Serving love and hope to Michigan’s marginalized

Visualize a card table topped with a loaf of bread, a jar of jelly and another of peanut butter. Imagine a young woman standing alone behind it making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and handing them out to the homeless gathered around her. 

Deacon Tim Sullivan of Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church in Plymouth, Mich., witnessed that unsophisticated yet powerful act of generosity and love while walking through the Boston Commons in 2002. The previous day he and his wife, Gail, had met another woman — unkempt in dirty clothes — leaning against the wall of a building in downtown Boston.  The words “Help me. I’m homeless.” were written on the sign she was holding.

Deacon Sullivan gave her some money and Gail asked the woman her name, saying she would pray for her. Her name was Pam. As they began to walk away, Pam called after them — asking their names so that she could also pray for them.

Piecing the two scenes together on their flight back home, the concept of PBJ Outreach was born. Before long Deacon Sullivan and five volunteers from his parish set up one card table with a few jars of peanut butter and jelly and 20 loaves of bread in a vacant lot where the homeless often gathered in a rough area in downtown Detroit. That morning the volunteers gave sandwiches to about 30 people.

It didn’t take long before the ministry started to expand — adding cold and hot drinks, a variety of sandwiches, chips and snacks and simple hot meals like beans and franks or chili. The outreach program has flourished over the last eight years. Deacon Sullivan estimates they have probably served 120,000 people.

It’s become an ecumenical program where others from a wide variety of backgrounds including Protestant congregations, an Islamic mosque, service organizations, families and teenagers doing community or Christian service work join in to help members of the parish. Volunteers meet at the church at 6 a.m. every Saturday to prepare food that they will serve to more than 250 individuals — homeless, poor, elderly and lonely — in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in one of America’s most depressed cities.

In addition to the meals, they also pass out loaves of bread, jars of peanut butter and jelly, school supplies, first-aid items and clothing. Festive meals, such as turkey dinners are served on holidays and gift boxes are passed out on the Saturdays before Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Christmas, when there’s also a visit from “Santa.”

Fellowship is another strong component of the program. Handshakes, hugs, prayers and love are all part of the “care packages” that are freely shared on those Saturday mornings — 52 weeks of the year.

We know God works in wondrous ways. And, we know that praying for each other, like Pam and the Sullivans, can transform lives. But, who would have thought the humble and unassuming peanut butter and jelly sandwich could also contribute such dynamic energy towards inspiring this boundless ministry of love? CJK

Information for this Breaking Bread entry was inspired by Gerald M. Costello’s “The Power of PBJ” in The Christophers’ Light One Candle column (August 2, 2010) and Maryann Gogniat Eidemiller’s “Peanut butter, jelly and love” Good News Profile in Our Sunday Visitor (June 20, 2010). To learn more about the program, visit pbjoutreach.org or call Deacon Tim Sullivan at 734-502-1818.