"Wonder Woman" is the moniker that pastor Fr. Eric Knapp, SJ, gives to Rena Schroeder, whose volunteer service to St. Francis Xavier Church in Cincinnati knows no bounds.
Places for lay volunteers abound in the Jesuit world
By Julie Bourbon
The present moment is a moment of grace. As lay people continue to grow in their service to the world, the Society of Jesus will find opportunities for cooperation with them reaching far beyond our present experience. We will be stretched in our creativity and energy to serve them in their ministry. We will be called upon to take a supportive role as they become more responsible for our own apostolates. We will be challenged to live out more fully our identity as "men for and with others."
—General Congregation 34
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"Wonder Woman" is the moniker that pastor Fr. Eric Knapp, SJ, gives to Rena Schroeder, whose volunteer service to St. Francis Xavier Church in Cincinnati knows no bounds. |
If an army travels on its stomach, then the Society of Jesus may well run on its volunteers. In the United States, the history of Jesuit-lay collaboration is a particularly rich one, beautifully articulated in the documents of the 34th general congregation. In a month of Sundays, one could not capture the depth and breadth of that partnership, from the year-long commitment of recent college graduates joining the Jesuit Volunteer Corps to the person who helps set the altar for morning Mass.
It is the experience of those volunteers-the men and women who co-labor in the fields without worldly compensation-that engages us.
"She's Wonder Woman," says Fr. Eric Knapp, SJ, pastor of St. Francis Xavier Church in Cincinnati. "She really exhibits this selfless sense of being a person for others."
She is Rena Schroeder, a parishioner for the last ten years, but not just any parishioner. Now in her 70s, Schroeder's badge reads "Wedding Sacristan," but her duties are far broader than walking nervous brides through Friday-night rehearsals and ceremonies the next morning. On Sundays she picks up the donuts (at 6:30 A.M.), sets the altar, takes the collection, distributes Communion, tidies the church, and locks it up. During the week, Schroeder is busy bringing communion to several area hospitals and volunteering for the Babies Milk Fund.
"I get a lot of satisfaction out of it, and I thank God that I can do all these things and help out," she says. Previously a parishioner at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains, Schroeder began attending St. Xavier after her husband died ten years ago. It was a Jesuit who came to minister to him as he was dying, and Schroeder has never forgotten it.
Says Knapp, "She has the energy of a hummingbird."
Schroeder is not alone in finding that the senior years can be a boom time for service to church and community. The Ignatian Volunteer Corps (IVC), headquartered in Baltimore, combines volunteer service with spiritual formation in thirteen chapters nationwide. It draws on the wealth of experience, knowledge, compassion, and time that "retired" folks have to give. Of the more than 250 volunteers at present, many are well beyond their initial one-year commitment to service and spiritual direction. Some come to IVC having known the Jesuits for years; others are new to the particulars of Ignatian spirituality, though not to the underlying concept of being men and women for others.
Jim Wallace worked as a college counselor at Our Lady of Tepeyac High School in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. He and Marge McDonald (who appears on the cover) are among hundreds of retirees who have put their life skills and experiences to the service of the Ignatian Volunteer Corps. |
"It's been great for me to go through the process," says John Howard, whose IVC assignment is with the Ignatian Spirituality Project, which provides spiritual counsel to the homeless in Chicago. Formerly in pharmaceutical marketing, Howard serves in an administrative role as the Spirituality Project expands to nine cities and beyond. He hopes to do more hands-on volunteering and less organizing as a staff member is hired to take his place. "I've probably learned as much in the last 3 years as I did in the first 50."
The Chicago IVC, with 44 volunteers, is one of the biggest in the country. Regional director George Sullivan describes a typical volunteer as someone with "a certain spirit of generosity, committed to their faith and to seeing God in all things." For them, that might entail pushing a wheelchair, helping to write a college essay, or simply sitting beside the bed of a dying hospital patient.
"Our volunteers are living out their faith," says Josie Pirano, regional director of IVC in San Diego, where fourteen people volunteer their time at both Catholic and secular agencies. In addition to their service work, two days a week minimum, they meet privately with a spiritual reflector and as a group to talk about their experiences. This year's group reflection focus was Ignatian Spirituality. "It spoke to them wherever they were on their journey," says Pirano.
