“St. Francis became a living prayer.”
—Thomas of Celano, The Life of St. Francis

People who fall out of love—presuming they really were in love in the first place—are those who neglect to cultivate real intimacy. Husbands and wives may be very busy doing things that presumably express love—fixing up a home, getting kids to school or music lessons or soccer practice, repairing, saving, hurrying from task to task—but, if they do not stop in their hurried lives to simply sit down with each other in quiet but real communion of feelings, they are on a dead-end road.

So it is with our relationship with the God we cannot see. We can be very busy serving God, but if we do not work at a simple intimacy on a regular basis, we will also end up in a real or equivalent divorce from God.

We would like to say in our own defense, “But my whole life is a prayer! Why worry about some particular part of it?” That’s an attractive temptation. It can gain support from Francis’s famous phrase, “the spirit of prayer and devotion, to which all temporal things must be subservient.” But the analogy of marriage is still true; wives and husbands wear themselves out doing all sorts of busy things for each other and the family. But if this supposedly healthy exterior is not nourished regularly by personal communion, it may become a substitute—or a flight from—real love.

Prayer is praying and nothing else. Prayer is not offering up our dish-washing, grass-cutting, snow-shoveling, and tire-changing. Prayer is looking at God, listening to God, responding to God and to nothing else. This means that there must be portions of our day when there is prayer and nothing else.

Prayer is the response of the human person to the personal approach of God. It doesn’t treat God like some far-off potentate to whom we dutifully pay taxes in return for the benefits of citizenship. Prayer believes—perhaps with difficulty—that God wants a personal relationship with me that is unique, totally different from all the other relationships he has. My relationship with God depends on how I manage my relationships with others.

But at the heart of my life is the call to personal intimacy with God. I achieve that purpose by receiving God—not mechanically, but consciously, willingly, reverently, and joyfully. What, then, is prayer? It is two things. Prayer is our uniquely personal response to God’s constant offer of himself. Prayer is a response that is separated from the rest of our lives in order that it may be the soul of the rest of our lives. Prayer is praying and nothing else. Prayer is direct communion with God.

Once this is established, we have almost an infinite number of choices as to the details. This is not saying that all roads then lead to the center, but it’s saying that once the center is taken care of, all roads from the center lead to God.

The first word in prayer can be “I,” but a more polite beginning is “you.” The focus is placed on God. Francis gives us a perfect example of this in his Praises of God.

You are the holy Lord God Who does wonderful things.
You are strong. You are great. You are the most high.
…
You are love, charity; You are wisdom, you are humility,
…
You are beauty, You are meekness.…
Our happiness consists in praising the glory and goodness of God:
We give you thanks for your great glory.

The second word may be “I.” “I admit my sin, my weakness. I believe in your mercy. I open myself to your healing. I trust you. I am convinced that your presence and strength within me is the source of all holiness. I ask you confidently for all I need: for the health and welfare of my friends and enemies, for peace and justice, for your Church, for the salvation of the world.”

Connecting with Scripture

And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father
will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will
your Father forgive your trespasses.
—Matthew 6:5–15

A Franciscan brings a song of love to the streets of Detroit.

I was sitting here waiting on the bus, about freezing to death, the first time I saw him,” Kelly Howard says of Brother Al Mascia and the Canticle Café mobile unit. She recalls the line forming at the Rosa Parks Transit Center in downtown Detroit and people walking away with coffee and sandwiches. “I said, ‘Free? Are you serious?’ So I got me a sandwich and it was wonderful. I was going to the doctor, didn’t eat, you know. I’m a diabetic, so it really helped me out.”

Five days a week, teams of volunteers minister in the style of Saint Francis, who left the walls of Assisi to help others. The first official run of the bicycle-cart ministry, which includes a back-end trailer loaded with seasonal necessities such as hats, gloves, scarves, socks, and hand- and foot-warmers, was Christmas Day 2010. The mobile-units ministry follows an 18-year tradition of St. Aloysius Parish opening the doors of their community center’s Canticle Café six mornings a week. Visitors to the Café would find coffee, along with donated breakfast food.

The Café, part of the parish’s community center, was a respite for men, women and children who had no home or needed a meal; a place to warm up in the winter or cool off in the summer. Seniors in nearby subsidized apartment buildings also gathered for fellowship and weekly grocery bags. Then, this past October, the building holding the community center and parish offices was shuttered.

