About That Third Person of the Trinity....

Over the years, I haven't had much inclination to pray to the Holy Spirit or particular awareness of the Spirit's presence. I have generally favored prayer to the Father, or to the Son because he seems more accessible. The Spirit was just kind of out there for me. Real, yet abstract, distant. Lately, however, it's been different.

Last fall, I experienced the Called & Gifted process from Siena Institute, and my relationship with the Spirit changed dramatically. I became acutely aware of where the Spirit has been active in my life. In the discernment of my charisms and what they mean, I have learned that the Spirit has been actively calling me to the various ways in which I serve through those gifts. There are, as I had always suspected, no coincidences.

Unsurprisingly, when I took the Spiritual Gifts Inventory, I learned my dominant charisms are Music, Teaching and Writing. However, in the weeks after my interview, some things opened up for me. It became clear that the moments when I heard an unmistakable voice leading me toward change and growth were of the Spirit.

Yes, I have heard the Spirit speak. Twice. Let me tell you about these moments, as evidence that the Spirit can communicate to position us where we are called to use our charisms.

The first incident was when I found myself, a Catholic for less than three years, at a national meeting of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions. Looking around the room at the professional liturgists and bishops present, I asked myself,  "What am I doing here?"  Immediately, the response came: "Because you can do this."  I responded by entering a degree program to learn more about what "this" was and to equip myself to do it. The "this" was ministry...

The second time occurred after I had been searching unsuccessfully for several years for a full-time position in ministry. At that point, I had been serving as part-time liturgy coordinator at my parish, while my day job was mostly clerical. I also had a writing job on the side for the local paper. I was restless with the patchwork of putting together three jobs to make a living - and not fully using my talents.

Over the summer, I began hearing a distinct voice in my head: "Bloom where you're planted." I was puzzled as to why this thought kept coming to me. In the fall, I made my Cursillo and during the communal penance service, on the way back to my seat after my confession I once again heard that annoying mantra: "Bloom where you're planted." This time I pushed back: "I can't bloom where I'm planted.Lord. I HATE where I'm planted!"The response was immediate and surprising: "Then, plant yourself where you can bloom!" I had never thought about leaving town. The job search led to a dual position as director of religious education and liturgy in a parish where I was a total stranger.

Over the years since those events, my progress in ministry has been more event-driven, but I learned to see the workings of God in occurrences that forced me to change or grow. I have been recently much more aware that recent requests for me to write and teach are part of the Spirit's plan for use of those charisms. (I have always shared my singing in parish and diocesan settings, because I have known for a long time that since I was born on St. Cecilia's day, the gift of my voice was God's plan and needed to be shared for God's glory and the good of his people, not to elevate me.)

Looking back, I now know that the voice I heard was that of the Spirit, because these events were clearly connected with my vocation to use my charisms to serve others. Called & Gifted made that very clear to me. As to writing and teaching, the C & G experience changed things for me in ways I never expected. I now have a greater clarity about why I have been given these gifts - and as to why, of late, writing and teaching opportunities have come to me without me looking for them. I also find a great renewal of energy to write and teach.  The Spirit gave these charisms and the Spirit continues to lead me in using them to build up the Church.

I pray that others whose charisms have not been activated may come to understand where the Spirit is directing them. The Holy Spirit is indeed "the giver of life" - a life filled with abundance of joy in using one's charisms to serve.

Come, Holy Spirit! Fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love!

Austerity or Abundance? When Church Budgets Drive Ministry Decisions

Today, I feel moved to engage in a little hand-wringing... and to pose lots of questions. With the stressed economy and falling contributions, some parish pastors have been cutting back on ministry salaries and hiring recently. I personally know of both catechetical and liturgical positions that have been converted to part-time, people who have been told the parish "can no longer afford to pay" them. It is heartbreaking to watch.

It began a couple years ago, when local pastors started letting full-time degreed lay ministers leave or retire, replacing them with part-timers with minimal formation for ministry. In my own diocese, this unfortunately coincided with the demise of our lay ministry formation program. This spring, I have watched with increasing dismay as excellent veteran ministers are pushed out at the behest of finance councils, or leave the ministry to retire while the pastor intends to get semi-volunteers to replace them.

Are we becoming an austerity Church rather than one of abundance?  We seem to be abandoning a theology of Christian hope and retrenching as if we are businesses instead of mission-driven agencies of the Kingdom of God on earth.  Have we forgotten the blessing to the Church that lay ministry provides?  Have we forgotten that the Holy Spirit is in charge?

At the same time parishes cut back, the cultural challenges to church participation and attendance are greater than ever and call for additional skills and strategies from our catechetical and liturgical leaders. Replacing them with well-intentioned but unformed people who are simply able to organize and operate a  program can only have negative effects.

We have not lost the need for catechetical leaders who can see the big picture - people with the ability to evangelize families and draw people into deeper participation in the life of the church, not just people who can "make the trains run on time."  We need people able to evaluate catechetical materials intelligently, who can deal with the very real issues of non-practicing parents of children in formation, and who have the ability to choose, lead and form catechists to provide more than what is in the textbooks.  We need leaders who can discern and support volunteers, with a vision for the future, who are available to attend local and diocesan formation to develop new strategies and skills, not part-time people who have another day job and/or the responsibility for a young family.

Parishes also need to provide more, not less adult faith formation. The promise of "Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us" that adult formation should become the priority in parishes has not been realized in most places - and without someone giving that area attention, parishes provide either nothing or very little to engage and catechize adults. Small wonder that stewardship of time, talent and treasure for many people is tepid or irrelevant to their Mass attendance (if they attend at all.)

This church needs liturgical ministers who understand the beauty of the liturgy and have the ability to lead volunteers to enculturate the celebration appropriately to make it lively and appropriate for the community, not just people to play keyboards. The most frequent complaint parishioners have is about the quality of liturgy.  When pastors cut back on liturgical staff, they make good liturgical leadership even less possible - and more of the burden goes onto the pastors themselves.

Back in 2005, Paulist Father Robert Rivers proposed that we need to go From Maintenance to Mission - to move forward as a church to accept the challenges of evangelizing in today's culture. Today, it is even bleaker than that, as we seem to backslide into retrenching, rather than maintaining.

So where are we going? Where is the vision? Where is our trust that "God will provide?" Why do we have such a failure of Christian hope? More than that, how does the trend toward retrenching affect our ability to carry out the Church's mandate to provide the "New Evangelization"?  Since pastors seem to be more and more adopting a business model of operation, why are they having so much trouble seeing that the more they invest in good people the more they will get back?

The ROI (return on investment) in good lay ministers who are able to work with a pastor and independently to provide and inspire great parish leadership will naturally be larger in terms of participation, engagement and stewardship of its people.  The experiments by the Gallup organization with "church engagement" strategies have shown how true that is.

The larger question here is why are pastors listening more to the voices of their business managers than to the voice of the Holy Spirit?   There is a term that seems to apply here: "Functional Atheism" - meaning we say there is a God, but we act as if God has no power to affect our situation.  We are going into a Year of Faith. Perhaps it should instead have been a "Year of Hope" instead.