Franciscan at Home

A strong community life within a parish does not just happen overnight. It is not the result of one specific curriculum or event but is woven together over time, creating a vibrant tapestry of unification in vision and way of life. When you enter a strong parish community for Sunday Mass, you feel alive, welcomed, and called to more. People of every age attend, the young and the old in necessary relationship, as a vibrant parish community is often multigenerational and a place people want to “come home” to and be part of. Together, they can weather the storms of staff and pastor changes or turbulent events. A strong community takes its strength from its intricate weave centered on Christ and his teachings and his sacraments, allowing for frays to be mended and the tapestry to grow.

After nearly 20 years of serving parishes, we have found that helping build strong community is our passion. We have seen real fruit not only for those immediately in front of us but for multiple generations. In the January 2022 issue of The Catechetical Review, we wrote an article titled “No Family Is an Island: The Necessity of Community Living,” in which we focused on our personal experience of building a large young family community within our parish. What began as our deep desire to grow in our faith life through a strong community like we had in college became with God’s grace a thriving, faithful community that included nearly all of the young families in the parish. Once you experience the tremendous blessings of full Catholic community, it is hard to imagine life without it.

In this article we wish to engage the question of how to build parish community from the perspective of parish planning. We have been asked by many people in ministry, “What is your secret to building parish community?” And though it would be easier if there was just one great program to follow, book to read, curriculum to buy, or priest to beg to be assigned to your parish, we have found the answer to be intentional work and a slow and steady weaving of the parish tapestry.

“Is it time for Narnia yet?” The beseeching eyes of my seven and eight-year-old students implored me to say a definitive yes. Smiling, I set my teacher’s book aside and picked up my copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In an instant, the children were sitting in front of me, eagerly awaiting the next installment of the seven-book fantasy series penned by C. S. Lewis.

It was 2022. I was on the cusp of leaving teaching to enter a monastery, and as a parting gift to my students, I had decided to read the Chronicles of Narnia aloud to them over the course of a few months. Why? I firmly believed that in years to come, their memories of this series could potentially ignite embers of faith in their hearts or even fan them vigorously into flame. Yes, the language can be old-fashioned in parts; yes, some may recoil at the traditional gender roles or turns of phrase; and yet, there is something so delightfully compelling about these stories. Fans can easily relate, for instance, to what Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware describe as a “delicious” combination of pleasure and nourishment: “Both the dreams of fairyland and the promise of heaven invade the imagination at the same time, baptizing it with wonderful and unexpected effects.”[1]

The Catechetical Power of Fairy Tales

Recognition of the power of quality literature and story in stirring or deepening faith is not a new phenomenon. C. S. Lewis, for instance, attributed one of the keystones of his eventual conversion to reading George MacDonald’s Phantastes. Steeped in rich spiritual overtones, this story features a young man named Anodos whose desire for “fairy country,” kindled upon reading a fairy tale, stirs him to embark on a perilous yet delightful journey through an enchanted wood.[2] Notably, as David Downing outlines, Anodos becomes more attuned to the natural world around him and discovers within himself a “capacity for simple happiness.”[3] From a catechetical point of view, there is an almost Edenlike quality to this. Thomas Howard, for instance, alludes to it when he describes Narnia as the “forgotten country” residing deep in the inner sanctum of our imagination. Similarly, Joseph Pearce highlights our inclination to forget the divine image in which we were made and, hence, the heavenly homeland to which we truly belong.[4] Our natural longing for God and heaven, planted in us at the dawn of our existence, can be easily buried by the clutter and chaos of life.