“Once we learned that we would no longer be able to remain for a number of reasons, including safety reasons, we started exploring the possibility of renting space of our own. That led to dead ends,” says Brother Al, coordinator of street ministry.

The parish offices were moved across the street and are tucked into a small area of the ground floor of the rectory, attached to St. Aloysius Church. “We Franciscans still felt a tremendous need to remain and serve and minister in downtown Detroit, and we’re committed to continue to do so,” says Brother Al, even without a brick-and-mortar structure.

Brother Al, once a New Yorker, remembered the vendor carts plying their goods in New York and the well-known Passover song “Dayenu,” sung at every Seder meal. The song, listing the mighty acts of God, says that each act “would have been enough.” Brother Al thought about a cart: Even if that’s all we have, that would be enough. The Canticle Café would be reborn—on wheels!

Shoulder-to-Shoulder

Volunteers and donations have paid for three bike units, and a youth-group car wash is providing money for a fourth. Every Tuesday through Saturday morning, carafes of coffee, hot chocolate, water and whatever sandwiches, muffins or doughnuts have been donated are loaded up and go out through the downtown streets. Two bike-cafés head over to the transit center, which Brother Al says is akin to “a village square,” and the third moves to Hart Plaza, a riverside park, where those without homes often set up camp in an underground structure.

The fourth cart will be used to replenish the others. It will be overseen by the parish nurse or a trained volunteer for anyone needing medical help. The mobile units are used later in the day for a concierge-style grocery bag delivery to seniors’ apartments.

“Anyone can come up and partake from our bicycle carts and be shoulder-to-shoulder with folks from various walks of life,” says Brother Al. “Something happens on the streets now that really hadn’t happened in the brick-and-mortar café [at the parish]. It gives the poorest of the poor an opportunity to donate back. I frequently get a handful of change from even the most destitute of people.

“Then there was a well-to-do couple walking their greyhound through the transit center who, once they heard what we were about, gave me $50 for a cup of coffee!” The public, accessible nature of the café, says Brother Al, “gives us an opportunity to have a much more intimate relationship with people.”

Linda Del Signore, a middle-aged woman with mental illness, was one of those people. She spent her nights huddled in sleeping bags against a building near the church. Brother Al could see her spot from his bedroom on the eighth floor of the friary. On the morning of January 24, 2010, when she wasn’t there, he took off with the bicycle cart.

Blocks away, he found her lying in a doorway, wearing only a thin blouse. Her sleeping bag and other possessions had been tossed nearby. Brother Al covered her with stadium blankets donated only the day before, called 911 and then called the parish nurse.

After an hour of trying to revive her, one of the paramedics came up to him and said, “I’m sorry.” Brother Al has since learned about the phenomenon of disoriented clothing removal that can happen in cases of hypothermia. The temperature that night had dipped to just below freezing.

The revival of downtown Detroit must accommodate people such as Linda, Brother Al insists. With God’s grace, he says, “we hope to grow our bicycle ministry to be a presence and a witness.” This time offers a “privileged opportunity,” he says, to use a new type of urban renewal, one based more on loving, caring, “more based on relationships.”

As the winter winds blow across Detroit again this year, Brother Al and friends will build those relationships, serving food and drink from their carts, bringing warmth, inside and out, to everyone along the way.

Learn more about Brother Al by clicking here.

In a world full of questions, it was the only answer.

Most nights after everyone has gone to sleep, I’ll climb the stairs for bed and pass into the soft sound of my childhood: the Baltimore Orioles’ play-by-play men whispering the story of the game from the pocket transistor radio in the bedroom of my 10-year-old son, Sean.

It’s like a summer poem. And for a while, I’ll stand in darkness beside Sean’s top bunk, inches from his soft breath, and eavesdrop in on the late innings. Sean was given the unfashionable radio—the same small, rectangular model I fiddled with 35 years ago from my bunk bed when navigating through the AM static to tune in to a game.

Like U2, Pat Conroy fiction, Irish pubs with low ceilings, and Baltimore’s Little Italy, baseball is a passion that will forever course through my bloodstream. I will never shake these joys. I can’t.

