Lenten Appeal: Helping Catholic Charities create hope in the Jubilee Year
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Catholic Charities of Central and Northern Missouri (CCCNMO) is hard at work offering hope to individuals and helping parishes become the centers of charity and sanctuaries of mercy that the imitation of Christ compels them to be.
The Catholic Charities Lent 2025 Appeal is an important opportunity to help.
“As Catholics, we are called to treat the most vulnerable among us with respect and dignity,” Bishop W. Shawn McKnight pointed out in a letter promoting this year’s Lenten Appeal.
“In order to continue to meet the needs of our community, it takes all of us in our diocese to make a sacrifice for our Catholic mission,” he wrote.
He observed that many people in these 38 counties — including parishioners and their neighbors — are suffering and would benefit from the Church’s Lenten prayers, fasting and alms.
He asked for people to consider making a one-time or recurring monthly gift to help Catholic Charities continue providing crucial assistance to people need.
Contributions can be made online at: cccnmo.diojeffcity.org/give.
“Catholic Charities serves the poorest and most vulnerable, regardless of religion, race or socioeconomic status,” he noted. “They are always ready to help people going through crises or a difficult time.”
Neighbors in need
Charity ranks high on Pope Francis’s objectives for the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope.
“I ask with all my heart that hope be granted to the billions of the poor, who often lack the essentials of life,” the pope wrote in “Spes Non Confundit,” the Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee Year.
The need for hope is sometimes overwhelming.
“Each day, we meet people who are poor or impoverished,” the pope continued. “They may even be our next-door neighbors. Often they are homeless or lack sufficient food for the day. They suffer from exclusion and indifference on the part of many,” (#15).
Catholic Charities works to remedy these situations in a uniquely Catholic way by delivering compassionate, holistic care through multiple programs designed to uplift and empower some of our most vulnerable neighbors.
“It’s a rare opportunity when you can give to a mission we all believe in and can experience,” said Scott Thrasher, president of the CCCNMO Board of Directors.
It does so as an agency by operating a large food pantry, providing health and nutrition services, legal family immigration services, and community services such as Predatory Loan Relief and counseling.
It also gives key assistance to charitable works in parishes throughout the diocese through targeted assistance known as Charity and Mercy Grants.
Recent grants include:
- $5,000 to St. Joseph Parish in Salisbury to help support Chariton County Child Welfare, which provided Christmas gifts, food and clothing for the lowest-income families with children in that county.
- $2,500 to St. Bernadette Parish in Hermitage to help support the Hickory County Child Advocacy Council, which provided school clothing, Christmas food baskets and diapers to the county health department for families in most need in Hickory County.
- Another $2,500 to St. Bernadette Parish in Hermitage to help support Hickory County Toys for Kids, which provided toys for families at the highest poverty levels in Hickory County.
- Multiple grants to parishes that have St. Vincent de Paul Society conferences, for their Beds for Kids Program.
“We’re providing help to our whole diocese and to our individual parishes and communities,” said Mr. Thrasher.
Rules of engagement
Mr. Thrasher, a member of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Columbia, was introduced to the work of Catholic Charities by fellow parishioner Mike Maag, previous board president.
“Once I learned what Catholic Charities does and met the people here, I wanted to be a part of it,” he said. “It makes me feel good to be a Catholic.”
Bishop McKnight has instructed the parishes and the diocese’s five deaneries to work on ways to use the resources of Catholic Charities and the experience of the people who work there to advance the cause of charity throughout the diocese.
“We’re working on ways to promote more engagement with parishes and with the deaneries,” said Mr. Thrasher.
“Because once we’re engaged, the mission and the good news of what Catholic Charities is doing will spread, and more people will want to be involved,” he said.
“Once you get involved a little bit and you get around and you see how good the cause is, you want to figure out how you can do more,” he added.