Fairy tales can awaken this longing within us and reconnect us, paradoxically, with what is truly real. For instance, Lewis found himself enchanted by what he describes as the “quality of the real universe” found in MacDonald’s fantasies.[5] They seemed to prompt an enhanced appreciation of the hidden, illustrious qualities of the world around him or, in his words, “the divine magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live.”[6] This parallels Joseph Pearce’s claim that, far from one’s immersion in a good story constituting a diversion from reality, it is instead a delightful reversion to it.[7] The good “magic” of fairyland, he says, has a sacramental quality: the capacity to reflect heavenly realities to us and provide us with a lens through which we can perceive them.[8] Moreover, one can be both delighted and caught off guard by talking animals, fauns, centaurs, unicorns, and personified trees, and thus more receptive to the truths behind them. If, like Lucy, one of the major heroines of the series, we “see” with the humility and purity of a child, we may in fact be granted a “fleeting glimpse of Eden.”[9]

For adults, however, the many concerns and fast-paced nature of life can stifle our natural capacity for wonder and thus counteract this manner of “seeing.” When we consider, as the Directory for Catechesis outlines, that many sacramental recipients or aspirants have not actually experienced an explicit encounter with Christ and therefore are often unacquainted with the deep power and warmth of the faith, we can ponder the possibility of a disconnect between intellect and imagination.[10] As important as knowledge about Christ and the Church is, it is not enough to recall facts. We need to be immersed in the wonder of it all, to stand in awe of this divine spark within us, the luminous reality of which we are part, and the glorious destiny to which we are called. As such, before the work of catechesis can achieve its desired end of deeper and enduring intimacy with Christ, one of its preliminary tasks may be to unearth and kindle our capacity and natural longing for wonder. One possible avenue is the use of quality literature in catechesis, which opens up a whole world of possibility.

The Church recognizes that every parish community includes members with disabilities and earnestly desires their active participation. . . . Catholic adults and children with disabilities, and their families, earnestly desire full and meaningful participation in the sacramental life of the Church.[1]

The parish is where the local Church lives as family, called together by the Lord, amidst all the peace, goodness, beauty, joys, struggles, and sufferings of this world.[2] People with impairments belong in our families and parishes,[3] and the US bishops in their teaching about disciples with impairments and their families, highlight the essential role of the parish, the local and visible expression of the Eucharistic community.[4] This invitation to think not only about individuals but about the whole parish family is instructive and offers an opportunity to reimagine aspects of catechesis.

Turning to the Directory for Catechesis, we similarly find an exposition of multiple facets of the parish and sacramental life, including emphases on: staying close to families of people with impairments, solidarity, inclusion, shared ministry, and a recognition that people with impairments are not passive but active members of the parish.[5] I suggest that the Directory also encourages us to consider that the above characteristics are to be grounded in a fraternal and deeply personal love embodied in close Christian community—not just on Sundays but on each day of the week and not only in parish buildings but wherever Christians gather. We might consider what such love in the parish could look like through four interrelated perspectives on the ordinary, conversion, friendship, and new life.

The Ordinary

While it may sound odd to phrase it this way, the parish is to be for us an ordinary environment—that is, a normative expression of our shared life as Church.[6] And in that sense, to the degree that human impairment is part of this world, we lose out on some of the richness of this ordinary life when those with impairments and their families are separated physically or socially from the parish, perhaps in subtle or unrecognized ways[7] (such as not being made welcome at Mass or at parish events or being left out of parish planning), and pushed behind forbidding walls of strangeness, to adapt a phrase from Miguel Romero.[8] In contrast, a family unity among Catholics with and without impairments, lived out in the Church and the parish, should be a quite ordinary and usual exercise of faith that simultaneously provides a profoundly attractive witness to fellow Christians and to the world.[9]

Such unity is a striking illustration of Pope Leo XIV’s motto: “In the One, we are one.” Working together as a parish family to overcome some of the social barriers and negative stereotypes surrounding impairment and impaired people is a beautiful mission consistent with the Gospel and the witness of the apostolic Church. The communal tasks of discovering and embracing each other’s gifts no matter how out of sight, of listening closely for new voices of peace no matter how muted, and of dismantling social walls no matter how high can help a parish to flourish as a community of love (1 Cor 12:4–11).