Carol Zellner's journey has taken her from volunteer to staffer who works with volunteers, including an IVCer. She serves at Sts. Peter and Paul Church in inner-city Detroit, where their warming center offers the Ignatian ministry of hospitality and formation to the city's homeless. Because of the sensitive nature of the center's work-many guests are drug addicts or have experienced significant sexual abuse-volunteers do a lot of behind-the-scenes work (sorting socks, preparing mailings) rather than interacting directly with guests.
"It takes formation for people to be ready to cross those cultural barriers," says Zellner, an RN before a mid-life career switch led her to get an advanced degree in theology. Volunteers, many of whom also serve on the parish council, might eventually hand out hygiene items to female guests, for instance, experiencing what Zellner calls "the mutuality of being neighbor to each other."
Lauren McGill, a Sts. Peter and Paul parishioner since 1990, serves on the parish council with her husband (they met during the sign of peace); she is also a lector and works on the finance committee for the Warming Center as well as serving the center's women's group once a month. A lawyer and public-school graduate who wandered into the parish one day in the late 1980s, she says something about the church just kept pulling her back downtown from her home in the suburbs. "There was a need for me," she says. "It just kind of grew from there."
Based on a commitment to Ignatian spirituality and ministry, the Ignatian Associates of the Wisconsin Province formed in 1991 in Milwaukee as an intentional community. Making promises for simplicity of life, fidelity to the Gospel and each other as companions, and apostolic availability, the original group of 11 has grown to include three communities—Omaha, Milwaukee, and the Twin Cities—with 66 promised associates. Twenty-one new members made their first promises in August, and an unrelated group recently formed at Spring Hill College in Mobile. "We promise fidelity and to walk with the Jesuits," says Joan Shrout, an associate since 1998 when her spiritual director, a Jesuit priest, invited her to join the group; she's now the province coordinator for the program. "We pretty much think of it as a lifetime commitment." Associates go through a two-year formation process: in the first year, they do the Spiritual Exercises in daily life, while the second year focuses more on Jesuit history. Members volunteer in Jesuit ministries, including Casa Romero Renewal Center in Milwaukee, Jesuit middle schools in Milwaukee and Omaha, and Cristo Rey Jesuit High in Minneapolis. The group commits to regular prayer, spiritual reflection, retreats, and the daily examination of conscience. Shrout is hopeful that non-Jesuits will continue to be included in the conversation about partnership at General Congregation 35 and beyond. In the meantime, the Ignatian Associates carry on their important work at home. "My own understanding of missioning," says Shrout, "is it's not so much going to Africa as around the block." |
Parishes, of course, are a rich source of volunteers and volunteer opportunities. Holy Trinity in Washington, D.C., on the edge of Georgetown's campus, has a reputation for social engagement. The parish gives 10 percent of its collection-nearly $300,000 last year-to the poor. A committee of parishioners visits sites that apply for grant money out of that fund. Among the 30 current fund recipients are SOME (So Others Might Eat), the Washington Jesuit Academy, and the Horace McKenna Center at St. Aloysius Gonzaga parish across town.
Hot and tired, Phoung Lan Nguyen was among a group of Regis University (Denver) students who volunteered their spring break to folks in need in Gulfport, Mississippi. (Photo by Teresa Sands) |
Parishioners trained in spiritual direction volunteer their time through the Jesuit Center for Spirituality, and an adult faith formation and education program covers such topics as Ignatian spirituality and social justice, with an emphasis on prayer leading to service or contemplative action.
"We think about the reflection component of our service, so faith informs action and action informs faith," says Fr. Jim Shea, SJ, pastor. "When we ask people why they come (to Holy Trinity), they come for the preaching, they come for worship, they come for community, and they come for the commitment to social action."
While a more affluent parish like Holy Trinity can focus much of its volunteer activities outward, St. Mary of the Angels Church in Roxbury, a Boston suburb, relies on volunteers to serve not only as janitors but as pastor, too. A diocesan church that just celebrated its centennial, it has been staffed by Jesuits since 1993. Scholastics and young priests from Weston Jesuit School of Theology and Boston College regularly help out, and Fr. David Gill, SJ, pastor since 2003, has had to cut his teaching duties as a Classics professor at Boston College to half-time in order to lead the parish.
