As we begin a new year, it is good to remember the three key words that encapsulate our participation in the Renew My Church effort:  welcoming, accompanying, and sending. The words themselves came from our Leadership Group and they have been adopted to guide the work of our Pastoral Council. What lies behind those three words, though, came from you. Welcoming, Accompanying, and Sending seemed to encapsulate the suggestions you provided at our Listening Sessions during Lent of 2021. How can our church better respond to the challenges of the world as it is today? Welcoming is about more than greeting people in the back of church. It is also about finding ways to connect with the increasing numbers of people who were not raised in a religious family or who became disconnected with church once they left home. Programs as profound as Alpha and as light as the blessing of pets are ways to connect with people outside of Mass. Accompanying means providing on-going formation and support beyond Sunday homilies and sacraments. Sending means enabling those who have formed a personal connection with Jesus Christ and his vision for the Reign of God to become actively involved in spreading the Good News. The hope is that these three themes will operate in a circular pattern. As more people become involved in various ministries and causes, the church itself will appear more relevant to more people, who can then be welcomed into the church community.

The good news is that projects are moving forward in these three areas. For example, as a contribution to the on-going spiritual support of parishioners, our Leadership Group is making a series of brief videos on various ways to pray. We may have been taught to pray a certain way when we were young and never thought much about it. But people of faith pray in all different ways. After all, the goal is the same:  opening our minds and hearts to God.

Last spring our Pastoral Council sponsored a welcoming event for those who were newly registered in the parish. Another such event is planned for this spring. Meanwhile the Pastoral Council is looking at another segment of the extended Assumption family that is underserved, those who marry here and those who choose to have their infants baptized here. We welcome members and on-members to celebrate these sacraments here and provide a preparation program for each sacrament; however, there is no formal follow-up after the wedding and after the baptism. How could the church better support couples during the first five years of marriage? What on-going support could the church offer to couples as their infants turn into toddlers? In an effort to learn more about how we could better “accompany” the newlyweds, I set up a Zoom call with six of our wedding couples who remain active in the Church.

What I learned was very enlightening. A yearly gathering for recently married couples would be appreciated. Some kind of presentation (probably in the area of communication), a special Mass, and some kind of social that would allow couples to share experiences informally and to befriend other Catholic couples. These couples told me that many of their friends who married in the Church felt grateful for the preparation program and were moved by the wedding liturgy. They had intentions of becoming more regular at Sunday Mass but never actually got started. This gathering would provide an opportunity to come back to church and enable them to form bonds with others in their demographic who were already coming to church. They all suggested that we need a more active Young Adults Group to enable younger people to get involved. Something that I learned that surprised me was how many of their Catholic friends chose not to have a Catholic wedding because they assumed they would be denied a church wedding or because of a concern that their non-Catholic partner had about the expectations that would be placed upon him or her by the Catholic Church. Most of these perceived obstacles are not actually obstacles at all and could easily be addressed in the preparation process. Obviously  we need to do a better job of “welcoming” engaged couples. I have asked the couples themselves to help with a video that we could upload on our website that would offer prospective wedding couples an inside look at what the process is like and what the expectations really are. This is an important area for us (and for other churches) to address. The number of Catholic marriages in the United States has declined by 2/3 since 1970. Perhaps a larger slice than we know can be attributed to poor communication.

                      Fr. Joe