaspar ring true with regard to our latest Inquirers to the Missionaries of the Precious Blood in the Vietnam Mission. Discerning the inclination towards a vocation with our Congregation does demand courage and firmness.
On October 15-19 a group of 8 men joined our Co-Vocation Directors, Hao Pham and Hoa Vu in a discernment retreat led by Fr. Nhan Bui at Foyer De Charite’s Retreat Center in Saigon. This group of men are older vocations to religious life and some of them are coming to us from having been with previous religious communities or diocesan programs. We in the Vietnam Mission believe that vocations do come from God and are eager to hear their life journeys. We are currently considering accepting older vocations into our formation program in order to grow our mission with membership into the future.
Please pray for Phu Nguyen, Tuyen Tran, Luyen Doan, Thanh Nguyen, Tuan Nguyen, Lan Vu, Hai Hoang and Hieu Nguyen. These eight men are discerning their vocations along with two others, Manh Nguyen and Fr. Tuan Tran whom Fr. Nhan also gave a shorter discernment retreat earlier this month. Let us hope and pray that one day these ten Inquirers can advance into our Initial Formation Program.
Oct 14, 2018
by Gabino Zavala, Justice and Peace Director
By J. Puig Reixach / http://www.puigreixach.net/ [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
Oscar Romero, who will become the first canonized Salvadoran saint, was murdered while celebrating Mass in a hospital chapel on March 24, 1980 a day after telling the army, made up mostly of peasants, that they were killing their own people. He told them, “No soldier is obligated to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God.”
He was shot through the heart while celebrating mass by gunmen linked to the right-wing death squads terrorizing the country. He had just said, “One must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and those who fend off danger, will lose their lives.”
Romero was outspoken against the military oppression of the Salvadoran people during the bloody civil war and critical of the involvement of the United States in this conflict. Pope John Paul II said, “He gave his life for the Church and the people of his beloved country.”
There is much about Oscar Romero that makes him a Saint for our times. For those of us who are Missionaries of the Precious Blood, his life of love, and service to his people challenges us to live out our charism to the marginalized through the blood of Christ in our lives every day. In his daily life he demonstrated how to be a church of and for the poor. Oscar Romero heard the cry of the poor and the cry of the blood shed by his people. And thus, he became the defender of the poor and a voice for the voiceless.
Romero used the spoken and written word to speak truth to his people. He was one of the better quoted clerics of his time. Just about every one of his public appearances as archbishop was captured not only by local television and radio, but internationally as well, He also wrote a weekly column in his diocesan newspaper. Many of his sermons and talks continue to be shared among his people. They are words that inspire, nourish, instruct, compel and encourage us to be prophetic and live out our faith.
Let us reflect on his message in his own words:
How I would like to engrave this idea
on each one’s heart;
Christianity is not a collection of truths to be believed,
of laws to be obeyed,
of prohibitions.
That makes it very distasteful.
Christianity is a person,
one who loved so much,
one who calls for our love.
Christianity is Christ.
-November 6, 1977
How beautiful will be the day
when all the baptized understand
that their work, their job
is priestly work,
that just as I celebrate mass at the altar,
so each carpenter celebrates Mass at his workbench,
and each metal worker,
each professional,
each doctor with a scalpel,
the market worker at her stand,
is performing a priestly office!
How many cabdrivers, I know, listen to this message
there in their cabs,
you are a priest at the wheel, my friend,
if you work with honesty,
consecrating that taxi of yours to God,
becoming a message of peace and love
to the passengers who ride in your cab.
-November 20, 1977
Even when they call us mad,
when they call us subversives and communists
and all of the epithets they put on us,
we know that we only preach
the subversive witness of the Beatitudes,
which have turned everything upside down
to proclaim blessed are the poor,
blessed the thirsting for justice,
blessed the suffering.
May 11, 1978
The violence we preach is not
the violence of the sword,
the violence of hatred.
it is the violence of love,
of brotherhood,
the violence that wills to beat weapons
into sickles for work.
-November 27, 1977
As Missionaries of the Precious Blood we believe that all blood is precious. Understanding this, the blood of Christ calls us to be with the marginalized, to be with God’s poor, to speak for the voiceless. This was the life of Oscar Romero. He saw the suffering of his people and was moved to raise his voice on their behalf. He saw the shedding of the blood of his people and he was compelled to walk with them in their way of the cross. Saint Oscar Romero is indeed a saint for our times. He is a saint for the Missionaries of the Precious Blood.
Human Development Fund Application
