This week's "take your next step" post is a very brief video (under 2 minutes). Click below to view the video!
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On the wall facing my desk is a quote from Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar and author of many books on spirituality. He says, “I try in every way and every day to see the events, people, and issues in my world through a much wider lens that I hope is ‘Christ Consciousness.’ I have to practice hour by hour letting go of my own agenda, my own anger, fear, and judgments in very concrete ways. In that empty space, often made emptier by my very failure, God is always able to speak to me, and sometimes I am able to hear.” Like you, I have a very busy life, and struggle with a never-ending list of things that I am supposed to do. I continually create my own agenda, often in response to my fear, anger, judgments, and failures. I struggle to remember that my happiness lies in opening up to a different way of seeing, of being conscious. I forget that this can only happen if I let God be at the center of my life.
What is at stake here? As the teens in Confirmation preparation this year can tell you, in the words of Matthew Kelly, “You’re here to become the best version of yourself,” not a “second-rate” version. Life is about making choices, saying yes to the things that help you in this quest and no to things that don’t. It sounds so simple. Yet some days even before the Angelus bells ring at St. Luke’s (at 7:15 a.m.!), I can be off to the races with my own perspective, judgments, and anxiety leading the way, responding to circumstances, demands, and expectations in ways that do not reflect the best version of me. With a focus only on our own obligations, needs, and desires, we can rush from one thing to another, barely remembering where we’ve been or what we’ve done, or who we have met along the way. There are treasures of connection and beauty, and opportunities for growth and learning, that we may miss completely in the midst of our rushing about. A choice we can make to help us become our best selves, to open up that wider lens described by Richard Rohr, is to participate in worship. This can give us the time and space to focus and to practice surrendering to what God and the moment are offering. This weekend we have the opportunity to focus on the profound gift of the body and blood of Christ offered to us in the Mass. Because it is a sacrament and a mystery, even when we receive the Eucharist frequently, we can approach it without a lot of intentionality. Writing in America magazine, theology professor John Marten reflects: “Sometimes I find myself in a line-up with a bunch of strangers, shuffling down the aisle in church, and I forget that I am standing with my family on the pathway to heaven about to partake of the body and blood of Christ offered once for all time for the salvation of the world. Perhaps you have walked down that aisle with me?” It seems to me we are all walking down that aisle together. No matter where we are on the journey, we have moments of forgetfulness, distraction, fear, and judgment. It’s so easy to feel that we don’t belong, that we’re not being attended to, that nobody is paying enough attention to us. I imagine Jesus experienced some of those feelings along the way. But right now, Christ is inviting us to let go of our ideas about finding happiness on our own. He is inviting us to allow him to transform us through our participation in the Eucharist. May our sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ together nourish our friendship with God and with each other. ~Fr. Thom Take your next step: Spend some time reflecting on how Christ may be working to transform you through the Eucharist, on what choices help you to become the best version of yourself and what choices do not. Identify one thing you will say yes to this week, and one thing you will avoid, to help you become the best version of yourself. Consider offering these choices to Christ when you hear the words “the Body of Christ” and respond “Amen.” This Sunday we celebrate the solemn feast of the Most Holy Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is not easy to grasp and certainly falls into the category of a mystery of our faith. Central to this mystery is relationship. Our God is a community of persons. Whether you think of the persons of the Trinity as Father-Son-Spirit, Creator-Redeemer-Sanctifier, or Lover-Beloved- and the Love between them, the three persons of the Holy Trinity are one God, and they exist in perfect union with one another. Most of us, I suspect, learned at an early age that we are made in the image and likeness of God. If then, this is true, we are meant to be relational and to seek unity with God and with one another. We have heard repeatedly throughout the Easter season, which ended with Pentecost last Sunday, Jesus’s instruction: “Love as I love you.” In Jesus’s teaching, preaching, healing, and forgiving, he consistently sought to unite himself with the persons he encountered and to restore them to union with God. Even when he chastised the disciples or the Pharisees, Jesus was loving them in a way that sought to draw them into union with him. As baptized Christians, we have been incorporated into the relational life of the Trinity and share in the mission of Christ. What are the implications of this? Just as Jesus’s mission focused on drawing those on the margins closer to him; so too, we are charged with reaching out and responding to those who are separated from the Church, those who have become discouraged and disenfranchised. Last week Rachel quoted Pope Francis in her