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Meet Our Pastor
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father terrywelcome message from
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Hello! I'm Father Terry coonan.
I was born and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I was one of eight brothers and sisters. It is truly a beautiful thing to have grown up with such a huge and messy gang, which we affectionately called the "Coonan clan."
While we certainly had fights and struggles and scars to prove them, more importantly we had our faith and a deeper love to overcome the conflicts. The faith is a gift. Without my parents, older siblings, grandparents, and my extended 'parish family' trying to live the faith, I do not think I would be your pastor today.
Our parish wants to be that "village" that helps to foster the faith of others.
Keep praying to the Holy Spirit to guide our parish in its progress towards these plans for evangelization, parishioner enrichment, and relationship-building.
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Pastor's Letters
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You are the salt of the earth, …the light of the world. (Mt. 5) Are we living this vocation in our families, friendships, and other relationships? If we ignore our circles of influence and “travel across land and sea to make one convert” (Mt. 23:15), then who will speak to those we have abandoned? Saint (Mother) Teresa of Kolkata’s response to one who wanted to move to India to serve with her was similar: “grow where you are planted.”Read More
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The reading today ends with the words of the Father over the Lord Jesus. These words are huge and should be prayed about in depth for every one of us. That’s why I included the next verse above. The first thing Jesus does is He goes to the desert (wilderness) to get away from everything and think about what the Father is doing in Him. Have you ever let these words, spoken over you in your Baptism, to sink into the core of your being?Read More
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In his Apostolic Letter Patris Corde, Pope Francis has asked the universal church to give special focus to Saint Joseph for the year of 2021. As the husband of Mary, the mother of God and thus the foster father of the Lord Jesus, Joseph deserves our attention in a particular way. This call for a year of St. Joseph marks the 150th anniversary of his being named universal patron of the church. As such a patron, it means every single one of us is able to seek his support.Read More
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Fr. Terry's Homilies
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about our mission
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"As busy as we are with so many things pulling us and pushing us, it is easy to get swept away in our lives. If we don't live our lives on purpose, we can end up living them on accident. Sometimes this can yield drastic consequences, like hiking without a compass and finding yourself lost. Our faith, and our unique vocation, is a compass that the Lord gives us.
Our parish has been working on its compass - trying to discover the voice of God speaking over and through the noise to a deeper calling. Over the past year our parish staff has been working from a new mission statement, and the work from the past few months in our Next Generation Parishes program has given us a good final product to begin using as a guide for our parish. You may have seen it recently on our parish website:
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.
While these thirty-two words make a long sentence, but we believe every phrase is essential to our mission. I would like to share a little of why these phrases are important.
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."- Father Terry
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