Krista asks Father Dave for advice on wanting to serve the poor while also tending to her young children. “Many things change when you become a mom, obviously in normal life, but also in your faith; the way that you worship, pray, and serve,” she begins. “For example, being able to just go to church without needing to contain two small children the whole time to keep them kind of quiet and a little less wiggly. That’s a big difference and shift from someone who used to just love to go to Mass and have that quiet time.”
Krista notes how she use to engage in direct service with the poor in high school and college, and now feels more hesitant to do so. “For example, when I take my daughters Carmen and Lucy to the zoo, there’s someone at a stoplight with a sign [asking for help.] If it were just me before kids, I would consider giving and being present to this person…when I have my girls, I think, I can’t do that, it’s not safe for me to make that choice,” she says. “So I’ll offer up a prayer, but it feels like it should be more.”
She asks Father Dave, “In New York City, you encounter different kinds of people all the time. While you’re not a parent, is there a way you balance those aspects of wanting to serve while also wanting to keep yourself safe, or wanting to keep your loved ones safe?”
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Father Dave responds, “I haven’t had, as you just described, the major life change where you now have to be concerned about these little ones. But what I heard you just say is that you have a desire to serve. So in the same way that your experience at Mass has changed — where it used to be sitting there and being quiet — now because of the gifts that God gave you in two new lives, you now are wrangling little, squirmy kids. While that’s not the way you used to do it, you are still participating in Mass.”
“So I would say, by analogy, if the safety concerns are such that you really couldn’t serve in that way, there are many other ways to serve in environments that are perhaps more controlled. I would imagine you’d want to be the mom who would model this for your children,” he continues, noting potential opportunities to prepare meals for the poor with less direct interaction at this age. “This time of year, particularly, people are often putting together Thanksgiving baskets for families or shopping at the store to donate. You could buy like three extra cans or five extra cans of cranberry sauce and say to Carmen, ‘We’re going to bring it to church for somebody who isn’t as well off as us or struggles with having food.’”
Father Dave affirms Krista’s desire to model service for her kids. “[While it’s] in a different way than you’re used to, what you desire in your faith is not only living it out for yourself, but passing this on to your children; that Jesus teaches us to do this. Pope Leo just put out an [apostolic exhortation] about how we’re supposed to not just pray for the poor, but actually make sure that their needs are met,” he says. It’s a ‘both/and.’ You’re saying ‘At church, when we pray for people, we not only pray for them, but here we are making sandwiches for them.’ That might be one time at Thanksgiving or Christmas, preparing a little basket or putting toys together for some kids that don’t have as much. That small conversation and interaction with a 4-year-old plants a seed and stays with her.”
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Brett offers a suggestion for those looking for more opportunities to volunteer in the community. “Idealist.org lists all the volunteering events that are in your area. You can search how many miles from your house, or what type of service you want to do,” he says. “That’s a suggestion, not just for you, but for anyone that says ‘I would love to serve. Where do I start?’ The church is obviously a good place to start, but branching out from there, [I have used] Idealist.org.”
They revisit Krista’s fears in engaging with someone asking for money on the street, and Brett shares how he serves in those moments. “My wife and I have a big pack of trail mix bags behind both of our driver’s seats,” he says. “It has gone over quite well…You hand those to them, and at least it’s a little snack that’s kind of healthy. Not necessarily for exactly your situation, but for people who are out there thinking about that awkward or challenging situation.”