column saying that “we can fear to lose the saved and we can want to save the lost.” That fear can paralyze us by letting it take over, or it can be a starting place in our prayer, asking God to deliver us from our fear and strengthen our resolve to follow in Christ’s footsteps, seeking those who are absent from our midst. Our incorporation into the life of the Trinity and our sharing in the mission of Jesus—that all may be one—make perfectly clear what choice we must make. Let us not fall short of the goal of living out a love based in union with God that seeks to draw others to Christ. Let us make room not only in our benches in church but in our hearts for those who have left us for any reason in the past. As Jesus told us that he was leaving to prepare a place for us, let us prepare a place for our brothers and sisters. Let us put aside the fear that impedes our attempts to make disciples of all people. ~Sr. Kathleen Take your next step: Each day for the next month (or year—whatever it takes!), ask God to give you the courage to reach out to someone you know who has left the Church, to welcome them to join you at Mass. This Sunday we celebrate Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. Birthday celebrations often seem especially significant or poignant when we are at a turning point in our lives--when we’re about to graduate or have a child or make a big move, or when we are facing a serious illness or grieving a loss. Pentecost this year seems especially poignant and significant because our Church, locally and globally, is at a turning point. Both in our own local community and in the universal Church, through the leadership of Pope Francis, we are asking ourselves some big questions: Why does the Church exist? What is the purpose of the Church? More and more it seems that, although there are many ways of answering these two questions, there are two basic approaches: One is that the Church exists primarily to serve the needs of its members. The other is that the Church exists primarily to reach out to and connect with nonmembers. It is essentially a question of priority, not an either/or. Is the faith community’s first responsibility to those who are already within its walls, or to those who are still outside of them? It seems clear that if a church does not address this question in an intentional way, the default position will be to serve the needs of those who are already within the community. As Paulist Fr. Robert Rivers puts it: “The people we need to reach out to are not around to tell us what their needs are. The people who don’t feel welcome aren’t present to tell us why. The poor who don’t feel at home in our church simply remain on the margins.” A difficulty arises, in Jesus’s time as in our own, when religious people feel threatened by efforts to reach out to irreligious people. The sentiment often emerges that their gain must be our loss. But in the logic of Christ, we only stand to gain when we share with others the gift of faith that we have been freely given. On February 15th of this year, Pope Francis gave a homily addressing these two basic possibilities for the essential orientation of the Church, inward and outward. The homily was based on Jesus’s healing of lepers and the way that the authorities often responded to such acts of healing with outrage and suspicion. “There are two ways of thinking and of having faith: we can fear to lose the saved and we can want to save the lost. Even today it can happen that we stand at the crossroads of these two ways of thinking. . . . The way of the Church is precisely to leave her four walls behind and to go out in search of those who are distant, those essentially on the ‘outskirts’ of life. It is to adopt fully God’s own approach, to follow the Master who said: ‘Those who are well have no need of the physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call, not the righteous but sinners’ (Lk 5:31-32). In healing the leper, Jesus does not harm the healthy. Rather, he frees them from fear. He does not endanger them, but gives them a brother. . . . [T]his is the ‘logic,’ the mind of Jesus, and this is the way of the Church. Not only to welcome and reinstate with evangelical courage all those who knock at our door, but to go out and seek, fearlessly and without prejudice, those who are distant, freely sharing what we ourselves freely received.” Here in the New Roads Catholic Community, we stand at a crossroads, too. What will our priority be? Are we going to be a church that fears to lose the saved, or are we going to be a church that wants to save the lost? ~Rachel Take your next step: Set aside a few minutes when you can listen to God. Read Luke 15:1-7 (or even just one verse, Luke 15:4--“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?”) several times, and notice what strikes you about this passage and what feelings emerge in reading it. We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us." 1 John 4:16 The whole gospel for this week is made up of words of prayer that Jesus offers for his disciples and the community of his followers. When I think of all the ways that Jesus was an example for us of how to live and how to become all that we are created to be, I don’t often think about his prayer for us. So as I reflect on those words from the second reading for this Sunday from the first letter of John, I realize that I am still coming to know and to believe in the love God has for me. It becomes so much more real when I recognize the ways that Jesus put his love into action. I am reminded of the things I can do to show my love and care for others. I can see a clear path to growing to my full potential.