"There was a tradition built up over the years of different groups serving the parish," says Gill. "We don't have a youth minister, we don't have a director of religious education, so people just do it. People pick up the ball." The church has had a Jesuit Volunteer Corps member assigned there for the last five years, and parishioners have organized themselves into teams, covering everything from liturgy planning to custodial duties and beautification of the grounds.
"It's a very special place. We have everyone from janitors to judges, judges to janitors here," says Alvin Shiggs, co-chair of the parish pastoral council and a parishioner for 30 years, even prior to his 1990 conversion to Catholicism. The congregation, an eclectic mix of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, African-Americans, Caucasians, even a small community of Laotians, is not rich by any means, yet their commitment to the community is: food pantry, HIV/AIDS education, hunger walks, fair trade coffee sales. Their outreach, says Shiggs, is the "greatest manifestation" of their faith.
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The Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC), which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, boasts more than 12,000 former JVs and more than a handful of second-generation volunteers. Their motto: "Ruined for life." For the 2007–08 JVC year, there are 280 volunteers in the United States for a year, while 49 more are with Jesuit Volunteers International, which requires a two-year commitment at locales in one of eight countries. All serve the poor directly and work toward structural change while upholding JVC's four values: social justice, spirituality, simple lifestyle, and community. JVC is in every major urban area and some rural areas, including Alaska, Montana, and Indian reservations. About half of JVs attended a Jesuit college or university. "A typical JV comes from a liberal arts background and was active in social justice or campus ministry," says Maggie Conley, project manager for national JVC activities. But JVC is actively trying to broaden its volunteer base and appeal to more nontypical volunteers, such as engineers or business managers. While those students may still pursue careers in business or engineering, says Conley, "They say, 'I'm going to do it differently than if I hadn't done JVC.' " |
That manifestation of faith often starts very young. Jesuit colleges, universities, and high schools traditionally engage students-and often parents, faculty, and alumni-in volunteer work. "We make it a point to call it Christian Service," says Ryan Heffernan, director of campus ministry at St. Peter's Prep in Jersey City.
The reason? Christian service means all our lives are linked, says Heffernan, and that our responsibilities to each other don't stop when the volunteering is done. "We examine the injustices that face the people they help," he says, and ask, "What can they do beyond? How can they change their daily lives?"
Prep students took part in seven immersion trips this summer, from local urban environments to rural Appalachia. The school requires 10, 15 and 60 hours, respectively, of service from freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. There is no requirement for seniors, although over twenty members of this year's class traveled to New Orleans in August for a week of house building and service to the city's homeless on their own initiative.
Heffernan says the school is going to expand its service opportunities to include families or perhaps father-son trips. "In getting students encouraged about Christian service, it spreads," he says.
Families of students at Gonzaga Prep in Spokane, Washington, have participated in something called the Fair Share Program since 1992. Part of the school's commitment to sliding-scale tuition, it was created to replace the work-study program that provided scholarships to students in exchange for custodial work. It was plainly evident on campus who was receiving financial aid and who wasn't.
"There was always a large class difference," says Wendy Griffin, special events coordinator. "There was just a level of justice that the administration felt needed to be addressed."
Fair Share means that every student's family is expected to give back 20 hours of service to the school; families with multiple students give 30. This is separate from the community service required of all students before graduation. " Regardless of your ability to pay, you do your fair share," says Griffin. The result? One Saturday this summer, 120 people showed up to remove rocks from the recently renovated sports field. Another weekend, families washed windows, weeded the grounds, and hosed down the bleachers. "The camaraderie that happens during a volunteer event is very important," says Griffin, who notes that some parents keep coming back even after their children graduate.
That's certainly the case at the art museum at Jesuit College Prep in Dallas. Lynn Adamic, the museum's director, is a paid staffer, but on-campus volunteers are a critical component of the museum, which houses 475 pieces, including some by Gorman and Dali.
"The museum wouldn't function without them," says Adamic. The school's art league has more than 150 members who give tours and help to clean and hang pieces. "I tell my volunteers all the time we are so blessed to have them," she says.