Imagine a parish breakfast at which it goes without saying that some enjoying the food and company need help with eating or with having a conversation. Picture a gift bearer at Sunday Mass whose speech is to some extent inarticulate as a result of a traumatic brain injury, or an altar server or lector who is a regular at the Sunday Mass but sometimes takes him- or herself off the schedule due to the cyclical nature of a psychiatric disorder, or a faith formation team with a catechetical leader who uses a wheelchair.[10] All this and more should be ordinary for the parish.

“Enabling families to take up their role as active agents of the family apostolate calls for ‘an effort at evangelization and catechesis inside the family.’” The greatest challenge in this situation is for couples, mothers and fathers, active participants in catechesis, to overcome the mentality of delegation that is so common, according to which that faith is set aside for specialists in religious education. This mentality is, at times, fostered by communities that struggle to organize family centered catechesis which starts from the families themselves.

—Directory for Catechesis, no. 124[1]

Parents. We rely on them to register their kids in our programs, to attend mandatory meetings, and to complete everything needed for sacramental prep. But fundamentally, we don’t trust them. Oh, we trust some of them. For the most part, though, we assume they aren’t reinforcing the faith at home—and have no interest in doing so. After all, they don’t even bring their kids to Mass most of the time. But what if the way we structure our programs encourages the very behaviors we don’t like?

Our policies and procedures, our attitudes and approaches reveal that we don’t really believe parents can be the primary educators of their own children. Regardless of what the Church actually teaches about parents and the domestic church, we pastors, directors of religious education, and catechists all fail to trust. If we even allow at-home formation, frequently we don’t allow it in a sacrament year. When it really matters, we don’t have faith that parents can do it right.

The Roots of Distrust and the Desire for Control

The reasons for our distrust of parents are many. How do we know that they covered everything they were supposed to cover? How do we know that they taught doctrine clearly and accurately? How do we know that the child received authentic faith from their parents, who aren’t well formed?

It comes down to control, but we often forget how little control we have over what happens in the classrooms on our campus. Even a well-formed catechist with an excellent lesson plan and exciting manipulatives can fail to pass along the faith to every child in the room. How do we ever know everything was covered in a meaningful way for every child? The truth is, we don’t. If that’s the case on our campuses, then why are we so suspect of it happening in our families’ homes? If we ultimately rely on grace to operate in one place, why not in the other as well?

Youth Ministry begins with ministering to young people. Though this statement appears self-evident from the title, it can be easy to forget this simple truth. As youth ministers, our time is often divided between writing lesson plans, answering emails from parents, developing programs and Bible studies, ordering pizza, and a host of other logistical and administrative tasks. But youth ministry is first and foremost about discipling young people—accompanying them on their journey toward Christ. In order to do this, we need to minister to their needs.

There is an old adage that goes, “teens don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” If we want to lead young people closer to Jesus, we need to begin by being attentive to their corporal and spiritual needs and ministering in those areas. In this article we’ll be focusing specifically on young people’s need for community, including practical steps we can take as youth ministers in ministering to this need.

Why Young People Need Community

In 2023, The US Surgeon General’s office released a public advisory titled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. This eye-opening report documented some concerning trends in our country. As a whole, we are spending far less time socially connected to others in a meaningful way. Participation in community organizations has gone down drastically, with many young people opting for gathering virtually rather than in person. Unfortunately, these lower-quality interactions simply cannot meet young people’s need for meaningful connections with others. Social media, despite its name, can negatively impact young people socially and lead to greater feelings of isolation.[1]

Social media isn’t the only factor contributing to this; overscheduling extracurricular activities, smaller families, the pandemic, and a host of other sociological factors certainly play a role. As people who minister to young people, the question we have to ask ourselves is: what are we doing about this problem? The reality is that we are one of the first lines of defense against the loneliness epidemic. As Catholics, we believe that the human person was made for community with God and with other people. We know we cannot do it alone. Our youth groups and parishes can be a place where young people can experience authentic community, a taste of heaven on earth.

