On Sunday, January 24, 2016, on the Feast of our co-founder St. Francis de Sales, we celebrated the commissioning of Aimee Fritsch and Heidi Schleif as the first two members of Visitation Resident Lay Community. What follows are their statements of commitment and a bit about their callings to found the lay community in north Minneapolis.
Meet Aimee Fritsch
Aimee Fritsch, Visitation Resident Lay Community
Commitment Statement:
“In all the joys and sorrows, frustrations and delights of being in this place and time, and being here well, I commit myself:
-to growing closer to God through personal and communal study and practice of Salesian Spirituality.
-to being grounded and engaged with the people and places of our beloved North Minneapolis
-to my vocation as a laywoman, bringing my daily life to my prayer and my prayer to life in the world
-to living in community where we support each other in being who we are and being that well.To all this as part of the Visitation Residential Lay Community!”
Three years ago I moved into an intentional community for the first time. It was a 25 person Christian community located in an old fraternity house next to the University of Oregon. Christus House showed me the value of this community, and after living there for a year and a half while I finished my degree, I then moved across the country, into another community, as a Jesuit Volunteer in north Minneapolis. As a JV I was placed at Listening House, a drop-in center for homeless and low-income adults in downtown St. Paul. This ministry of presence has made my life so much richer, and I am very thankful that I was asked to stay on staff upon finishing my year of service and beginning grad school at the University of Minnesota. I’m also so grateful to be able to continue to live life in community as a part of the Visitation residential lay community. Community is a home for hopes, dreams, sorrows, frustrations, and joys, and in community I am better at being who I am, and being that well.
Meet Heidi Schleif
Heidi and Aimee with their Salesian Medals
Commitment Statement:
“As I try my best to always live a life fueled by my faith, I decide to intentionally ground myself in this place of North Minneapolis and in Salesian spirituality. I commit myself to continue to build relationships in both my internal and external communities, and to grow in faith by the example of Francis and Jane. I commit myself to prayer and awareness of God at all times; in the people that I meet and in the challenges that this community and its community face.”
I had experience living in community during my year of service in Ecuador through the program Rostro de Cristo (Face of Christ), and I also lived in community with Cody Maynus last year during his year with the Visitation Intern Program. I currently work at the Church of St. Gerard in Brooklyn Park as the Children’s Ministry Coordinator. I believe that it is very important to acknowledge that everyone who is a part of the Church, not just women and men religious, is called to live out their spirituality in every aspect of their lives and that lay people really have to claim that—each in their own way—in order for the Church to really be as strong and vibrant as it can be. Sharing in community as lay people is what makes us strong and helps us to figure out where we fit in the world and what God is calling us to do with our lives as well as how God is calling us to live our lives. The support and friendships from my communities in the past and the sharing in challenges together has helped me immensely to become the person I am today, and I am very excited to continue living in community through the lens of Salesian spirituality and the specific challenges and joys that come along with being part of the north Minneapolis community.
These background articles first appeared in our Winter, 2016 Newsletter.