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All of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities work to cultivate a sense of service in students and staff. For instance, Seattle University's Center for Service and Community Engagement, begun in 2004, engages with campus and community partners to provide its students (above) with many service and justice work opportunities, whether for class credit or simply as an extension of Ignatian spirituality. "Students need direct experience working with people who are suffering to deepen their education," says center director Kent Koth, paraphrasing Jesuit superior general Peter-Hans Kolvenbach. The time they spend reflecting on their service work, Koth says, will make students "more effective leaders." The university offers more than 160 courses with a service component, ranging from psychology classes that require traditional one-on-one community outreach to a finance course in which students assess the impact of building a light rail system in a low-income community. More than 2,700 students signed up for these classes last year. The center coordinates with the 40 or 50 community organizations—homeless shelters, AIDS groups, a juvenile detention center—within a mile of the university to make the connections between those who need help and the students, faculty, and staff who want to give it. The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C., hosted a Commitment to Justice conference two years ago at John Carroll University in Ohio. Representatives from many of the country's Jesuit colleges and universities came together to promote the adoption of pedagogical, curricular, and administrative innovations for a deepening commitment to justice in Jesuit institutions of higher education. |
Cultivating student volunteers increasingly produces graduates who return to give back to their alma mater. At Marquette University High, alums have been coming back since the Alumni Service Corps program was founded in 1993. They live in community for one year while teaching, tutoring, coaching, moderating clubs, and chaperoning dances, among other things. The school averages four or five volunteers per year; three times that number typically apply.
"They miss the religious community that they had in high school and they want to reconnect with that," surmises Fr. John Belmonte, SJ, in explaining the popularity of the Alumni Service Corps.
The program started in 1992 in the Missouri Province, which presently has thirteen volunteers at its schools in Denver, Kansas City, and St. Louis. Sean Agniel, the provincial's assistant for social ministry, is the new coordinator for the Alumni Service Corps and is himself a double alum-of St. Louis University High and of the service corps.
"You meet a lot of volunteers at a crossroad in their lives. That was the case for me," says Agniel, who volunteered at Rockhurst High in Kansas City and ended up teaching there for several years upon realizing that he didn't really want to go to law school after all. The volunteer year, he says, was "an invitation to listen more closely to God and to where he was calling me."
Those who are called to serve as volunteers at Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota find themselves in a quiet, starkly beautiful place where the voice of God mingles with duties: teaching classes, driving school buses, and leading Girl Scout troops.
"Though I was in a place that was not where I was from, where people were different from me, I was able to grow into the person God wants me to be," says Shawn Storr, who spent six years at Red Cloud, the first three as a volunteer. He met and married his wife Stephanie, another former volunteer, at the school.
A Jesuit at Notre Dame first introduced Storr to Ignatian spirituality, and it was at a volunteer fair that he first heard of Red Cloud. The Storrs recently moved back to South Bend, and when asked what lesson he had taken most to heart after his years working with the Jesuits, Storr does not hesitate. "The Ignatian principle of magis," he says. "The desire to always strive toward the greater, to do more. Every time I look at a problem or task now, I'm asking myself, `How can it be done better next time?' "
Ronnie Briggs of New Orleans also asks himself that question. Whether fixing the plumbing at the Good Shepherd Nativity School, which survived Hurricane Katrina, or serving as the chairman of the New Orleans Province's ongoing capital campaign, the retired oil services executive is always doing something for the Jesuits. " I'm retired and I'm working my way to heaven," jokes the man who was raised by nuns after his parents died when he was a teenager. Briggs's son graduated from Jesuit High in New Orleans, and Briggs has been a regular at Manresa House of Retreats for 22 years. "That faith background is in me, and the Jesuits helped me realize that I have to give back. It's all about what we're called to do."
Rena Schroeder, St. Francis Xavier Church's Wonder Woman, would agree, but first you'd have to slow her down long enough to chat. She's presently planning a volunteer appreciation dinner for 150 guests, of which she is presumably one.
"I don't want to be praised for that because I want to do it," she says, brushing off any thought that she is being feted along with the others. "That's what I do." 
Julie Bourbon graduated from Loyola University New Orleans with a bachelor's in English and a master's in pastoral studies. She is the editor of National Jesuit News in Washington, D.C.