PASTOR’S ADDRESS TO THE PARISH
Last year my talk at all the masses was called
“The Sermon on the Amount”. It was about
money – because we needed to talk about money.
Money’s a reality in life.
But this year we need to address something
deeper – not what we have but who we are.
As your pastor, I think we need to talk about who we are and how we are
– as a community. The title of this talk
could be “The Way We Are”.
As I review the last four and a half years I
have been with you as pastor, what is striking is our growth as a parish. This is nothing new to you – but just to
review to gain some perspective. In 2009
we were 800 households. Now we’re about
1,600 households with a total of 3,500+ registered members. And our growth has made us younger. Our average age is 34; our median age is
36. Here are some other important
statistics. We’re just over 51%
married. A significant and growing
demographic group is our singles. We’re
over 35% single. My group – the 60+ gang
– we make up about 11% of the parish.
That’s about 400 people. In
context, that’s 400 compared to 760+ school age children and 1,200+ young
adults.
So, on this statistical, demographic level
“The Way We Are” is lots of growth and lots of change. But I want to move beyond the
statistics. I want to move deeper – to
raise the question of our parish as a community.
This is an obvious question for us to ask as
Catholics. Catholicism is a kind of
“we”-thing. To be Catholic is to be
rooted in community, to be committed to common good, to a just society and to
the nurture and care of God’s creation for future generations. As Catholics we’re a “we”-people.
But that same question of community is a
difficult, much un-answered question for us as Americans. We are unsure what it means to belong: what
it means to belong to one another; what it means to belong with one
another. That sense of community
and the commitment it requires not only eludes us; it challenges and scares us
– because we, as Americans, prize and privilege the individual and individual
freedom. As Americans we’re an
“I”-people.
Just to make it clear. I am not talking here primarily about
the kind of belonging that comes from group membership – like a club membership
or even citizenship with its rights and obligations. I am talking about the belonging that
comes with friendship, with marriage, with family – and with the community
that’s akin to all these: the community of Church and parish.
As a parish we are recognizably Catholic in
our social justice outreach into the larger community. And we are recognizably American in
our struggle to create and commit to being a community among ourselves.
In that context I want to bring up just one
statistic as an example. There are 763
registered school age children in the parish.
20% are in Catholic school. 30%
are in our faith formation programs. But
how about the remaining 380 students? As
Catholics, we say they’re part of us.
They belong. And we all belong
together with one another. But as
Americans, do we let them go their own individual way, untouched by us? Do we let them – and I mean this in the
deepest sense – do we let them be “alone” – be “alone” – prepping them for a
whole society of loners, not knowing how to step out of themselves? Do we want that for them?
How do we belong to one another? How do we belong with one another? What kind of community are we willing to
create and commit to? These are basic
and difficult questions for us as a parish.
And we can see their difficulty in our on-going inability to grow a base
of committed volunteers: volunteers to serve in our faith formation programs –
to serve as ministers at our liturgies – to take an active interest in parish
affairs at meetings and assemblies – and volunteers to visit and care for our
elderly – a growing number.
Sadly, in our Church and in this parish, we
are learning from the larger culture to behave as consumers – consumers of
services we expect to be given to us. We
are behaving as “getters” – not “givers”.
By definition the consumer is basically intent on having his own needs
met. The needs of others are just not a
motivating force for the consumer.
Adding value to someone else’s life is not a serious question.
When we mimic our society – its culture and
values – then we are giving ourselves its future. That is a future we can see in our country
today. Just look and listen! You will see and hear a distrust among
us. It’s a pervasive, sometimes ugly distrust
that disengages us from one another and makes us dysfunctional – incapable of
common purpose. And all this – all this
in the name of an exaggerated and unquestioned individualism we call “freedom”.
As your pastor and as a Jesuit, I must tell
you that course – our present course as a parish – is unsustainable. It has no future. Though we have much for which we can be truly
grateful as a parish, we have no promising future as a community.
The only thing that can give us a promising
future is, quite simply, love – our love for one another. It’s a love that’s active and tangible. It’s a love that commits itself to actually
living and working and doing for the sake of others. It’s a love that shows up.
This is Jesus’ command to us: we are to love others
as we have learned to love one another.
This parish is to be where we learn to value and practice love – where
we learn why and how to give to others: to give ourselves and to give of
ourselves. This learned love is what we
will bring to our city, world and planet.
The only thing that can give us a promising
future is our decision to hear Jesus’ command to us. It will be our decision to get serious about
being his disciples – our decision to learn to live and love like Jesus – our
decision to be more than churchgoers.
We all have big decisions to make: you and I,
laity and clergy, married and single, young and old. “The Way We Are” is a matter for our
decision as a community. We have
the responsibility for “The Way We Are” as a parish community. This decision and our responsibility will not
go away. In the coming year, together
with the Parish Council, I will recall us to both. Please get ready for that. And let us make the needed decisions – aware
of their consequences and aware of God’s Spirit within and among us. We need to pray – pray to God and pray for
one another.
I want to close with some words from Pope
Francis, from his recent letter of encouragement to the whole Church titled
“The Joy of the Gospel”.
Let us believe the Gospel when it tells us that the kingdom of God is
already present in this world and is growing,… The kingdom is here, … it
struggles to flourish anew. Christ’s
resurrection everywhere calls forth seeds of that new world; even if they are
cut back, they grow again, for the resurrection is already secretly woven into
the fabric of (our) history, for Jesus did not rise in vain. May we never remain on the sidelines of this
march of living hope![278]
You need to know this. Being your pastor has been one of the greatest
blessings of my life. It’s out of a
grateful love for you that I raise the questions I have today. St. Peter’s, our parish, deserves to be a
parish where disciples are made.
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