Ana Salazar says that the faith and community that they are living out is being cultivated into love poured into the streets of the city, particularly with people who endure homelessness and poverty in all its forms.<\/p>\n
\u201c(They) have been experiencing the poverty of loneliness,\u201d Salazar said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod didn\u2019t give us his love to be an insular kind of love. It\u2019s meant to be continued to be poured out. And so simultaneously we\u2019re forming our missionaries and we\u2019re giving them an opportunity to go out and to build relationships with those who have not been experiencing friendship or good relationships in the past, and treating this poverty with loneliness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christ in the City is empowering these young adults not only to support Philadelphia\u2019s unhoused and under-resourced people, but also to build a life in their own intentionally Catholic community that fosters their Catholic faith and forms them as Christian disciples.<\/p>\n
Salazar has been part of Christ in the City for many years, though only in Philadelphia for a few months in her new role. She spent a few months last summer here as well while serving in Christ in the City\u2019s other hub city of Denver.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up alongside the missionaries there, going to lunches in the parks, and getting to know the missionaries and the staff,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just this juxtaposition between the radical and the simple. That just strikes you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most visible sign of Christ in the City\u2019s presence happens in a similar setting every Wednesday at noon, when they descend upon the lawn near the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Center City and unleash brotherly love and sisterly affection in Christ through their Lunch in the Park outreach program.<\/p>\n
They spend an hour serving lunch to those enduring physical hunger, which often becomes a launch point for connection and much longer time spent getting to know people, listening to their vulnerabilities, and letting God work through them to love where it\u2019s needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou go to lunch in the park and you see missionaries pulling out guitars and singing with people. You see them giving haircuts to our friends, or you see them having little dance parties, or you see them singing or cracking the most random jokes,\u201d Salazar said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re a passerby, you\u2019d say, \u2018What are you doing here? What are you solving?\u2019 And as soon as you invite people into that, they see, we\u2019re just all people. We\u2019re hanging out. We\u2019re just enjoying the fact that we\u2019re friends, we\u2019re called to be friends. We\u2019re called to be in this community.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Archbishop Nelson J. P\u00e9rez and missionaries from Christ in the City gather outside the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul on Sept. 9 before the organization\u2019s weekly Lunch in the Park outreach.<\/p>\n
Both Salazar and Christian Narin, who works in personal formation with the Christ in the City team, realize that this form of ministry doesn\u2019t solve the quantifiable temporal poverty they face. But they recognize that the unquantifiable need for connection and hope can loom even larger for people in the long run.<\/p>\n
Narin said someone told him that Christ in the City\u2019s outreach is \u201cthe most inefficient program when it comes to numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we do is just to go to the streets, to love people, to talk,\u201d he said. \u201dSometimes the missionaries will be (there) two hours with the same person. We are not counting numbers or how many people we help to get housing or get resources. We help people just to feel loved, and we try to help to restore their dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The missionaries Salazar and Narin help lead come from different backgrounds and locations, as far away as Colorado, Maine and Texas as well as the Philadelphia area. They are giving one or two years of their lives to the mission. Some are cradle Catholics, and some are recent converts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re so unified in the fact that the Lord in some providential way has led them here. And so talking with the missionaries, they\u2019re all just assured in the fact that they\u2019re meant to be here. And they\u2019re excited to learn to see the why,\u201d Salazar said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe call the community the school of love. Here are 20 missionaries from all these different walks of life. And they\u2019re praying together, they\u2019re learning together, they\u2019re living together and they\u2019re experiencing new things together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salazar recognizes that Christ in the City\u2019s mission to be present to the unloved responds to the Church\u2019s call for missionary discipleship by forming young people on fire for their mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single person that steps in front of us,\u201d Salazar said, \u201cis an opportunity to love.\u201d<\/p>\n