Our Future Depends on It

Our Future Depends on It

Those who participated in the Lenten Mission last week I'm sure will join me in extending our gratitude to Patrick Nolan, SJ, who did a phenomenal job encouraging and guiding us in spiritual exercises! I’d also like to thank the combined music ministries and lectors, members of the Knights of Columbus and Collaborative Pastoral Council (CPC) who facilitated parking and served as greeters. We were fortunate to welcome back Fr. Bill Lohan (who returned to lead one night of prayer) and all the priests who joined us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and, I am especially thankful to Fr. Bill Schmidt: for finding our mission preacher and promoting and preparing all the materials for this wonderfully successful mission! May these experiences and our continued practice of spiritual exercises continue to help us "Finish Strong" on our journey to Easter and beyond.

Looking ahead, the priorities we set for our collaborative will help to determine the ways our parishes will "exercise" our gifts to grow and become stronger communities of faith. In this column I have shared about some of the three Priorities being written into the Local Pastoral Plan (LPP) for our collaborative parishes. These Priorities need to contribute to the primary purpose of being a collaborative: "to help each other...inspire spiritual growth as disciples of Jesus [and] share His Good News in word and deed" (current draft of LPP). By guidance from the CPC and your Disciple Maker Index surveys, our Plan Writing Team made our first Priority "The Sunday Experience" - the Lord's Day Masses and everything connected with them, from the time someone thinks about going to Mass until they return home afterward. Last week's column began to talk about the Priority of "Faith Formation of Adults and Families." In addition to our work of Faith Formation of children and youth, we need to help parents and all adults grow in a mature understanding of our faith and how Christ is calling us to live it in our modern world.

The other Priority that is essential to our ability to continue as parishes that worship the Lord in Word and Sacrament is "Vocations and Discernment, Especially Diocesan Priesthood." This Priority will remind us to appreciate that by baptism we all have a vocation, a calling from God, to live our faith and mission in this life in particular ways. God wants to use your life in a special way to serve Him! Learning what particular ways God is inviting us to serve Him with our whole lives (and in this particular time in our lives) often takes prayerful discernment to discover. Life vocations in the Church include not only ordained ministry and religious life (sisters/nuns, brothers/ monks), but also professional lay ministers, other careers of service, and sacramental marriage (a vocation that is facing a "shortage" like priesthood and religious life!) Among these, the purpose of our collaborative highlights priesthood because we cannot participate in the fullness of the sacraments without priests to serve our parishes. Vocations, including priesthood, are the responsibility of all of us: to pray for and cultivate in our own parishes and families. Later this year we will form a Collaborative Vocations Team to help guide the efforts of parishioners and the Pastoral Team (clergy & staff) in discernment and support for all vocations, but especially priests to serve the parishes of our archdiocese.

Our future depends on it!