God’s love and care for us extend to every dimension of our lives. It is most apparent in the many blessings I receive every day, although my vision is often obscured by the challenges and problems I encounter every day. So I decided that a first step to motivate me to put my love for others more into action is to stop to literally count my blessings. At the 4 p.m. Mass on Saturday evening, I was blessed by the presence of one of the surest signs of God’s love in my life: my mother. For me the blessing was magnified by the thoughtfulness of my brother and sister who brought her, realizing how much she would want to attend Mass with me for Mother’s Day, and also how difficult it would be for me to make that happen on a busy weekend. That’s three big blessings right there! It makes me realize I can spend more time thinking about how I can facilitate people getting together with people they love when I have the time to invite and transport them. On Sunday, I was blessed by the many devoted parents who brought their children to receive the Eucharist for the first time. They had participated in our Eucharist workshops and taken responsibility to help their children grow in faith and be ready for this important step in their faith journey. They showed such love and attentiveness to their children, and the joy of the event was contagious. I realize I am losing count of my blessings already! It makes me realize I can spend more time and attention looking for opportunities to help others grow, to participate with them in activities that support that growth, not only in faith but in all the ways people strive to reach their full human potential. That same morning, several people took the time to seek me out to tell me that they had enjoyed the Mass and commented on aspects of the experience of worship. It was a real blessing that people took the time to encourage me in my work. It is so easy to be your own worst critic. More blessings! It makes me realize I need to look for ways to encourage people who do things that I appreciate and value and encourage them with affirmation. Along the same lines, a gentleman sought me out after Mass to thank me for visiting with him and his wife and for praying and celebrating the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick with them. His wife had since died, and he wanted me to know how meaningful and important the experience had been. One more big blessing for me! It made me realize how important it is to tell people when they have made a difference and to thank them. ~Fr. Thom Take your next step: Count your blessings! As you reflect on the ways you have been blessed, think of ways you can be a blessing to others in the ways that you have been blessed this week. How many times have you heard the suggestion made—whether in a homily, or at sacramental preparation programs for baptism, Eucharist, or confirmation—to pray regularly? I know I have heard the suggestion a lot and made the suggestion as well. But, I haven’t often heard how to go about it. Apart from taking the time to say prayers that someone else composed, how else might we go about praying to God? It is simpler than you might think. Consider prayer a conversation with God, one in which you share with the one who loves and cares for you more than any other what you are thinking, feeling, and experiencing in the dailyness of life. The words from Matthew’s Gospel—“Come to me!”—are an invitation to each one and all of us from God, to be with him and receive the refreshment and grace we need. Begin by finding a quiet comfortable space within which to pray. Let this become your sacred space, setting it off by lighting a candle and perhaps playing some soft, quieting instrumental music. Pay attention to how you feel as you begin your time of prayer. Are you agitated? Confused? Thankful? Full of optimism and energy? Hopeful? Hurt? Lonely? Fatigued? Peaceful? Looking for guidance or direction? Spend a few moments thinking about what you might be looking for during this time in prayer. Begin to share with God what you feel and what you hope for during this time. Then take a few moments of quiet before reading a passage of scripture. You could read the Gospel of the day, or some people might decide to read sequentially a particular book of the Bible, for instance, the Gospel of Mark. Some texts lend themselves more readily to imaginative prayer than others do. For example, suppose you choose to read Mark 8:22-26, the story of the blind man of Bethsaida. Picture the scene. You may choose to be an observer of what is going on, or perhaps you see yourself as the blind person needing healing, or you are one of the group of people that led the man to Jesus. Let your imagination go, and have the story unfold. Perhaps the friends are eager and persistent in their request of Jesus to restore his vision, or maybe the blind person wants to speak his own mind. Imagine what Jesus is saying or doing before the man has his sight restored. How might you respond? Before you end your time of prayer, notice once again how and what you are feeling. Has your affect changed? Did you gain any insight? Spend some time sharing your feelings with God, and remember to thank God for any graces you may have experienced. A final step in your prayer could include taking the time to recount briefly in a journal what happened during your time of prayer. For example, having prayed with the passage about the blind man’s healing, you may note: “I came to prayer feeling disturbed and unsure how to see a situation in my family life. I asked God to give me the insight I need to deal with the situation. Having witnessed that it took two times laying hands on the blind man before he was healed, I realized that God was letting me know that it may take more time and effort for me to resolve the situation that had me disturbed. With that awareness, I found myself more relaxed and peaceful than when I began. Thank you, God, for once again helping me to see more clearly.” There are many ways we can enter into a prayerful, life-giving relationship with God. This is one way that has a long history of helping followers of Jesus