I feel the same about my Catholic faith. No matter the anguish, consternation, or unhappiness it’s occasionally whipped up in me, I will never shake this sturdy and glorious faith. I can’t, because I know it to be true. I know it is the truth because it came from the lips of Jesus Christ. Our first pope passed on these wildly transformative truths and, like 10 of his closest friends, died for it. But skin strippings, upside-down crucifixions, beheadings, and all the rest of the agonies could not put a halt to this budding faith. There was too much glory in it.

So like a world-class, 4×400 relay team, the early Church fathers, martyrs, and a mushrooming band of followers managed to pass it forward. And those very same deposits of faith spread like tentacles throughout a jolted, saucer-eyed world.

Today, these radical, mind-bending truths are burned into our Magisterium and Catechism. These scripturally sound truths are as convincing to me today as Cal Ripken Jr. snapping Lou Gehrig’s streak was for me as a kid.

Saving Graces

I remain a Catholic because it saved me.

Minutes from death’s door after unsuccessful brain surgery in 2009, I was anointed by a healing priest and was mysteriously saved. I’ve too often brought distress and worldly concerns into eucharistic adoration only to be consoled and heartened in its aftermath.

I’ve confessed my sins, received graces, and watched my life change in the smallest and most wonderful ways. I am continually floored by the manner in which a simple family rosary will change the entire complexion of my family.

The Holy Spirit works wonders because it has no limitations. And because of our sacraments, this same Spirit booms within the Catholic faith. And as shepherd of my family, I want to sustain this Spirit and Catholic faith within my family. I know I am a substandard dad and husband. I need help.

And things are changing.

Souls at Stake

One night last summer, I took Sean to Camden Yards to watch the Orioles throttle the Oakland A’s 10-1. We sat through a steady drizzle for nine innings until, finally, Orioles’ left fielder Nolan Reimold gathered in an easy fly to end the game.

But at points in the game, I noted that my once-small boy is no longer small. For the first time he asked to leave his seat and buy his own pretzel and soda. (Before, that was my job.) He overheard and commented on the five inebriated 20-somethings seated a row behind us and their choice of vulgarities.

Time is moving on, and my boy is growing older—as are his siblings, 12-year-old Gabby and 5-year-old Shannon.

In our hands, my wife, Krista, and I hold virtual innocence—souls unencumbered by the restlessness, confusion, and pain that run so deeply today. Sean was given the transistor radio partly because, in my own simplistic manner, I’m trying to hold back a dragon. Gabby has a stocked bookshelf because I’m trying to hold back that same dragon: the secular and youth culture.

I think back to my most carefree days, and I recall the same joys most people probably do: flashlight tag, ice-cream trucks, backyard bonfires, and the neighborhood pool. I know my kids’ lives are not fairy tales. Eve reached for the apple, and sin, pain, and evil shot into the world. And soon, my children will suffer because of their unwise decisions. And they may slowly pull away into a world so contrary to their untroubled lives of today.

Souls are at stake here. Today, perhaps more than ever before, we wrap our arms around the unbending authenticity of our Catholic faith and work in piecemeal fashion at passing it on to our kids. This Catholic faith, I know, will help keep them from deep hurts and waywardness.

‘I Will Not Leave You’

In John’s astounding retelling of the Last Supper, Jesus comforts his confused disciples, telling them he will give them an advocate to be with them always. “I will not leave you orphans” (Jn 14:18a), Jesus says hours before his departure for Calvary.

That line has remained with me since hearing it long ago. This rudderless culture—where immorality is mainstreamed and sacred truths are repeatedly punched in the mouth—will soon be upon them, and it will likely scar them in some ways. As a dad who wants to slay every dragon in sight of my children, I know I’m helpless in preventing it. Its fire spews unbridled.

So I rely on the redeeming graces that my Catholic faith provides to help them feel “unorphaned” as they ease into their teenage years. All I can do is try to shape them and gently burn into their souls, psyches, and memories the gentle reassurances of God’s measureless love and tender care for them.

So, after dinner, I resurrect life lessons from Little Visits with God, a book published in the 1950s, where names like Henry, Frank, and Judy pepper the pages to teach small lessons in morality. And they will laugh and poke fun at me for bringing outdated characters like “Harry the Grocer” and “Pete the Milkman” to our dinner table.

