Detroit, Mich., Nov 18, 2017 / 12:17 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- It’s a Franciscan custom to give food – even if that’s just a simple sandwich – to anyone who comes to the door hungry.
Beloved Capuchin friar and doorkeeper Father Solanus Casey, set to be beatified Nov. 18, knew the custom well, and had a desire to feed anyone who came to the door of St. Bonaventure monastery in Detroit.
“They are hungry; get them some soup and sandwiches,” Fr. Solanus would often tell his fellow friars.
The need became especially great in 1929 at the start of the Great Depression. That’s when Fr. Solanus had the idea to start a soup kitchen down the street from the monastery, where he could send anyone who came to the door looking for food.
“In time the lines grew to more than 2,000 people waiting for their single meal of the day. The friars knew they had to do more,” the Capuchins explain on their soup kitchen website.
To expand their ability to feed and serve people, the friars turned to the Secular Franciscans in their community. Together, they worked to gather, cook and serve meals at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, which is still operating out of multiple locations in Detroit today.
The soup kitchen just down the street from the monastery is a rebuilt version of the original site founded by Fr. Solanus Casey.
Today, Alison Costello is the head chef at the soup kitchen, and she runs a tight ship. Friday, November 17 may have been the day before Fr. Solanus’ beatification, but it was a bustling day at the soup kitchen just like any other.
Coney dogs were on the menu, along with mixed green salad and roasted potatoes. Once Chef Alison got a breather, she sat down with CNA to talk about her philosophy as the head chef.
“This is a holy place, you have to treat it like a church,” Costello told CNA. So there are some rules: Don’t cuss. Dress modestly. Recycle.
A practicing Catholic herself, Costello came onto the staff of the soup kitchen about 17 years ago, “burned out” from the hectic hours of the regular restaurant industry. She was familiar with the Capuchins and saw the soup kitchen chef role as an opportunity to serve those in need.
“I knew I had to boost up the nutrition levels of the food here because most of our folks have a compromised immune system,” she said, “and I have to be culturally sensitive at the same time.”
While the guests at the soup kitchen are a diverse crowd, the majority at this particular location are African Americans, who tend to have similar genetic health problems and nutritional concerns.
“So when I started, I knew I couldn’t’ just serve brown rice, I had to serve white rice as well. Or our salad couldn’t be just iceberg, it turns out that our guests really liked the bitter greens, and so I brought in spring mix salad. Our soups started to be made from scratch, and I make purees, which they had never seen, like I make a roasted red pepper puree,” Costello said. Her puree is very popular with the guests.
She has told other chefs that it doesn’t matter “if people are paying customers or they’re sitting there smelling (badly), they deserve to eat well.”
Talk to almost anyone at the Capuchin soup kitchen, and they’ll tell you the reason they continue to come there, whether as a guest or as a volunteer, is because of the community atmosphere.
Frank Shorter, who was pouring water into vases on Friday, said he originally started volunteering at the soup kitchen as part of a probation program, but he stayed because he got “addicted to helping people” and enjoyed the friendly environment at the kitchen.
Margie Coleman is a longtime volunteer with the soup kitchen, whose husband is a parishioner at Sacred Heart parish in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit.
“I love working with the people, it’s always a good time, I’m having a blast,” Coleman told CNA.
“You never know what you’re going to run into here, and I keep learning new tips and tricks for cooking, and I’m just having a good time. It’s all about service and giving back to the people,” she added. “Fr. Solanus was all about helping his fellow man, and I feel the same way.”
Margie’s husband Mark often works right alongside her in the kitchen. He said Fr. Solanus’ example teaches us that you don’t have to be academically smart to make a difference in the world.
“I got the sense that he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the closet,” because he struggled with seminary classes, Mark said. “But he actually was a much more powerful light, once you kind of dug into him, which I think is a real testament to him as an individual. Just because you’re not the brightest person in the world doesn’t mean you can’t have a wonderful impact on the world.”
Today, the Capuchin soup kitchen not only serves food, it also provides showers to those who need them, as well as social services. It is connected to a Capuchin-run urban farm, which provides much of the produce for the kitchen.
“People should come experience it for themselves,” Costello said, “and what a community this is and what a witness the friars are. I have enjoyed every day…that I’ve been here, the camaraderie, the family, we have our family here,” she said, thinking of guests or volunteers that they’ve grown close to over the years.
Costello added that she was “honored” to follow in Fr. Solanus’ footsteps at the kitchen. The quality she most admires in the friar’s legacy is his humility.
“I think Solanus would want people to know you can be an extraordinary person by doing ordinary things,” she said.
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OCP’s cover art is usually lame, but that’s the least of their problems.
Should have used fr Martin or Sr semone.. OCP, the wagon wheel disaster for popcorn cafeteria catholicism..
Why apologise for a made up being by a delusional conman like Smith? A cult if there ever was one.
Me thinkest that thou hast misread the article. The apology is made to the Catholic readership BECAUSE of the reasons you state.
But, now that we’re on the subject, it’s fascinating how two very similar religious “types” diverge poles apart from the historically real Incarnation…Mormonism denies the possibility of miracles (all existence is only natural, anthropomorphic, and evolutionary, even God!), while Islam holds that all existence comes miraculously from a totally inscrutable Allah (to affirm even secondary “laws of nature” is to admit an autonomy outside of the only autonomy who is God—and this assertion is blasphemy!).
But, on so many other counts cultic Mormonism and Islam are almost replicas of each other…and almost inevitable to the human imagination—in the absence of Christian witness to the historical Incarnation of Jesus Christ as fully human and fully divine, not a hybrid but both natures fully in one Person. Now, about the similarities:
“Islam attributes a restored text—the Qur’an—to messages received by Mohammed directly from the Angel Gabriel beginning in 610 A.D. The founding prophet of Mormonism is believed to have been visited by the Angel Moroni, instead, beginning in 1823. The prophet Joseph Smith carries an exactly transcribed and untouchable text delivered on hidden tablets of gold. Islam’s untouchable Arabic script (Q 13:37, 42:5, 46:13) is duplicated for Mohammed from an identical text in heaven. Both religions (and many others) have a supplemental set of writings, respectively the Book of Mormon and the Muslim Hadith. Both religious leaders experienced initial persecution, the mystic Joseph Smith in Missouri and Illinois and Mohammed at Mecca. Both migrated to a selected new base of operations, Joseph Smith west to Salt Lake and Mohammed north to Medina. Islam is preached first to the tribes of Arabia, while Mormonism initially saw its mission among the indigenous tribes of North America. Mormons have believed that the American Indians are migrant descendants from the Israelite patriarch Lehi arriving via Arabia to the New World in 590. B.C., but do not reject possibly Asiatic origins [….] Mormonism, like Islam, claims to be a restoration rather than a new religion, and claims an option for ongoing revelation. Mormonism would restore a corrupted Christianity while Islam would restore the earlier and corrupted faith of Abraham [Israelite worship of the Golden Calf, and Christian “polytheism” of the Triune One] from the very beginning of the Judeo-Christian narrative. Mormon apologists refer to a universal apostasy by a Church extinguished under Diocletian and ravaged by later strife among Protestants. Islam is scandalized by early Byzantine Christian theological disputes of about the same period” (extract from Beaulieu, “Beyond Secularism and Jihad: A Triangular Inquiry into the Mosque, the Manger & Modernity,” University Press of America, 2012, Chapter 2).
SUMMARY: Probably not a bad idea to apologize for witlessly using the image of Moroni on the cover of a Catholic publication.