Most parish directors of religious education are actually pretty creative people. They are continually devising new strategies to try to get barely-connected families to be serious about their involvement in their children's faith formation. (Often against their will.) Many in our diocese make use of annual pre-sacrament parent meetings to urge parents to get involved by bringing their children to Mass on a regular basis, praying and reading Scripture at home and talking about their faith with their children. They give inspiring talks, show videos, facilitate group process, and send home family projects. Some use various formats of intergenerational gatherings to involve the entire family on site at the parish. They spend a huge amount of time and energy trying to get parents to step up to their responsibility for their children's faith formation.
While these are certainly good practices, and certainly they have some effect, how difficult it is to reach these folks meaningfully with the good news of Jesus Christ becomes painfully apparent when most of them disappear from the parish after the last child receives that all-important Confirmation certificate. They pretty much have what they came for. Now they can move on. They will come back to church for weddings, baptisms, and funerals, and perhaps on Christmas and Easter... or not. Some even blithely tell parish leaders that they promised their teen that after Confirmation they no longer have to come to Mass. These are the "casual Catholic" families. They really only want to know how much the sacrament will "cost" them in terms of money and time. They will mostly give as little of both as possible. A few may have enough good will to volunteer for ministries while their children are in formation, but even many of these do not remain after the Oil of Chrism is dry on their child's forehead.
What's missing and why don't these strategies work very well.? Simple. Many parents quite often don't have much faith themselves to share with their children. They may have a conventional sense that faith is important, but they really don't have a strong relationship with Jesus Christ. While intergenerational programs offer more opportunity for engagement, they are missing something very important: opportunities for the parents to experience real and meaningful conversion of their own.
Enter Father James Mallon. Father Mallon, the Canadian priest behind Catholicism 201 (the follow up to Alpha for Catholics) andDogmatic Theology. He is a man with a plan. When he spoke in our diocese on December 8, he described his method... and proposed some models. (The full presentation can be heard HERE .)
What Father James proposes is that we stop spending the bulk of our energy on those who are not serious about their faith. Not that we abandon those barely-connected families, but that we no longer tolerate the status quo by enabling them to get those sacraments they want from us for a minimal temporary commitment. He is convinced that people make lots of promises in the course of sacrament preparation they never intend to keep. He spoke of it as "ritualized lying". We set people up for this when we allow them to celebrate sacraments and make promises within that celebration, knowing full well they are not really ready and have no sense of commitment to those promises.
Father Mallon explained, as an example, how when a couple comes to him seeking a church marriage, before he sets up the preparation and the wedding date, he first asks them to start coming to Mass on a regular basis to get to know him and the community, and to go through the Alpha Course for Catholics, a small-group evangelization process. Some will balk at this, a few will go away, but many decide to go through this. So do many parents who bring children for baptism, or children for other sacraments. Those who do engage in this process, apparently, stay and become a part of St. Benedict in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a very growing and lively parish, which has been described as the "Willow Creek" of Canada. Everyone in the parish is considered to be on an active faith journey... they are truly a parish that has become a "learning community." Everyone in the parish is asked in some way to participate in the stewardship of time and talent - and time is not just time spent in service, it is also time spent in prayer and developing one's spiritual life.
What about the families who are already engaged and active and lifelong members of the parish? Father Mallon says you need to stop lumping them in with the inactive people and treating them all the same. That might mean you offer something deeper for those who are ready - a separate track, as it were... small groups, perhaps, but using resources that acknowledge they are further along on their journey of faith.
So, what difference would it make in your parish if everyone were asked to become part of a small-group evangelizing process before they or their children receive sacraments? If they were helped to see why God and faith and the Church really matter (in a program such as Alpha for Catholics) If they were all expected to be and assisted to be on a faith journey? If they were all tapped for time and talent?
Do you think parents might stop telling their kids that after Confirmation they never have to go to Mass again? Do you think they would be more engaged and active in the parish? What would YOU do if you could, to evangelize and engage the disconnected folks who only seek us out when they want sacraments? Can you start thinking differently about the focus of your efforts with parents - to change from making it about their children's faith to making it about their own faith?