I will laugh right along with them, but I will ask questions about virtue afterward. And these questions will help steer them to question their own morality and decision-making.

Breath of Heaven

On some nights, we’ll pray the rosary. And on those nights—when they’re fidgety, when they can’t wait to get to the sidewalk chalk and the sprinkler, when it’s the third inning of the Orioles’ game—I imagine this rosary will one day become their most cherished prayer.

When they look back one day, this rosary will be the most lasting, rhythmic memory of their childhood. Prayer, they’ll discover if they already haven’t, is their umbilical cord to heaven. It will feed them always.

And on the way to the barn to ride Manny, the old racetrack thoroughbred, their mom will occasionally stop by the exposed Blessed Sacrament at our parish up the street to allow them to share their hearts with Jesus. Mommy will tell them that Jesus is right there in the chapel in front of them, listening to their every word. She will tell them that he loves when you visit him, maybe more than anything else in the world.

We will continually lead them deeper into the mysteries of their faith. Because it’s true, and because it will one day, God willing, lead to the salvation of their souls.

And, really, isn’t that what this is all about?

This beloved story has a lot to teach us about peacemaking in our own times.

The story of how St. Francis of Assisi tamed the Wolf of Gubbio is one of the great legends linked with the life of the saint. I have never been too worried as to whether the story was historically true or not. I am more interested in seeing how the story fits into the pattern of biblical themes and of God’s plans for creation. In this well-known legend, St. Francis goes to the Italian town of Gubbio, where a fierce wolf had been terrorizing the village and even killing some of the people, including children.

During his visit to Gubbio, Francis goes out to meet the wolf. You can find an account of this event in The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, a 14th-century collection of stories about Francis and his companions. According to the story, when the wolf sees St. Francis, he comes charging at the saint with his mouth open, ready to attack.

St. Francis immediately makes the sign of the cross over him and says, “Come here, Brother Wolf. I command you on behalf of Christ that you do no harm to me or to anyone.” As soon as St. Francis did this, notes The Little Flowers, “the fearsome wolf closed his mouth and stopped running; and once the command was given, it came meekly as a lamb, and threw itself at the feet of St. Francis.”

Francis Cuts a Deal with the Wolf

Then St. Francis scolds Brother Wolf for destroying and killing the creatures of God. “The whole town is complaining about you,” Francis tells the wolf gently. “But I want to make peace between you and the people. And so I promise that I will have food given to you regularly, Brother Wolf, by the people of this town so that you will no longer suffer hunger. And I want you, Brother Wolf, to promise that you will never harm any human person or animal.” The wolf showed agreement by simply bowing his head.

And so Francis asks the people of the town if they will promise to provide food for wolf regularly. They all say they will. Finally, St. Francis asks the wolf to give a guarantee in front of all of the people that he will no longer inflict harm upon the people of Gubbio or its animals.

“Then the wolf, lifting his right paw, placed it in the hand of St. Francis. Because of this action…there was such rejoicing and wonder among all the people…that they all began to cry to heaven, praising and blessing God who sent Francis to them who, through his merits, had freed them from the jaws of the cruel beast.”

“Afterwards that same wolf lived in Gubbio for two years, and he tamely entered the houses, going from door to door, without doing any harm to anyone and without any being done to him; and he was kindly fed by the people….Finally after two years Brother Wolf died of old age, at which the citizens grieved very much.”

Echo of the ‘Peaceable Kingdom’

The “peaceable kingdom” is an expression of the messianic era of peace, foreseen by the prophet Isaiah in this famous passage: “Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them” (11:6).

Another passage of Isaiah reads, “The wolf and the lamb shall graze alike, and the lion shall eat hay like the ox….None shall hurt or destroy on my holy mountain, says the Lord” (65:25).

It is clear that the inspired writer of the Book of Revelation, the final book of the Bible, was referring to the “peaceable kingdom” when he wrote, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth….I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race….He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death and mourning, wailing or pain, [for] the old order has passed away” (Rev 21:1-4).