At a regional bishop’s meeting that i recently attended, an animated dialogue took place regarding different catechetical approaches currently employed in our Catholic schools. The discussion was wide ranging, but several bishops lamented the all-too-common absence of any treatment of the “fear of the Lord.” It appears that many texts avoid all but a passing reference to it. What also became apparent is that, in numerous cases, the reason for its exclusion is that many teachers and catechists simply don’t understand it themselves! Many intentionally omit it in order to protect people, especially children, from what they judge to be a punitive focus that is out of keeping with modern religious sensibilities. The teaching is thought to be inherently Jansenist, and they fear its effect on children and catechumens. This is a tragedy, as nothing could be further from the truth.

Fear of the Lord is a critically important disposition of a person toward God. It acknowledges the infinite glory and majesty of the Supreme Being, the One Creator God who effortlessly sustains all that he has created in being. He is mysterious beyond comprehension, an all-consuming fire, at once terrible in power and fascinating beyond imagination. As the Catechism affirms, “we firmly believe and confess without reservation that there is only one true God, eternal infinite (immensus) and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty and ineffable, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; three persons indeed, but one essence, substance or nature entirely simple” (202) and one “infinitely above everything that we can understand or say” (206).

To truly grasp the immense mystery of God’s infinite splendor and grandeur is to be amazed. It is to be filled with deep religious awe. God is discovered as the numinous, omnipresent presence to which every creature owes its existence and to whom they must answer. The Catechism affirms that, when faced with God’s presence, humans discover their own insignificance and recognize God’s holiness (see 208). This is, of course, absolutely true and profoundly important. But it is also where the confusion begins.

In the summer of 2002, I had a health crisis, and left a community where I had been discerning a vocation to consecrated life. Feeling alone, and at a loss as to how to move forward, I went home to my parents to recover. About a year later, my mother developed ALS, and after eight months in hospice care, went home to Jesus. I was still in poor health, without work, and grieving. I could not foresee how the Lord would come to my aid. Then my sister invited me to come to Michigan to help her homeschool her seven children, to a town and parish where, she claimed, the Catholic community was amazing. I had been in many places where I’d experienced rich community and was a little skeptical. But I felt deep peace and even certainty that this was the right next step—at least for a little while.

Six months after I arrived in my sister’s town, some new friends asked me how I liked being there. I answered: “I’d like to be buried here.” I was not being morbid. Rather, after spending several years in Europe, Washington DC, and Canada, I’d at last found a place to settle, to rest in, to belong.

As I cared for and instructed my three very young nieces and nephew, my soul began to come to life again and let go of grief. Through my sister and her friends, I found myself adopted into a vibrant group of Catholic families, most of whom homeschooled. The parents were serious about living their faith and forming their children in it. I looked forward to the weekly mom’s coffee and play group, and soon I was “Aunt Liz” to a host of children.

One day not long after I’d arrived in Michigan, I stayed to pray after daily Mass at the parish, and the grief over my recent losses surfaced. Crying, I was surprised to see a woman I did not know tap me on the shoulder, asking if she could pray with me. I said yes, and that was the beginning of a beautiful Christian friendship. It was also my introduction to a community where praying with others was a normal occurrence. In those early days, I took advantage of all kinds of opportunities for healing prayer, basking in the love and consolation I received.

Because there was no space for me in my sister’s house, I was invited to live with a family from the parish who lived down the street. They became fast friends. The father of the family enlisted my service on the evangelization committee at the parish. We promoted and facilitated new small groups, and soon I was meeting folks of all ages from all walks of life and welcoming them into the community of which I was still a new member.

The more people I met, the more I was amazed by the witness of faith. Funerals at the parish were powerful experiences of hope, and I left them inspired and eager to run the race well. One image in particular remains emblazoned in my memory. It was the memorial Mass for the adult son of a couple who had already lost their other son. During the opening hymn, the father stood in the front row of the church with his hands raised, praising God with full voice. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and yet, his faith in God’s goodness and mercy impelled him to give thanks even in the midst of heartache.

When my wife and I were younger, we would occasionally talk about Family Missions Company. We were fascinated by their model of sending young families to underserved parts of the globe to spread the message of Christ. It is something that we both would have loved to do. However, we also both agreed that it was not where we were being called at that time in our life. Instead, I served as a religion teacher at a Catholic high school near my hometown. Soon, we began to joke that it was pretty much the same thing as Family Missions—we were doing hard work to spread the Gospel to people who seemed to not have heard it before, and we were doing it for pay that really wasn’t sustainable!