grow closer to him and helping us to notice the ways in which God communicates with us. Try it. You might really like it. ~Sister Kathleen Take your next step: At least twice this week, engage in imaginative prayer. If you are looking for a place to start, try reading about the cleansing of the leper in Matthew 8:1-4 or the call of Simon in Luke 5:1-11. Pay attention to the ways that Jesus responds to you as you tell him what you are feeling and what you hope for from him. The church throughout all Belmont, Watertown, and Waltham was at peace. Well, OK. The Scriptures don’t actually say “Belmont, Watertown, and Waltham.” Technically the passage says “Judea, Galilee, and Samaria.” That’s who St. Luke was writing to and about, so of course those are the areas he mentions. But we believe that the Word of God is alive and active, speaking to us and our situation today just as surely as it spoke to the earliest Christians. We recognize in this description what God also desires for our community--God wants us to be at peace and consoled by the Holy Spirit, to be built up and growing in numbers, to be worshipping God in all that we do--and we trust that God is present among us, actively working to bring about his vision. It is up to all of us together to try to understand God’s vision, and to recognize what God is currently doing in our community to bring about that vision, so that we can cooperate with God’s action and try not to get in God’s way! One large part of understanding God’s vision for our community is looking at why we exist as a community at all. Like all the other collaboratives formed by Disciples in Mission, the pastoral plan for the Archdiocese of Boston, our collaborative’s purpose is to help our two parishes become better at two things: 1) reaching those who have become disconnected from the Church, and 2) helping those who are already connected to grow as intentional disciples. From the local level to the global level under the leadership of Pope Francis, our Church has been growing in recognition that we must take seriously Christ’s call to seek the lost and to make disciples. There are so many pieces to figuring out what this means on the local level--how will our partnership actually help St. Joseph and St. Luke to respond to Christ’s call more effectively? From worship to sacraments to service to communications, there are so many ways that working together can help our two parishes reach more people and help more people grow, and we have a long way to go in figuring out all the details. One thing that became clear early this year was that the working name for our partnership, “Saints Joseph and Luke Collaborative,” would not help us to reach people who had become disconnected from the Church, who knew of the existence of either St. Joseph Parish or St. Luke Parish but were convinced that Catholic churches had nothing to offer them. In considering this, we were particularly struck by these words from Pope Francis in his September 2013 interview in America magazine: “Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent. The ones who quit sometimes do it for reasons that, if properly understood and assessed, can lead to a return. But that takes audacity and courage.” That is exactly what we feel God is calling us to be: a community that finds new roads, new ways of reaching out. We chose the name New Roads Catholic Community (and accompanying logo) for our partnership as a way of signaling this new perspective to those who have become disconnected from the Church--that perhaps there is more to the Catholic Church than they think there is; that if they give us another look, they will find that we have something more relevant and meaningful to offer than they had previously imagined. Our name also signals something important to those of us who are already actively participating in the life of our community: each of us is called to new roads on our individual journey of faith; we are all called to growth and discipleship.
Yes, using a new name and logo takes some getting used to, but as Pope Francis says, journeying down any new road takes audacity and courage. We will have many new roads to travel together as we try to bring about God’s vision of growth for our community, but we are confident that God will be with us. ~Rachel Take your next step: Spend a few minutes reflecting on Pope Francis’s call for “audacity and courage.” As a member of the New Roads Catholic Community, what step might you take to reach someone who has become disconnected from the Church, to help someone grow as a disciple, or to grow as a disciple yourself? Ask God to give you the gifts of audacity and courage to take this step. Why have we been offering message series? In recent months, we have shared three- and four-week message series on God’s invitation to relationship, how people come to know Jesus, and why we choose to follow Christ. As we continue to grow and move forward, we thought it would be important to have a conversation with the community about why message matters, what we hope to accomplish by focusing so intentionally on message, and where we hope to go with message in the future. Pope Francis said, “We know that the faithful attach great importance to it [the homily], and that both they and their ordained ministers suffer because of homilies: the laity from having to listen to them and the clergy from having to preach them! It is sad that this is the case. The homily can actually be an intense and happy experience of the Spirit, a consoling encounter with God’s word, a constant source of renewal and growth.” Since renewal and growth are exactly what our Church needs, we need to be intentional about our focus on the power of God’s word. It provides an amazing opportunity to help people reconnect to faith, and to challenge all of us to grow and change. What do we hope to accomplish by focusing intentionally on message? We believe that meaningful worship experiences are key to helping people encounter Christ and become more intentional disciples, and that a relevant message is one of the most important elements of a meaningful worship experience. One of our major goals