Tell U.S. Catholic how hospitable your parish is

This month's U.S. Catholic Sounding Board article focuses on hospitality. Even if you don't think St. Thomas is great, (and I'll pretend not to be hurt by that) please take the time to read this article and respond to the survey at the end.

Let’s give a warm welcome
If parishes lose the Catholic tradition of hospitality, they risk losing members.

By Heather Grennan Gary

One place we can and should be reminded of what true hospitality is--and given a chance to practice it--is in our parish.

I learned this lesson the hard way when my husband and I moved with our young family to a new town several years back. While we were sad to say goodbye to our parish and the community we'd built, we were eager to move. And when we met people in our new town, one of the first questions they'd ask was, "Have you found a church yet?" Our answer was pretty straightforward: We were Catholics, and there was one Catholic parish in town, so that was that.

During our first year there, we attended the big Sunday morning Mass, the bilingual Mass, and the Saturday vigil. We volunteered to be lectors, to teach English to Spanish-speaking parishioners, and to help with the parish website. We took part in a reading group and bought SCRIP. Our daughter was too young for the regular religious ed program, but she made the age cutoff for Vacation Bible School, so she went. read the whole article here.

What kind of space do we offer?

Making space literally means what it implies. We have to make room for others in our lives both physically and attitudinally. Just as we make room for a spouse, our children or a sibling to enter our lives, so too do we need to make space for others in our places of worship, and we need to be present to them in that space.

Our "presence" refers to "being" with one another; being truly attentive to them. There is great comfort in sharing our own stories and listening to the stories of others. Making space in our busy lives to "be" with others is what true presence is all about.

Presence comes from an inner attitude that recognizes the depth of the connection between humans, and the connection between humans and God. This attitude must be nurtured constantly in prayer and practice. With this inner attitude of presence, true hospitality becomes a way of life, in every moment of every day. It exemplifies the meaning of the word Stewardship.

In the words of Henry Nouwen, we can provide our guests with “a friendly space, where they may feel free to come and go, to be close and distant, to eat and to fast”.

Are we good stewards of our space?

Reverend Fun - Nice Visit

Reverend Fun - Nice Visit

What Jesus meant....

I’m telling your mother!

That’s right, and so should you. In May we honor our Blessed Mother, Mary, as well as our own mothers, birth mothers, adoptive mothers, Godmothers, mothers-in-law, and any other woman whose relation to us includes the word or action we typically assign to “Mothering.”

And, isn’t it wonderful that we can look to Jesus’ mother not just as our role-mother, but as our role-model? We know from scripture and tradition the kind of woman Mary was: courageous, steadfast, contemplative, and grounded in her trust in God to name just a few attributes. We can also imagine the stories between the stories of how Mary might have acted at other times of her life. In the Jewish tradition, this imagining, or filling in of the gaps, is called “midrash.” At a recent St. Thomas Sophia’s Circle retreat, our presenter Yonah Klem, employed midrash to guide attendees to deeper understanding of the matriarchs of the Old Testament. Another word uncommon to our Catholic vocabulary is “targum,” which without going into its literal usage in ancient translations can be understood as an extended paraphrase of a story, in other words, targum is the story within the story which helps bring home the truths being told.

We cannot know more about the historical Mary than we already do, however, using that foundation we can practice midrash, or employ targum as a way to fill the gaps with scenes of Mary as a young girl learning at the knee of her mother, as an adolescent, sharing confidences with her friends, and later, as a young bride-to-be just prior to being visited by Gabriel with the news that would change the world. It can be helpful to wonder if Mary did “all the right things” when she was raising Jesus, or if she ever worried that she was too harsh, or too easy.

Mary, our Blessed Mother, was a real (albiet truly special), live flesh-and-blood woman. And like the mothers in our lives, we can still turn to Mary for guidance and wisdom. So, go tell your mother...
(SF)

How will you respond, Lazarus?

Lent forces us to consider the meaning of resurrection. Are we buying it, or not? As Christians our faith in Jesus as savior is balanced on accepting and believing he rose from the dead. Let’s not kid ourselves, it is hard to believe. But we do want to believe don’t we? So, we set aside the squeaky wheel that calls for proof, we suspend our doubts…”with God, all things are possible.”

This weekend we will hear the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. The story informs our skeptical minds and says “listen, if you can’t believe this, how can you expect to accept what comes next?”

In recent days, I have been struck by the implicit role of community in each of our own personal resurrection stories. Yesterday, after breaking open the word together at a staff meeting, Fr. Joel challenged us to reflect on where we witness the resurrection story, in personal lives, in the parish, in the people we serve, and beyond.

At my age, I can say I have heard the story of Lazarus a hundred times or more. But yesterday I heard something new in the following passages:

He cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. –John 11:33

Notice how Jesus uses a loud voice when he tells Lazarus to come out. The dead man’s response might be, “uh, Jesus, my friend, don't shout. If you haven’t noticed I am now dead to the world.” To which Jesus would quip “no, you aren’t, you have more to give, now get up!” Jesus' loud voice did not tell the others, “Go in there and help him out,” it was directed to Lazarus, and Lazarus had to respond willingly to Jesus’ command and without help. How many times have we heard the unmistakable voice of Jesus telling us to pull ourselves together and make a change? His voice is quite loud. But we are bound up in our burial cloths. His voice is persistent. But we don’t think he is talking to us.

Listen! We have to respond of our own free will to the incredible, unbelievable, other worldly possibilities to which Jesus calls us.

The next line is even more telling
So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” --John 11:34

Here is the role of community: “Untie him and let him go.” Our willingness to respond to Jesus' call is step one, but it is not enough. We are limited by what binds us: our way of thinking, our sense of purpose, our abilities, or lack thereof, and the ever-increasing limitations placed upon us by others, all these burial cloths need to be removed. Jesus doesn’t tell Lazarus to break free on his own; he tells the others to help him.

And that is all we know about Lazarus. We don’t know the rest of the story. We don’t know what Lazarus does with the rest of his life. It is not important. What is important is what we do.

What are you going to do when you hear the loud voice of Jesus waking you, will you respond? Who will Jesus command to help free you from the burial cloths that prevent resurrection? Will you do the same for another?