Surely the inspired writer of Revelation, whom we know as John, is pointing us back to Isaiah’s description of the rise of the messiah: “But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse [David’s father], and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and understanding….He shall judge the poor with justice, and decide aright for the land’s afflicted….Then the wolf shall be guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid” (see Isaiah 11:6-9). As a footnote of the Catholic Study Bible tells us, “this picture of the idyllic harmony of paradise is a dramatic symbol of the universal peace and justice of messianic times” (p. 891).

Harmony, Interrupted

What Isaiah is showing us here is a vision of a future era in which the original state of peace and harmony in the Garden of Eden, lost through disobedience and sin, is restored. In this new world, there will be no pain or sorrow or enmity or untimely death, only happiness and rejoicing.

Even the animals will return to a state of innocence and bliss….Clearly the author of Revelation goes out of his way to show that, just as the first book of the Bible [Genesis] began with an ideal garden paradise where God, humans and beasts dwelt peacefully together, so now the Bible’s final book ends with the original garden of harmony and peace restored.

In part, what the story of Francis and the wolf reveals to us is that St. Francis—as a follower of Christ, the Messiah foretold by Isaiah—is helping to bring about the same peace and reconciliation in this world. This peace, harmony and reconciliation is not only meant to exist between God and humans, but also between God and the whole family of creation! We, too, can be instruments of peace.

The prayer practices of this popular saint can help us in our own spiritual journey.

According to St. Teresa of Avila—one of the Church’s great spiritual masters—prayer is a matter of coming into living contact with Jesus; it is not just recitation and repetition. Simply going through the motions doesn’t deserve the noble title of “prayer,” and it won’t lead to the union of our souls with Jesus. It was only through her living contact with Jesus that St. Teresa began to love him.

Before she started praying with sincerity and devotion, St. Teresa was typically preoccupied with waiting for her allotted prayer time to end and listening for the striking of the clock. (This is reassuring for those of us who find that prayer challenges our attention spans.) St. Teresa actually spent more than eighteen years struggling in her prayer, pulled between conversing with God and being caught up in the activities of the world.

But eventually she recognized the need to focus on whom we are praying to with our minds, not just our mouths. In Interior Castle she wrote, “If a person does not think [of] Whom he is addressing, and what he is asking for, and who it is that is asking and of Whom he is asking it, I do not consider that he is praying at all even though he be constantly moving his lips.”

And in the book she wrote especially for the young sisters of her order, The Way of Perfection, she begs them not to address God while they are thinking of other things.

Teresa also compares a person’s relationship to Jesus with a woman’s relationship to her husband. A good wife knows her husband. She understands him, cares for him, and is attentive to him. When he speaks to her, she listens. And when she speaks to him, she knows the person she’s talking to. Because of their personal knowledge, their conversations have the potential to be more than just empty exchanges of words. Similarly, if a soul knows Jesus, understands him, cares about him, and is attentive to him, prayer can be truly meaningful. At the root of prayer is a relationship of love.

St. Teresa warns against reciting the Our Father or attending Mass without thinking about the encounter with Christ. Staying focused in prayer requires effort and discipline; it’s often easier to daydream. But the soul will begin to experience the presence of Jesus in a deeper way when it engages him directly. St. Teresa refers to the early stages of prayer as “frequent solitary conversation with Him who, as we know, loves us.”

Tasting the sweetness of loving conversation with Jesus, even in its simplest form, makes the soul yearn for more. However, this doesn’t imply that prayer will always be easy. St. Teresa refers to the four stages of prayer in terms of “the four methods of watering.”

The soul’s effort to unite with Jesus in prayer is sometimes like drawing water from a well: it involves a lot of muscle power and labor. At other times, by God’s grace, the efforts are less difficult, like collecting water from a water wheel. Occasionally a soul will be able to simply draw water from a “river” that God provides in his goodness. And if God sees fit, he can even send a heavenly spiritual rain that requires no action from the soul.

Since God’s wisdom and timing—not our power—bring the heavenly showers, we are to simply focus on that which is in our power. We draw water from the “well” by staying dedicated to our prayer time and keeping our attention focused, until God should lead us somewhere else. But even this stage, with all its effort, can be a joy because it is an expression of love for Jesus.

The stronger this loving relationship becomes, the more perfectly united the soul is to Jesus.