is to make the experience of Mass more relevant and engaging, especially for anyone who has become disconnected from the Church, but who is open to making a new connection. Message is particularly important for those who do not yet have a full appreciation for the meaning of the Eucharist—it can help people find a sense of meaning and belonging, to reconnect and grow in relationship with God. But message is also important for those who are further along on their journey—it is one of the most effective ways that committed disciples are challenged to grow and change. Connecting themes and ideas from week to week builds awareness that the spiritual journey is continuous, that growing in faith is a process, and that the new steps we take are built on the foundations of our previous experiences. When a community has a shared focus, guided by the readings we hear at Mass, and the message is reinforced in the prayers, in the bulletin, on our blog, and reflected in our worship environment, this facilitates conversation and supports the growth of members at every age level and at every stage of the faith journey. Message is a starting point, intending to feed the conversation and growth that leads people to strive for their full potential. That’s what the Church is for! Anything important is not easy, and we have a long way to go. We want to offer message series throughout the year, consistent messages at each Mass on the weekend, and age-appropriate messages to the children in Kids’ Church that are based on the adult message for the week, to facilitate conversation in families. We have been experimenting with different ways to focus intentionally on message, and as with anything new and experimental, some things have been effective and successful, and some haven’t. We will continue to learn, make adjustments, and experiment with message, and we welcome and invite your participation in this process. Our strong belief in the power of God’s transforming word inspires us to continue to find ways to incorporate message into engaging and relevant experiences of worship. ~Fr. Thom Take your next step: Spend a few minutes praying with this week’s message and the whole Glimpse message series if you have time. What do you remember about this message? Was there a certain part that touched you? Did it invite any change in your life?
One of our goals at New Roads is to offer a relevant, engaging message each week, and to connect the message from one week to another in a way that helps people to grow as disciples and facilitates conversation in the community. On Easter we began a new four-week message series, Glimpse, about learning to recognize the ways we have actually experienced the Resurrection ourselves. As we plan for future message series and work to discern what messages our community most needs to hear, it would be really helpful to hear from you--what message series topics do you think would most help you to take your next step? We invite you to fill out a one-question survey that lists ten message series topics we are considering for the coming six months. We are grateful for your participation!
~The New Roads Leadership Team Click here to view the survey in a new browser window. Questions? E-mail Kathy O'Leary. As we continue to reflect on the joy of celebrating Easter, we are so grateful for what so many amazing members of our community did as we came together for worship during Holy Week and Easter. We are astounded by the number of people who pitched in, and we are sure that we don’t even know about everyone who helped! We feel that it’s really important for us as a community to pause for a moment after such a big celebration, both to thank all those who helped, but also to reflect together on why we poured so much time, energy, and effort into these liturgies.
From the music ministers, altar servers and masters of ceremonies, lectors, Ministers of the Eucharist, greeters, and the many who contributed to decorating our worship spaces, to the volunteers who coordinated Kids’ Church, the teens who provided the Living Stations of the Cross, and those who coordinated screens and projectors, there were so many people who worked to make our parishes warm and welcoming and helped us create meaningful experiences of worship for people of all ages, wherever they might be on their faith journey. As we prepared for Holy Week and Easter, we saw various members of our community doing amazing things:
Striving to become a growing community of growing disciples has meant combining our two parishes for worship during the Triduum, enabling us to use all our resources to create meaningful worship experiences; providing age-appropriate worship experiences for children at Kids’ Church through our Tiny Disciples and Children’s Liturgy of the Word; experimenting with different music to help us come up with a clear vision for music as a component of worship; and using a collaborative name and logo, a new Web site, and social media to reach out to people who may think they know what St. Joseph or St. Luke parishes are all about, but may give the New Roads Catholic Community a try. The New Roads Catholic Community exists to offer experiences of worship, welcome, and conversation through which people can encounter God and grow in their relationship with God. We can only do this through the work of our members, so we thank those of you who served during Holy Week and Easter, and invite those who have not yet served in an active role to take that next step. ~The Pastoral Service Team Take your next step: Reflect back on your experience of Holy Week and Easter at New Roads. Was there something that stood out to you? Something that sparked your interest or curiosity? Something that made you think: I could help with that, or I have an idea to make that better? Spend some time reflecting on how you might want to serve in our community. Try bringing that reflection to prayer. Whether you aren’t sure how you want to serve, or you know exactly what you’d like to do, reach out to any member of the Pastoral Service Team to learn more about how to get involved. |
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