Back in the summer of 2002, while I was teaching at Greenville High School in the Delta, I had a fellowship from the US Department of Education. I studied with a group of teachers in the countries of Chile and Argentina for eight weeks that summer, which was a wonderful experience. A husband and wife from Maine who befriended me on that trip had spent a lot of time in Spain. Several times that summer, they encouraged me to go on a pilgrimage to Spain that was at the time not very well-known. After praying about going on that pilgrimage, I felt the call to go, hiking 300 miles of the pilgrimage route of Santiago de Compostela in 2003. Little did I know at the time that I would later go on the Camino four other times. I am hoping to go many more times in the future. I remember that first time I went, I wondered if I made the right decision about going, since I did not have a lot of time to prepare and I really did not know what to expect on a pilgrimage. However, pilgrimage is now a big part of my Catholic spirituality, something that has really shaped my life.
I bring this up as we prepare for the ALPHA faith sharing program in a few weeks here at St Jude. Perhaps signing up for ALPHA is a big leap of faith for you. Perhaps you feel like ALPHA is outside of your comfort zone. Perhaps you wonder about the type of experience this is going to be. However, as your pastor, I want to encourage you to become a part of this program. ALPHA for adults will take place on Monday evenings, while the youth ALPHA will take place on Sunday evenings. I have heard so many good comments about the ALPHA program we had for adults last winter. There was a great sense of community and a great opportunity to share our faith with each other. I was telling Deacon John that I believe in “BOTH/AND” as a priest, that there are lot of things we can include in our faith, rather than to be closed minded and narrow minded. We have so many ministries and outreach programs here at St Jude that appeal to different spiritualities. We have a Spanish mass, an extraordinary form Latin mass, prison ministry, college outreach, and ministry at the state hospital. We have traditional Catholic devotions such as Adoration, Benediction, and the prayer of St Michael. We try to reach out to all different devotions and spiritualities. The ALPHA program is a part of this effort to evangelize and grow in our faith together, to offer different ways to express our spirituality.
We have heard about the need to evangelize to those who are unchurched or who are curious about the Catholic faith, or to reach out to those who have been on the sidelines of their faith for a while. ALPHA helps us to grow in our own faith and to reach out to others. Bring a friend or co-worker or neighbor or family member to ALPHA: they need not be Catholic or even Christian. Let us open our hearts to the ALPHA program. It is a way for us to evangelize not only in our own parish community, but in the community around us.
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