In return, they offer us a tangible opportunity to meet Christ in the guise of the hungry, homeless, addicted and disturbed. Occasionally the encounter is rich and even blossoms into genuine friendship, usually it is transient - and sometimes it is disquieting. We know that we give the crumbs from our table, in return they offer us something valuable, a practical opportunity to care and to serve.
This is the Christmas Week of the shelter and we have a strategy for dinner tonight. While the other six churches in Brighton & Hove will likely be serving traditional Christmas fare, heavy on turkey and the trimmings, we will prepare a self-service buffet with a variety of foods. Importantly, we will push the boat out tonight, with decorations and fine food, to try and give our guests a memorable experience in this most important of weeks.
To start, we found an elderly and forgotten Christmas tree in one of the storerooms and Georges, backbone of the volunteers and master chef, made it look respectable once more.
At one end of our parish room we erected the guests' collapsible beds and put their bags by the beds. Seventeen beds and bags travel round the churches in a mustard-yellow van, 'Carol'. Each morning they are loaded into the van and driven to the next night's church where they are unloaded. The bags contain the guest's bed linen, duvets, pillows and wash bags.
In the kitchen Cassie is hard at work, preparing the starters. There are roast chicken legs, cooked prawns, cold cuts of salami, German sausage and ham, tuna fish rice, quiche, green salads and potato salad...and more.
There are a dozen volunteers on hand tonight - the Evening Shift is very popular, especially over the Christmas Week. After our team meeting and prayer, we scatter to finalise last-minute preparations. Chef Georges poses for a souvenir photo by the buffet tables, which now included the main courses, of which the highlights are poached salmon, turkey in tomato sauce and gammon ham in mushroom sauce, accompanied by a cheese board.
In the final minute before the doors open for the guests, the volunteers and Fr. Kevin Dring pose for a Christmas photo at the decorated tables.
Thirteen men and one woman sit down with the dozen volunteers for dinner. After grace, Fr. Kevin has a surprise gift; a parishioner has donated rosaries and prayer cards for each of the guests. Fr. Kevin has blessed the rosaries and, when he offers them, the majority of the guests ask for them. The conversation is light and the food given proper attention. Queues form for second helpings and most of the food vanishes. The dessert table has a selection of richly decorated cakes, mince pies and chocolates - but tempts few of the guests. Instead, Imelda's home-made trifle is deservedly popular and one guest has several helpings of the Tiramisu.
After dinner some guests go outside for a final cigarette. Others, exhausted by a day spent walking around in the cold and occasional rain, are ready for bed. By ten thirty the guests are fast asleep, the tidying up is done and the Overnight Shift has arrived to relieve the Evening Shift who, tired but happy, depart.
By six-thirty in the morning, the guests are stirring. The Morning Shift has been busy for half an hour, the bacon and fried eggs are sizzling in the pan, the baked beans bubbling, a smell of hot toast and coffee is in the air. Unusually - because it's Christmas week of course - kippers are on the menu. Harry has brought in a few of the morning papers and the football pages are being studied closely, one topic of discussion is that local football team Brighton & Hove Albion's Manager, Sami Hyypia, has resigned after the football team won only one game of the last 18.
As the men are leaving, one of them turns to a volunteer and tells her that he is really looking forward to coming back next week, in fact, he would prefer to stay in the Sacred Heart Church's Parish Room for the entire week. Surprisingly, it was not particularly the food that impressed him, it was the people who made it, served it, sat and talked with him, watched as he slept and accompanied him for smoking breaks - a timely reminder that hunger comes in different forms.
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