Sometimes the callings we get in life can be very surprising. Some of the conversions in the hearts of believers have been very dramatic. St Ignatius of Loyola had a conversion of heart while bedridden after a cannonball shattered his leg in the battle of Pamplona. St Paul had a conversion experience that jolted him out of his former life as he is traveling to Damascus, as a light from the heavens appears and as he hears the voice of Jesus speaking to him.
Not all of our responses to God’s call are so dramatic. Some of us here at Holy Savior parish in Clinton and Immaculate Conception parish in Raymond grew up in the Catholic Church. Some of you may have been baptized as infants here at one of these parishes, or had some of your children baptized here. Even if we are baptized into the faith as infants, when we are teenagers or adults, at one time or another, we have to make a conscious decision to continue in the footsteps of our faith or not. We see a lot of youth and young adults leave the Catholic faith and leave organized religion altogether, never to return. We know that it is very easy to go down another road in life, to shut ourselves off from God, to choose another path that follows the values of our secular world. We have the freedom to follow our faith or not, and whether we consciously make that decision or not, we all make that choice in some way.
Our Gospel tells us about two brothers who are making their livelihood fishing; they are casting their nets in the sea when they receive their call from Jesus. We don’t know if Simon and Andrew had previously known Jesus or had heard him preaching before. Some Scripture scholars speculate that these brothers may have been friends of John the Baptist. But, ultimately, Simon and Andrew left everything behind to follow Jesus. It was a radical change, but they realized who Jesus truly was, and this made all the difference in the world.
In our first reading this morning, we hear about another call, the call of Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh, to tell them to repent and to change their ways. The people of Nineveh believed in the message that Jonah brought, responding in a sign of repentance, symbolized by their sackcloth and ashes. God saw their remorse, so he did not carry out his promise to destroy their city.
Bishop Kopacz has called us to a reimagining process here in our Diocese and our parishes to look at the way we do ministry, at the way we evangelize our community, and at the way we reach out to others beyond our community. As we are a part of the Hinds county area of churches, we have eight parishes right now in Hinds county, and also the Carmelite monastery and St Dominic chapel that also offers Mass to the people, so ten different places in Hinds county where the Catholic faithful can go to Mass. Unfortunately, our county has a declining population in general and a declining Catholic population. This is in contrast to Rankin and Madison counties in our area, which are growing. We need to look at how we are meeting the needs of the Catholic faithful with the resources that we have as parishes and as a Diocese. I told the Bishop, however, that our areas of Clinton and Raymond are growing compared to the city of Jackson. And most of our parishioners come from within our parish area, as an opposed to the parishes in Jackson, where many of their parishioners do not come from within their parish boundaries.
These are some of the areas that the Bishop wants us to look at in our parish. You can see that these are areas that we have been working on irregardless of this reimagining process.
OCIA/RCIA
Adult Faith Formation
Religious Education
Youth Ministry
Campus Ministry
Young Adult Ministry
Intercultural Ministry (Including all emerging cultural communities)
Family Ministry (including marriage prep, NFP, Pro-Life, grief support, etc.)
Community Outreach (Ecumenical and other community events)
Social Justice (Care for the poor, animation of Catholic social teaching)
Liturgical Ministry
Parish Council
Finance Council
Stewardship
We are going to be talking about these areas and our plans for our parish in the parish council and in some of the small groups we have in the parish. I want to dialogue with all of you about these things. It is going to be an on-going work in progress, that is for sure, tackling these different areas. But that is what parish life is all about.
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