Winter has been unusually warm here in the area around Chicago, and even though we are finishing up January, the lack of snow and the pleasant days have made it somewhat unlikely that this February will bring the usual rounds of "cabin fever" for those cooped up indoors. The unusual weather has made it a little more difficult to capture the normal sensations I associate with winter Ordinary Time. Here, this period of time normally has a touch of the ambiance of huddling with a group of friends around a warm fire while listening to the sharing of wondrous stories. We take refuge from the cold and come to Mass to be among friends and to learn together what it means to be disciples.
The period between the end of the Christmas Season and the beginning of Lent is a time to learn from the words and actions of Jesus. It is when we hear the Apostle Paul chiding us about how we are to live, and then hear the core stories of Jesus - actions, miraculous healings, discussions and more from his ministerial life among his disciples and the people of the places where he traveled. It is a time to find out who Jesus is and what is essential and expected of us if we follow him. As is always true, we do this in community, together.
In actuality, the weather doesn't matter - but the friends that we gather with do. The journey of faith that we share during the liturgical year is never simply "me and Jesus," but the shared struggle to learn and grow together - in the liturgy, in our parish activities, in our charity and service, in our catechesis, our sacrament preparation and in all the ways we are Church. As we navigate these "counted days" of Ordinary Time up until Ash Wednesday, never forget the value of friends along the journey. It is truly a case of never walking alone.
This powerful excerpt from a speech given in 1967 to the Southern Christian Leadership Council shows why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a prophet in his time and a true witness to the message of the Gospel.
His unfailing sense of the call of Jesus Christ to all people to create a just world, where the hungry are fed and the poor uplifted was extraordinary - and his delivery an authentic call for all to cooperate with God to recreate the world into a living image of the Kingdom is timeless.
Dr. King was a gift to our nation, whose speeches are worth listening to again and again. The blatant racial prejudice he fought against has lessened, to be sure, but the oppression of the poor by the rich and the failure of our nation and world to deliver justice for all still rings true. One cannot but hear echoes of the current economic situation and political debates in what he said, and wish perhaps, that more had changed.
OK, it's not often the culture of sports hands us a genuine liturgical catechetical opportunity. The furor surrounding Tim Tebow's public gesture of faith of kneeling in prayer on the football field has caused a storm of controversy and a flurry of photos in newspapers and on the internet:
along with numerous parodies, including references to the three Magi kneeling, to Darth Vader and other familiar persons and has spawned a T-shirt meme and a new term: "Tebowing".
So, why not use this as a way to teach kids that it is OK to genuflect? In my parish, where I volunteer as a catechist to a group of older kids preparing for Confirmation, because most of them have missed prior years of faith formation, genuflecting in church does not come naturally. I think I will tell them that if a sports hero can do it, so can they. Just saying. Thanks, Tim.
Well, this year I did it. I got up in the middle of the night to get ready to go to church for La Danza and Las Mañanitas - the pre-dawn Mexican cultural celebration for Our Lady of Guadalupe. I have wanted to to this for a while, and as the vice chair of our Pastoral Council, I kind of felt I should do this. Maybe I missed them, but the only other "Anglo" I saw in the room besides myself was my pastor, who speaks fluent Spanish. I, on the other hand, speak only a little, understand maybe half of what I hear, and felt a bit like the proverbial tourista.
As I came into the back of church, I recognized Oscar, a talented musician who directs and plays with the 1:00 p.m. Sunday Spanish choir - dressed in full regalia - complete with feather headdress. He smiled and mugged for my camera. Later, he took his place beside the altar and began to beat the drum that summoned about 30 colorfully dressed dancers, mostly women and teens, to the front. For the next 25 minutes they stamped, swayed, spun and shook maracas, in honor of the Virgin, as Oscar drummed out various rhythms. Their performance was beautiful, strange and a bit primitive. Certainly like nothing I have ever seen in church before. The colorful costumes seemed a bit skimpy for a December day in the Midwest, but soon the dancers were mopping their brows from their exertion, despite the chilly room.