Of course, as the years have gone by, I certainly acknowledge that the work done in mission fields around the world is very different than teaching in an American Catholic school. But I have also realized that the analogy holds up well in many ways. The work of Catholic education is hard. Many of the students and parents in Catholic schools really are not open to hearing the Gospel. The pay is less than the “market average” when compared to public schools. Clearly, the idea that Catholic schools are like missionary work is not completely unfounded. Now, as a Catholic school principal for over 15 years, I see more clearly that Catholic education is mission work, and, in some particular ways, I have begun to approach it as such.

In the first paragraph of the first document of the Second Vatican Council we find a summary of the Council Fathers’ goals for their work: “This sacred Council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church. The Council therefore sees particularly cogent reasons for undertaking the reform and promotion of the liturgy.”[1]

As many have noted, these aims have as their clear goal the renewal of the Church and its human structures for the sake of evangelization, both for those already in the family of God and for those not yet part of that family. In keeping with the remarks by which Pope St. John XXIII opened the Council, its goal and purpose was to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ more readily knowable and known by and to the men and women of our age.[2] One might fairly describe the intent of the Council as catechetical and evangelical. That is, it sought to do what it could to enliven the efforts of Catholics to deepen their own faith in the Triune God and to draw others to the same God.

Unfortunately, that intention did not bear its hoped-for fruit, at least initially. As many have also noted, in the initial postconciliar years and decades, the intended fruition of the Council Fathers’ desires not only did not come to pass, but just the opposite occurred, such that, some 20 years after the close of the Council, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger remarked that “the catastrophic failure of modern catechesis is all too obvious.”[3]

Why and how did this failure in catechetical and evangelical renewal occur immediately following the Council? Many have offered answers to this question from numerous perspectives. A recent and compelling answer is found in Brad Bursa’s Because He Has Spoken to Us: Structures of Proclamation from Rahner to Ratzinger. Bursa not only traces the theological origins and development of the postconciliar catechetical collapse to the attempted catechetical implementation of the theology of Karl Rahner, but he also proposes a way forward by pointing to the Trinitarian Christology of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI.

I have had the joy, honor, and privilege of working with adolescents for over 20 years, first as a Catholic high school teacher, and now as a licensed marriage and family therapist in the throes of raising my own tweens and teens. There are several key moments in my formation, work, and ministry that stick out in my mind.

The first was a teaching demonstration I completed in my undergraduate studies. I was preparing to graduate without a clue of what my next step would be in my ministry and career, and as I stood before my peers and professor, I felt deep in my soul the Lord calling me to work with teenagers in the high school setting. A second moment occurred a few years later, during my time as a high school theology teacher. I had a student in one of my classes whom I tried to engage each day, only to have her ignore me or roll her eyes. One day, I walked into my classroom and found her crying beneath my desk. I listened to her cries and gave her tissues to wipe her tears as she opened up about the pain and suffering of her home life. As I sat, listened, and prayed, I heard the Lord call me to work with teenagers once again, but in a new way: as a therapist. Since then, there have been countless hours through the years of sitting with teens, listening as they share their pain and struggles and doing my best to bring light into their darkness and truth into their hearts. I am grateful for the call I have received, and I recognize the challenge that it has been.

I often feel that adolescents are unfairly criticized and misunderstood. They are described as emotional, irrational, uncontrollable, and, at times, an overall nuisance. Yes, adolescents can have big emotions. Yes, they experience uncertainty and upheaval in their lives—even several times in a given day. Yes, they want to go against the grain regularly and question everything and everyone. I believe, however, that the changes adolescents experience in this time of life, specifically in their brain development, are some of their strengths and superpowers rather than their downfall. When youth ministers have a deeper understanding of these changes, along with the obstacles and opportunities they pose, we are empowered to meet, serve, and accompany them better.