This week, Catholic New World special contributor Heather Grennan
talks with Franciscan Father “Gus” Milon.
Learning to Serve - and Learning from - Poor
Fifteen years ago, Franciscan Father Augustin “Gus” Milon, founded
Port Ministries, an outreach ministry serving the poor and homeless
in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood. Each month the organization’s
nearly 6,000 volunteers help provide food, shelter, education,
counseling, legal assistance and health care to those in need.
Milon’s first book, “Wisdom From the Poor,” was published last
month and draws from his work at Port Ministries.
Catholic New World: How did you decide to write a book about your work? When did
you decide to start putting it down on paper?
Father Gus Milon: I started last January, really, and there were a lot of things
I had to say concerning what we’ve gotten from the poor, as a
gift from them. Basically, that’s what it’s about. It’s based
on Scripture, and then we put pictures in from our ministry.
CNW: What does it mean for you that the book is out for the Christmas
season?
FGM: Well, first of all, Christmas is a time for gifts. So it makes
a good gift, but also it’s a gift to us from the poor, from the
Lord, from the spirit working in our midst. We’ve been here 15
years; we do a multi-dimensional outreach to the poor—soup kitchen,
two shelters, home visiting, family center. So we do a lot of
things with the homeless and the poor.
Christmas is a great time for the book to come out because our
ministry has always stressed children as an important source of
wisdom. Most of us, we want to pour all of what we think is wisdom
into kids. We don’t realize that the children, who are the poorest
of the poor, have a wisdom to give to us. Christmas is a time
for children.
CNW: Do you have one message you hope your reader will walk away
with?
FGM: Yes: that all of us are poor. That’s the basic message that
I’ve learned in 15 years here. That everyone has poverty. Some
of us cover it up and some of us wear it on our sleeve. Those
are the homeless and the ones out there on the streets and the
ones living in all these hovels around here.
There’s a basic wisdom in everybody’s poverty if we would only
touch it. That’s why the Christmas Jesus was born poor. If we
see that and can catch it in our spirituality and our lives, then
we begin to realize there’s a wisdom in there for life, which
allows us then not to be adults, but allows us to be children
of God.
There are 24 chapters in the book, and each chapter is headed
by a picture from our ministry, plus two Scriptures and a short
prayer. I call it a prayer book, because I want people to sit
with it in expansive ways of prayer. Read the Scriptures, call
upon the Holy Spirit. The topics are timely, like loneliness and
attitudes.
CNW: How does your work with the materially poor help you understand
and work with spiritual poverty?
FGM: Well, grace builds on nature, so where we are at a human level,
at a natural level, also has something to do with our spirituality.
See, our American dream says “no, you have to be rich. You have
to have more money.” The [materially] poor person has to come
to a point where they see that it’s all right to be poor.
I remember working in our soup kitchen once and there was a woman
there, an elderly woman, and she was dirt poor. She’d come two
or three times a week just to help us in that kitchen. I remember
her one time saying to me, “Father, it’s our right to be poor.”
And I thought, “She knows where she’s at; she knows where she’s
going.”
The spiritual poverty and psychological poverty within us is on
that same kind of “I have to touch it, I have to know it, I have
to own it” level, so then we are able to realize that we live
in a broken human nature and a broken situation, and a broken
world around us.
People are broken, vulnerable and wounded. As you grasp that,
God is ready to work. Not to make you rich, but to give you that
spiritual wealth in your heart. So then life becomes not just
scrounging around trying to get your next meal; life becomes,
“God is providing for me.”
CNW: What kind of feedback have you gotten from readers?
FGM: We’ve gotten good feedback, people saying that it’s deep enough
to take one chapter every night and read it, pray it. People who
have been taking the scriptures that are given in each chapter
have really gotten much from it, they’ve said.
It’s not just a whole bunch of ideas, it’s more flowing like words
from the Lord, really. And then there’s a lot of Franciscanism
in there also.
CNW: Is there anything you didn’t include in the book that you want
told?
FGM: There’s a lot of history of God’s hand in this ministry over
the 15 years. A lot of people have put a lot of energy, time and
effort into ministering here, and not just handing out sandwiches.
Somehow that story has to be told—and how it started, and our
vision for it. But I guess that’s book two.
“Wisdom From the Poor” is available for $12 through Port Ministries,
(773) 778-5955, as well as at Watra Church Goods, 4201 S. Archer
Ave., Chicago,. and Barnes & Noble Booksellers and Borders Books
in Lincoln Park. For more information, visit www.theportministries.org
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