Dear Friends,
Repetition is the mother of all learning, so I've been told before. As I mentioned at some of the Masses this weekend, please keep reminding me of your names so that I may learn them. If I can remember the starting lineup for the 1994 Cleveland Browns, hopefully I can remember everyone's names.
Repeating myself, I spoke about various facets of discipleship at Mass last weekend: worship and adoration; personal friendship with Christ in the midst of a community of faith; learning from Christ; and making Christ known through word and deed. If these pillars are essential to following Jesus Christ, then these are the pillars that, when taken full advantage of, help parishes to grow and thrive. These pillars can be summed in the acronym ACTS, short for Adoration, Community, Theology, and Service:
- Adoration: this includes Mass, but also includes other opportunities for devotions and ways to grow in prayer
- Community: events and actions to foster greater relationships with each other
- Theology: ways to better learn from Christ and to learn the Faith
- Service: opportunities to make Christ known through service
Since I am new to our parishes, I welcome your input: which of these pillars do our parishes do well? Which of these pillars do we need to address or give added emphasis? I look forward to having these conversations with you, so that together and with the grace of God, we can continue to build up our parishes as homes that help us glorify God and love our neighbors.
Continuing on the theme of repetition, Mass may seem repetitious to many: we do the same thing week after week, many say. While more ink may be spilled on that later, I will say for now that athletes and musicians go through the rigorous and arduous repetition of practice, and so similarly, part of practicing the Faith is going to Mass. We're not perfect, maybe we're barely average, at living out the Faith, so we need “to go to practice (again more will be said about the Mass because it's so much more!).”
With that in mind, I would like to look at a weekday Mass schedule. Currently, the only weekday Mass is Friday 9am at St. Mary's, and soon the Tuesday 9am at Resurrection will be resumed. Wanting to be able to allow as many people as possible to “go to practice” and attend Mass during the week, I want to start a conversation regarding Mass times on Wednesdays and Thursdays: at what time should these Masses be?
Lastly, July 14 is ordinarily the feast day of the patron saint of fast food: St. Kateri Tekakwitha! You may ask why that is—you'll find out when you say her name aloud. When you do that, you'll also discover a bad joke. Have a great week and God bless!
In Christ,
Fr. Matt