Once they had finished, Rosalinda, a parish reader and fellow member of Pastoral Council, stepped up to the microphone and read a long text about the story of Juan Diego and the Virgen. Then, a seven-man mariachi band came up and began to play and sing. I know enough Spanish to know that many of these were, in effect, love songs to the Virgin, singing of her as the "queen of hope" and identifying themselves as Guadalupano, people of Guadalupe - her children. The people joined in most of these,singing by heart and from the heart. Of course, having no music and not knowing them, mostly all I could do was listen and add in the refrain occasionally, when I could pick it out. I could sense their great love, even if I could not fully understand the texts.
Throughout the hour and a half of the pre-Mass celebration, some women, from the back of the church shouted out phrases that seemed to have set responses, almost as if they were cheerleading. I have to admit, this morning was a strangely fascinating if rather foreign experience. I felt a strange sensation of being an outsider, yet not a total stranger. It's my parish, but it's their parish too. Despite the language and culture gap, we all belong, in our own way, to the community of St. John the Baptist. The Virgen is my mother in faith too, even if by adoption. Maybe someday, I will feel more at home with the whole thing. Until then, I will keep stretching my comfort level to join them when I can.
Brothers and sisters: Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thes: 16-17)
On this, the Third Sunday of Advent, the apostle Paul issues us a challenge to be joyful and prayerful - in all circumstances. That, frankly, can be difficult as the holidays approach - especially for those who grieve.
Many of you know that two and a half years ago, I lost the most significant person in my life. I am, however, not the only one. Many people have experienced deep and painful loss and face the coming of Christmas with some degree of depression. A time of year that is traditionally focused on family, love, and being with people we care about, can only tap into memories and regrets about the person or persons who are no longer with us. For people of faith who grieve, this time of year can be particularly painful, because the relationship with God may be somewhat conflicted. In the larger context, I believe we live in a world where many people are not only unhappy, they have forgotten, or perhaps seldom, if ever, experienced true joy.
There is a real difference between happiness and joy. One is temporal and temporary, the other runs deeper. A person can, I have found, be unhappy about the circumstances of life, but still have an underlying sense of joy that stems from something deeper. For me, that is from knowing that even if I find it hard to trust God after my experience of great loss, I know instinctively that God has never truly abandoned me and is simply waiting for me to sort it all out.
For people of a secular bent who have little or no sense of the presence of God, superficial, temporary happiness based in possessions (which can be lost) and people (who may either fail us or die) may be all there is. Those who do not have an experience of the love of God, if they lose someone or something significant, have only themselves and their relationships with others to rely on. All of those things are fallible. As Teresa of Avila said: "God alone is enough."
The readings today call us to pray anyway - to pull ourselves out of ourselves and look ahead to the coming of one who is greater than we are and to have faith that in the end, everything will indeed be alright. Only that kind of faith can bring true joy. In the meantime, we are called to hope. Here are two songs, appropriate for this Sunday that for me express this perfectly:
The full podcast of Father James Mallon's presentation in the Diocese of Joliet on December 8 can now be found here: 
As I came into the back of church, I recognized Oscar, a talented musician who directs and plays with the 1:00 p.m. Sunday Spanish choir - dressed in full regalia - complete with feather headdress. He smiled and mugged for my camera. Later, he took his place beside the altar and began to beat the drum that summoned about 30 colorfully dressed dancers, mostly women and teens, to the front. For the next 25 minutes they stamped, swayed, spun and shook maracas, in honor of the Virgin, as Oscar drummed out various rhythms. Their performance was beautiful, strange and a bit primitive. Certainly like nothing I have ever seen in church before. The colorful costumes seemed a bit skimpy for a December day in the Midwest, but soon the dancers were mopping their brows from their exertion, despite the chilly room.
