The Mandate for a Parish
You'll find it in Isaiah
Today’s Gospel is something that we can take to heart. Of course, it has a strange ending, which we do not see this year.
The people grow angry with Jesus when he announces in this way whom he is after he reads Isaiah aloud. He also insults them and they decide to try to throw him over a cliff, that is the part we do not see this year.
That same message from Isaiah, we need to take to heart for ourselves.
Jesus announces his mission. Of course, he is quoting Isaiah where God speaking through the prophet explains to the people who feel defeated after the Babylonian Exile. He says that his mission is to:
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
This is key because this is also the mission of a parish.
Many will say that we have to go to Church on Sunday otherwise we will go to Hell. It is a terrible motive that undermines what the Church actually says. A Catholic parish must be a life giving place where those who feel most alienated and dehumanized come to be experience the life giving grace of the Holy Trinity.
Obviously, some parishes and some parts of Church history have grossly failed in such realities, however, for us we need to take that seriously. Our parish must be a place that is life giving for all.
I know from my own experience, when I returned to the church, the parish I entered in 1980 was a tremendously lifegiving experience. It was St. Charles Borromeo parish in Point Loma, California. What made it lifegiving was the people who participated at Mass from the choir to the parishioners who attended. It there I learned the practice of offering coffee and donuts after Mass.
It was a Christ centered parish that welcomed me at the time. You might say, why wouldn’t they welcome me, I ended up becoming a priest. It is the other way around. I became a priest because they welcomed me.
In my younger days, I was angry at the world, long story. So I ended leaving the Church in my own hometown and eventually I entered the Navy. However, after three years there I started to think of coming back. That is another long story. Now take those two facts together. Angry guy left the Church now coming back. What is he going to look like. In my case, I was dressed in jeans, T-shirt and a jean jacket. I was ready to leave if they told me I was not dressed appropriately for Church. That did not happen and I had a wonderful experience that made all the difference. For me, that quote from Isaiah happened over time.
So it must be for us. Our parish must not just be a place where people fulfill an obligation and it is not. However, our parish must be a channel of God’s grace and healing that transforms everyone who walks through that door regardless of whom they may be. It must be as St. Paul says in Romans 12 a place where people have a renewal of their minds.
It is a bigger challenge here in New England as the liturgy tends to be more traditional. It might explain why the Latin Mass is so popular in the NorthEast. If you compare that to San Diego, you need to know that holding hands during the Our Father is normal in virtually the entire west coast as it was in that Mass I attended regularly in San Diego. It is not as common in the Northeast including New York and the New England states.
The other thing is that to make a parish one of healing means to also build a Christ centered community and in our case of English speakers and Brazilians, which we have here. We all greatly appreciate the Christmas decorations we have here but we also appreciate the spirit in which the Brazilian community puts them.
Catholic parishes should not be what people call gas stations where we go to receive the weekly spiritual fill-up we request. No, Catholic parishes need to be places of great healing grace where everyone welcomes everybody who seeks Christ and we all welcome Christ.
It needs to be a place where people regardless of their history are transformed in Christ and receive the grace that makes them more human and alive everyday.
Such a grace as we see in the teaching happens when the parish is filled with parishioners who choose to be channels of God’s grace. Let us be those channels and let us build that parish.
This also means that we must not embrace the rules more than the grace. We must embrace the spirit of the law over the letter of the law although the spirit is a higher standard. It is where we ask the Lord in this Jubilee year to lead us to become that channel of his grace and love to all who enter those doors in such a way that they leave changed.
Jesus’ remarkable characteristic we see in the Gospels is that no one whom he encountered was ever the same. So may we be a channel of his love to ensure the same for everyone who enters that door and may we all be continually transformed in Christ.
Fr. Robert J Carr is pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Allston, MA
The parish podcast is at CatholicAudioMedia.com
The newest edition of Fr Robert J Carr's latest book is now available. Christ in Our Humanity. You can find it here.