Pots of fresh red tomato sauce simmered on the old gas stove in a cozy kitchen of a small Lutheran church. Eight students and I from the Catholic college campus ministry gathered around chopping vegetables, sautéing ground beef, boiling noodles, and making fruit salad. We were cooking dinner to share with twelve people experiencing homelessness.
As the shelter guests spent their afternoon working on ways to transition off the street, we prepared to welcome them back to their temporary shelter with a warm cooked meal. An elderly gentleman from the Lutheran church, lovingly called “Colonel Sanders,” rolled up his sleeves and joined our campus ministry team in the preparations, teaching us the secrets of the best part of a pineapple.
In the kitchen, we shared in the same mission—to show the love of Jesus to those on the margins and to provide a moment of dignity as we all break bread together. We didn’t discuss the nuances of our theological differences, but instead prayed together for the guests that would arrive soon.
Two times every year, our Catholic campus ministry would partner with a local Lutheran congregation to host guests experiencing situational homelessness through a program called Interfaith Shelter Network. This organization works with one hundred different faith communities to provide a rotational shelter program where each host houses and feeds shelter participants two weeks at a time.
The churches, temples, and mosques in the area do not have the capacity to create their own emergency shelters or provide transitional services. Instead, they each work together to carry the responsibility for a couple of weeks. This collaboration with Interfaith Shelter Network allows different faith traditions to join together to make a difference in the lives of vulnerable men, women, and children in San Diego.
Pope Francis, in Evangelii gaudium, says “God’s word is unpredictable in its power” (22). Understanding God’s love and purpose for humanity creates opportunities for us to see one another more clearly through the eyes of compassion and hope, and paves the way to work side-by-side with others. After sharing dinner with the shelter guests, our group of college students gathered to reflect on our experience and pray with the gospel. We discussed Scripture passages about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, hospitality, loving those on the margins, and breaking bread together.
In Nostra aetate, The Declaration of the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Pope St. Paul VI shared that “Men expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of the human condition, which today, even as in former times, deeply stir the hearts of men…” This includes questions like: what is the meaning of our life, what are moral goods, what is happiness, and what comes beyond this life. As Catholics, we believe that all people are created in the image of God and are meant to be in relationship. The human heart yearns to experience love. As we encounter people of other faith traditions, love serves as the common thread that binds us together and provides a foundation for many other shared values.
Although our campus ministry effort was only a small part of the rotational shelter, it connected us back to some of the basic concepts shared across so many faith traditions—it remains essential to recognize people’s inherent human dignity and to care for the most vulnerable. Our faithful commitment to charity and justice, along with our shared purpose and compassion for a broken world, united us with many other faith communities. These values, flowing from love, are cornerstones for effective interfaith dialogue, and serve as a bridge for people of faith to cultivate human fraternity with others.
The more we understand our own Faith, and recognize God’s work in our relationship to the world around us, the more lovingly we enter into dialogue with others. We don’t need to wait for an opportunity to serve at a shelter for those experiencing homelessness to meet others with openness and compassion, but our fraternity can flow into our daily encounters. At the Evangelical Catholic, we are continually hearing the witness of God’s work in the world through individuals, many who we have met through our Reach More™ Mission Training, who are engaging with their communities daily in creative ways. They are vibrantly living their personal apostolates, and finding ways to connect with others compelled by their love of Jesus. Fostering compassion and collaboration is something that anyone can do, we just need the open heart and the confidence to engage with others.
The pope’s prayer intention for the month of October is for collaboration between different religious traditions. By understanding our own Faith and living the Gospel, we grow in the values and perspectives necessary for true collaboration with others. As the Body of Christ, our hearts deeply long for unity. Although our brothers and sisters from different religions do not share in the fullness of this understanding, we do share a desire to live in loving relationships with one another. From our experience of faith, we find inspiration to act justly, advocate for the marginalized, and promote peace. Our mutual call to love and serve others becomes a lived reality, contributing to a more just and loving society alongside those across faith traditions.
The Gospel might be what draws us to the margins, but it is there where we find a shared humanity with people from different faith perspectives who hold in common a desire to create peace and to lift up the dignity of our brothers and sisters in need of justice. So, along with Pope Leo XIV, “Let us pray that believers in different religious traditions might work together to defend and promote peace, justice, and human fraternity.”
