Vocations campers from Mooresville
work with Missionaries of Charity
By Sean Gallagher
Prayer and work. The rhythm between these two activities often characterizes the way that priests and religious live from day to day.
More than 20 boys and girls in the third- through the eighth-grades from St. Thomas More Parish in Mooresville recently experienced this firsthand when they visited the convent of the Missionaries on Charity at 2424 E. 10th St. in Indianapolis.
The children were participating in a parish-sponsored vocations camp in which they learned about priestly and religious vocations.
Many priests and religious came to the parish in Mooresville to speak and pray with the children. They included Father Robert Robeson, archdiocesan director of youth and young adult ministry and director of formation at the Bishop Bruté House of Formation at Marian College in Indianapolis, Benedictine Sisters Catherine Duenne and Cathleen Yungwirth, members of Monastery Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand, Ind., in the Evansville Diocese, and Little Sister of the Poor Lourdes Miranda, who lives and ministers at the St. Augustine Home for the Aged in Indianapolis.
But in order for the campers to learn about the life and ministry of the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, they went to them.
When they arrived, they joined the four sisters who live at the convent in Indianapolis for their daily hour of eucharistic adoration.
At its conclusion, a group of boys and girls accompanied two of the sisters as they visited shut-ins at the nearby New Life Manor, subsidized housing apartments. The campers had made plaques and decorated flowerpots for each of the residents they met there.
St. Philip Neri parishioner Jerome Murphy of Indianapolis was one of the residents they met. Murphy, who is blind, told the boys and girls that, “The Catholic faith kind of taught me that losing my sight was the best thing that ever happened to me because it showed me that God had given me so many other senses that I didn’t know that I had.
“I see people from the inside out, not from the outside in,” Murphy said. “We have a lot of problems when we judge people. We judge them by what they look like on the outside, but we never really get to look at their souls and see what they’re about.”
He encouraged the boys and girls to be open to priestly and religious vocations, telling them that they could make a positive impact upon the faithful that way, especially on people who live in the inner city.
Murphy also told the campers about the ways in which the Missionaries of Charity help him.
“The sisters always come by and work with me and pray with me,” he said. “I talked with them today about my youngest daughter and the problems she’s having, and we prayed together about that. Hopefully, that will help her get on the right path.”
Father Rick Eldred, pastor of St. Thomas More Parish, who will become pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Bedford on July 6, said that the trip to pray and work with the Missionaries of Charity was an important part of the vocations camp.
“I think it’s wonderful because they’re seeing a different aspect of the Church and servants of God than they see in their own home parish,” he said. “And also they are going out to see the people of the community, which, in most cases, are much worse off than our parishioners are.”
Father Eldred was also pleased that the boys and girls were able to see how the Missionaries of Charity minister “with such great joy and peace of God.”
“That’s what it’s about,” he said, “for the children to be able to see the ministries of God, to discern whether they’re being called to follow.”
Allison McQueen, a St. Thomas More parishioner who will be in the fourth-grade in the fall, participated in the camp and said during her visit to the residents of New Life Manor that she was glad she was able to observe and participate in the ministry of the Missionaries of Charity.
“I think it’s really cool because you get to see what other people do, and you’re not just staying at your church all of the time,” she said. “You’re visiting other people, and you know how they serve God and you know how they do all of the things they do.”
Missionary of Charity Sister M. Gaynel, the superior of the order’s convent in Indianapolis, was pleased that so many young people came and shared her and her sisters’ ministry.
“It was really beautiful,” she said. “The children need to see what the needs of this place are and that there are people who are lonely. They want us to visit and have us sit down and talk. For us, it was a beautiful experience with the children, that they came to visit them and ask them questions.”
Beyond her happiness with the children seeing what was for them a new aspect of the ministry of the Church, Sister M. Gaynel was also pleased that they were learning about religious vocations by their visit to her convent.
“We pray for them that they would be open to what God wants them to do,” she said. †
