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Fr. Matt’s Homily from 11/8/2020 - RMC Announcement
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You know that, prior to the pandemic, I was preaching all the Masses about every 6 weeks as a way of setting forth our new vision and mission while guiding us in the beginning steps of parish renewal. This is another one of those weekends.
But this weekend was chosen for a specific reason. As we are sitting here a very important message went out to the entire parish. I received a call from Bishop Bartosic, the bishop of our vicariate, letting me know that we are beginning the Renew My Church process. In the lingo of the diocese, our grouping has been activated. I have been telling you that this was expected to happen in January 2022, so this is over a year early. That difference is due to the pandemic. I want to try and help you understand what this means, what it doesn’t mean, and what we expect the next steps to be.
As a reminder, we will journey through this process with 5 other parishes: Our Lady of Hope in Rosemont, Paul of the Cross and Mary Seat of Wisdom in Park Ridge, and St. Juliana and Immaculate Conception in Chicago.
Renew My Church is a strategic initiative of the Archdiocese to renew parishes in Cook and Lake counties. For us to be activated means we will begin to discuss possible structural, operational, and ministerial changes to the 6 parishes in our grouping.
This is a hopeful time for the Catholic Church in our area, and we should be looking forward to the ways the Holy Spirit will transform our parish to be more effective in the evangelizing mission of the Church. For our community, Renew My Church is not a foreign reality. The past year-and-a-half has been packed with significant strides in our movement towards renewal. Our new vision and mission have received incredibly positive attention from the Archdiocese and beyond; our beginning conversations on evangelization and the establishment of our Pope St. John Paul II Fund for the New Evangelization are positive signs; our restructuring of parish leadership to better serve the mission of the Church is a necessary change for every parish; all of these moves are tremendously important and continue to receive significant support from outside the parish. In fact, we are only one of four parishes that have been allowed to start what is normally the last part of Renew My Church – the part that focuses on vision and mission – prior to the activation of the whole grouping. Thankfully, the purpose of Renew My Church is something that most in our community have already wholeheartedly embraced. And, for those of you that have embraced it, thank you. Thank you for investing in our community in a way that takes the hard work of the past 60 years and places it at the service of the next 60.
As Catholics, we know that the Gospel is both encouraging and challenging. Because of that, as an initiative growing from the Gospel, Renew My Church will also challenge our community. Undoubtably, we will learn how our parish does not measure favorably in terms of financial giving and stability. We will learn that there are significant issues with our facilities, and that some differed maintenance is now becoming critical. And we will probably be invited to reflect on why, over the course of the past 8 years, so few people have become Catholic through our Church and we have had so few vocations arise from our community.
Now we shouldn’t shy away from hearing that and whatever else Renew My Church presents us with - in fact I am thankful for the ways we will be challenged because I know the Lord must bring these things to light so that He can heal them. I know our God is a God of freedom, and that He longs to free our community from anything that inhibits us from sharing the Gospel message with the whole world.
Even though it’s just days after we were notified, meetings have already begun for the pastors of our grouping. I am grateful to have the chance to collaborate with these good men as we together reflect on what is best for the Church in our area. In January, our senior leadership team will begin meeting with teams from the other 5 parishes along with a handful of representatives from the Archdiocese. There will be opportunities for our community to learn both about this process, the type of renewal the Archdiocese is expecting, and to provide feedback on potential futures of the 6 parishes. We will receive a decision from Cardinal Cupich around May, and any changes will become effective July 1st of next year. The Archdiocese has no pre-set plan, but it is possible that, 8 months from now, the parishes in our area will look different. Our new website, which we just launched on Friday, will be your source for the most up-to-date information. Look under the “empower” tab to find the page.
You can expect significantly decreased availability from me. I have strived to be available to you, allowing you to book appointments directly on my calendar through our website. In order to properly shepherd a community though this process, a pastor must dedicate most of his time to it, especially during the activation period. Fr. Alex has already expressed his willingness to shoulder an increased amount of sacraments and pastoral care. I am both confident in his abilities and personally grateful for his support. We are blessed to have him here.
Here is how you can help our community move through this process in a healthy way. First, pray for both our parish and the others as we undertake this journey together. Pray that the Lord blesses the other parishes in our grouping with abundance and a special outpouring of His grace. Also, please be supportive and encouraging of our leadership; especially our staff and our senior leadership team. These men and women have and continue to give so much, striving to help our community become who the Lord is calling us to be, to become a community of fruitful disciples proclaiming freedom in Christ. It is also important for all of us to be positive and hopeful, knowing that our trust is in Jesus Christ. I know it’s an easy temptation to yield to, but please avoid the negativity and gossip that have, honestly, already been harmful to our parish. Make sure to hold each other accountable when we give in to those temptations. Today I want to make a special invitation to you if you have been struggling over the past year-and-a-half with our focus on renewal and with our leadership at the parish: Put aside the negatively, put aside the anger and complaining, put aside the distrust and let this be a new start as together we invite Jesus Christ to not just renew our church, but to renew each of our hearts and to set us on fire with divine love.
As we begin this new period in the history of the Catholic Church in our area, the good news is that I’m not in charge (I was worried some of you might clap when I said that). But the good news is also that the Archdiocese is not in charge. The good news is that our Lord and King, Jesus Christ, is in charge. And He is amazingly generous in sharing with us His most Holy Spirit to awaken us to the truth that, for we who are baptized, we are beloved children of our Heavenly Father. If we invest in this process, we will be more ready to engage those who are seeking a God who loves them, to enliven those who hunger for a deeper relationship with Jesus, and to empower those who realize they are called to share the Gospel with the world.
This is not about us or Paul of the Cross, this is not Our Lady of Hope versus Mary Seat of Wisdom. We are Catholic, we are one family united in baptism. We have been entrusted with a mandate to care not just for those in our parish database, not just all Catholics in the northwest suburbs, but to engage all people – Catholic or not. Our God is a big God, and He has big hopes for us. Together, let’s use Renew My Church to let our hopes be equally as big, to let our vision be as expansive as His is, to boldly step into a future where we really begin to understand what it means to become fruitful disciples proclaiming freedom in Christ.