St. Teresa’s prayer life did culminate in the “spiritual rain” of mystical union with Christ. Evidence of her celestial transports is present throughout her writings. She sometimes interrupted everything to converse with Jesus in the eloquent language of prayer. Yet she remained remarkably down-to-earth for a woman who experienced divine rapture on a regular basis. At her more advanced stages of spiritual life, Teresa’s union with Jesus was so profound that she was aware of his presence in her soul every minute. This is why she thought nothing of pausing to speak with him every now and again.

By sharing these intimate moments in her writings, St.Teresa has left us a beautiful testimony to the fruits of loving Jesus with the whole soul.

Producer Ron Hall lived a life of privilege—until a moral stumble shook his foundation. His story is the subject of a new film starring Greg Kinnear and Oscar-winner Renée Zellweger.

One’s first impression of Ron Hall is that this Texas-born art-dealer-turned-film-producer has a ready smile and seems always on the verge of laughter. It only takes a couple of minutes while visiting the set of the new film Same Kind of Different As Me in Jackson, Mississippi, to learn that Hall is willing to tell on himself. He jokingly explains to St. Anthony Messenger that it’s a miracle he’s alive.

Hall was brought up poor in rural Texas. After starting college and completing a stint in the Army, he graduated from Texas Christian University with a degree in business. He then married his college sweetheart, Deborah Short, in 1969, and met with success as a high-end art dealer. When he made his first big commission for an art sale, it was a miracle he made it to the airport.

“Instead of looking where I was going, I kept smiling at myself in the rearview mirror, so pleased with myself. I’m lucky I’m not dead,” Hall says.

This new film, which will be released October 20, is an adaptation of his 2006 best-selling book, Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together. Hall cowrote the book with Denver Moore to tell the story of how Deborah, “Miss Debbie” as Denver called her, did indeed bind them together in friendship, faith, and service.

An Unlikely Friendship

In the film, Ron Hall (played by Greg Kinnear) and Deborah (Ren ée Zellweger) have been married for almost 20 years and have two children, Carson (Austin Filson) and Regan (Olivia Holt). Ron’s business has grown by leaps and bounds, as has his pride and willingness to show off his wealth—traits that Deborah does not admire in her husband. They are a Christian family, but Ron’s dedication to his faith slips when he has an extramarital affair.

Ron confesses his guilt, and Debbie agrees to forgive him if he comes every week with her to serve the homeless at the Union Gospel Mission in Fort Worth, Texas. Deborah also has a kind of gift to see people in her dreams and prayers. She’s stunned when she sees a homeless black man with a violent reputation (he walked around swinging a baseball bat as a warning not to approach him) named Denver (played by Djimon Hounsou) near the mission. He is the man in her dream that she believes will save the city.

But Ron doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. He agrees to help Deborah and is taken aback when he realizes that she’s been working at the mission for a long time and he didn’t know. Denver is a challenge for Deborah. One day, he throws a fit and scares people in the food line. Deborah zooms in on Denver and Ron. She sets up situations that put Ron and Denver together. A bond begins to develop between the two men.

Denver was born on a sharecropper’s farm in Louisiana. He had a brother, sister, and grandmother who died in a fire. Denver didn’t go to school, but he did manage to get baptized in a bayou before he left for Texas looking for work. He developed a terrible temper and—after returning to Louisiana—committed armed robbery, earning him a stint at Angola Prison. When Deborah finds him, he is back in Texas, sleeping near dumpsters and sitting through sermons at the mission to get a meal.

In their book, he and Hall trade off chapters telling their life stories until they meet and become unlikely friends, both loving Deborah through the 19 months of her illness and death in 2000. The amazing thing is that, afterward, Ron invites Denver to live with him in the family home until his own death 12 years later. He becomes a surrogate uncle to Carson’s and Regan’s children. His faith in Jesus and in the potential of people to love one another encourages him to become a motivational speaker.

A Story of Redemption

“There was no reason for me to be friends with Denver because my heart was not in the right place,” Hall tells St. Anthony Messenger. “It was through Deborah’s encouragement that I got involved in the mission and the people who came there to eat, find clothing, and use the services provided. This is a story about redemption. It’s hard to watch the arrogant, judgmental person I once was. And, yes, I think Greg Kinnear does a very good job playing me.”

