Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 16, 1993 TAG: 9305140014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Those who labor there often don't see the results of their efforts, yet they have faith that they have made a difference. They own nothing but don't try to escape their poverty. Theirs is a vocation not of the hands, but of the heart.
They pray.
They pray for the poor they see walking to the RAM House day shelter for the homeless each day; for starving children in Somalia; for a man about to undergo surgery in a Roanoke Valley hospital; for hundreds, perhaps millions of unnamed, unknown people.
For the three residents of the old two-story brick house on Campbell Avenue Southwest and the 200 other men and women like them around the world, prayer is more than petitions for mercy from a benevolent God.
Linda Owen, director of Roanoke's Madonna House, explained:
"I am a prayer."
"We pray always," she said -- at waking, while sweeping the floor, at daily Mass, when retiring.
They pray in adoration before partaking of the sacraments, they join in communal and liturgical prayer, they petition, but, "we are a living prayer when we act for God."
Owen, Viva LeBlanc and Kathleen LaBrie are part of an international organization of Roman Catholic men, women and priests dedicated to serving Christ.
Madonna House members take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and -- after seven years of service -- may take lifelong vows of commitment to the Madonna House order.
They are never ordained -- except for priests who may join -- preferring instead to live in what they describe as the "Nazareth family" model. That means the residents of the headquarters in Combermere, Ontario, as well as the 22 field houses of the organization, ideally would mirror the composition of Jesus' family -- men representing Joseph, women representing the Virgin Mary and priests representing Christ.
Just as in the church's ordained ranks, however, there "aren't enough men to go around," Owen said, so many houses, like the one in Roanoke, are staffed wholly by women.
Some of the houses serve the material needs of the poor around them, through soup kitchens, for instance. Others, such as the one in Roanoke, are "prayer and listening houses."
While they "don't do direct service," the women at Madonna House do "try to educate ourselves to be able to send those who come knocking at our door to the right places," Owen said.
They also "hope we are giving energy to those around us" who provide those direct services.
The house welcomes visitors who wish to pray, LeBlanc said. They may come with specific needs or just want to know more about the Madonna House order. On the first and third Fridays of each month, there is an open house with soup for supper.
While the visitors are mostly Catholic, LaBlanc said, they also include Protestants who have heard about the staff's "witness to the life of prayer."
The women hope some visitors will "catch this spark . . . and start walking the journey with us," even if they don't adopt the order's lifestyle.
"Even if no one came" to pray at the house with them, Owen said, the women would "still see ourselves as necessary." They might, however, try to discern whether they were "listening to the Holy Spirit" and doing what the community needed.
They see themselves as "people of the towel and water" -- attempting to imitate the humble service Jesus is recorded to have performed for his disciples by washing their dusty feet.
"We try to be present for what people need," LaBrie said. While they are not counselors, sometimes their visitors just "need someone to listen to them" -- a role the women are glad to fulfill.
It is a "hospitality of the heart" that they return to a community that likewise gives to them. "We live by the generosity of others," LaBrie explained. That extends from the clothing on their backs, to the food they eat, to their car and the gasoline that powers it, to the heat in Madonna House.
Their outstretched hands "should be like a tray," LaBrie said. "We keep only what we need to serve. The best is passed on to the poor."
"We live for God. We are people of God," Owen said.
"It is a wonderful life, but a life of vision."
by CNB