Pastor's Letter-- December 20, 2020

With Christmas in under a week and COVID spiking, we estimate larger crowds but manageable ones for the great solemnity. We do intend to use the overflow areas in the gymnasium and perhaps Payne Hall as needed. Pray that it all works well and please help things to be successful by extending patience and mercy.

In the November 29 bulletin, I introduced the three-year plan for the parish that was created over the last year by a team of twelve people, under the guidance and direction of Tom Lenz of the Catholic Leadership Institute. You can review the plan on the parish website, and we intend to mail it to every registered household in the parish. A lot of deliberation took place, sometimes quite intense, always purposeful, charitable, and faith-filled. It all started with a survey (with the fancy name Disciple Maker Index) parishioners were invited to take in November, 2019. We got nearly 200 responses.

We’ve gotten some beginning feedback, supportive and also curious or unsure, and I am grateful that people are engaging with the plan and what it means. I want to take time to explore the various elements of the plan - Our Mission, Our Vision, Core Values, Parish Priorities, and Goals – and put some “flesh on the bones.” My hope is that this plan only strengthens our parish to continue to be a bright light in our community as it has for over eight decades.

For a number of months now, the new Mission Statement has been published in the bulletin, first introduced in August. Driven by the missionary zeal of St. Thérèse, the Lord anoints us to proclaim to the poor and broken the Good News that Jesus calls us to abundant life in Him. These words came together only after much discussion. The following is a reprint of my explanation of this mission statement from the bulletin on August 2nd.

First we can go to the core of the message. Our job as a church in the world is to bring the gospel to others, so that they may encounter the person of Jesus. Poverty and brokenness are not always so easy to see in the soul, as we often don't like admitting our weakness and need for God. The reality is we all are poor and broken, and we all have a Savior who can make us healed and whole. Evangelization is a huge part of the survival of our church in a very post-Christian culture that is not hospitable to the life of faith. If we are not bringing the Lord to others, they may never have a chance to meet Him and thus continue until death in a life that is a quiet nightmare in a desolate wasteland. Jesus' life is abundant - not just the basic "biological" life (Greek 'bios') of earthly things and hedonistic ends, but the fuller life (Greek 'zoe') of God's divine life shared with us by Grace, and ultimately stretching into eternity and breaking through into our present. This life is only found "in Him" - "there is no other name under heaven by which we are saved." (Acts 4:12)

All of us are called to be missionaries (evangelizers). Pope Francis reaffirmed this in Evangelii Gaudium, and it goes all the way back to Christ's great commission from Matthew 28, which was not just for the apostles but for all of us. Shifting to the first phrase, our patroness was in fact named as the patron saint of the missions. A girl who spent her whole short life in the two cities of Alencon and Lisieux (outside one pilgrimage to Rome) had such a heart for bringing Jesus to the world that it could not be contained by the four walls of her Carmelite convent: "Jesus, my love. At last I have found my vocation. My vocation is love. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and then I will be all things" (Story of a Soul). Thérèse also had a close pen-pal relationship with two French missionary priests, serving as a spiritual mother for them.

The anointing from the Lord (which we all received at Baptism and Confirmation) is a powerful reminder to the gift of the Holy Spirit that "drives" us as it "drove" Jesus and the apostles. Saint Paul's words also echo here: "the love of Christ impels us" (2 Cor. 4:15-21) It is also an allusion to the charismatic nature of our parish, which I foresee as something that will only grow, and will be an avenue for our evangelization efforts. Finally, the textual similarity to Isaiah 61 and Luke 4 reminds us of Jesus' mission that is now our own as Christians (literally "little anointed ones").