“Working with an excellent cast and crew to help tell the story of Ron’s challenging journey was a creative joy,” Kinnear says about playing Hall. Hall is now remarried and says, “I never thought I could find a woman who could live with a man who spent all day talking about his deceased wife. But I found Beth, a woman who loved the story so much, she picked up Debbie’s torch and now runs the new Same Kind of Different As Me Foundation, which raises money, food, and services for the homeless.” They live and work in Dallas.

Oscar-winner Jon Voight plays Hall’s estranged and bitter father, Earl, who was, as he describes him, a “racist and an alcoholic.” Hall praises Voight’s performance nonetheless: “Voight played my father so well I thought he had come back from the grave. It was through the help of Denver that Hall could rebuild what was broken.

“It was Denver who forced me to go back and repair that relationship with my father,” he says. “I carried a lifetime of bitterness and anger in me because of how my father had treated me. He was 90 when I began spending time with him, and I found out so much I had not known. He was so wounded and scarred from World War II. He had been forced to kill so many people in battle in the Philippines. He came back with wounds you couldn’t see. Denver told me, ‘Mr. Ron, sometimes you just got to bless the hell out of people.’ So I blessed my father, and he reconciled with God before he died. I credit Denver with this.

“Denver was more than a homeless man. Hopefully through Djimon Hounsou’s portrayal, he will be an inspiration to change many people. You never know whom God is going to send and place in your life who will bring you to salvation. This is who Denver was for me.”

Renée Zellweger, also an Oscar winner, is thrilled to be a part of the story. “I’m honored to share in telling Debbie’s story and to be part of this beautiful effort to perpetuate the legacy of her work,” she says.

Oscar-nominated actor Hounsou was homeless for a time in Paris, so the role of Denver resonated with him, according to Hall.

“Djimon came on set three weeks before we needed him,” he explains. “He would walk the streets with me and get the feel of what it was like when Denver and I walked the streets together. He had to go to a dialect coach to overcome his French accent and learn to speak like Denver. He would fill his mouth with corks and right before he would go on set he would take them out. This exercise would relax his mouth. It was very impressive for me to see what he would do to be authentic in the role of Denver.”

“It’s a rare opportunity for an actor to be blessed with a role so soulful. Denver’s spirit was at once an emotional challenge and an extreme privilege, learning the story of a man who came from so little and gave so much,” Hounsou says about the role.

What does Hall hope people will get from the film? “That they will see Christ in Miss Debbie, who became the hope for glory for Denver. I also hope they see the Christ-like forgiveness that she showed me as her wayward husband who betrayed her. She became a servant to everyone she met. I want people to see the homeless with the eyes of God. I pray the film does this for everyone who sees it.”

Sidebar: On Location

It’s always a treat for a film journalist to be invited to make a set visit during the filming of a movie, as I did for this film. Same Kind of Different As Me is a compelling story about redemption, forgiveness, and becoming a humble servant to those in need. And the filmmakers took these themes seriously.

When they were scouting locations for the mission, the producers found the Central United Methodist Church Family Life Center in Jackson, Mississippi. The kitchen, dining room, and garden were in need of repair, and the gym could not be used because it needed new electrical wiring. As they negotiated with the pastor to use the facility, the filmmakers promised to leave it better than they had found it—and they did.

“The vision for the commercial kitchen is to create a place where people can learn marketable skills while serving people in need, as well as to develop their spirituality,” pastor David McCoy says.

“I came to the church after the film and the work at the center was completed. I saw the movie at a screening with the previous pastor, Reverend Stephen Tyrone Cook, and when I came out, I was so emotionally caught up with what God was asking of us: to lift up our brothers and sisters by giving them food, clothing, and sharing faith so that they can then reach out to others and become active members of the community. It’s a powerful film,” says McCoy.

According to Ron Hall, they had to ask for the trust of the church elders and leaders because they had been promised assistance before and people didn’t keep their word. The work took about a year. One of the producers, who lived in Jackson—Stephen D. Johnson—followed the work to completion.

“When Denver and I first walked the city streets together, I would ask with a disgusted tone, ‘Why is that guy so drunk? Why does he do that?'” Hall recalls. “Denver would answer, ‘What do you see down there, Mr. Ron? The courthouse. It’s filled with judges. We don’t need no more. We are all homeless, just workin’ our way home.'”