This is my homily for yesterday, the The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, aka Corpus Christi. Of course, yesterday also was Father's Day, so it was one of those confluence-of-several-events days which, depending on the circumstances, can be a blessing or a curse for a preacher.
For me, it was more curse this year. I struggled to find a way to tie the two topics together. What I'm pasting here is (more or less) what I preached on Sunday morning. At the Saturday evening mass, I preached an earlier cut, which I found didn't cohere very well. This one is marginally better, but I still didn't love it. Almost no feedback from parishioners afterward, which tells me they didn't love it, either. I'll try to do better next time. On a day like Father's Day, people don't want deep and challenging; they want light and sentimental.
At a third mass this weekend, I did something completely different: I called the little children up to the front of the church, had them sit on the sanctuary steps, and did some Q&A with them about Father's Day, the Body of Christ, and whatever else they wanted to talk about. I'd ask them questions and put a hand-held microphone in front of whomever wanted to answer. I've done this once before, a number of years ago, at an Easter mass, and a couple of other clergy at our parish over the years have done it occasionally. I thought it only went ok this time: I had expected many more kids would be at mass with their dads on Father's Day, but I figured out yesterday that Father's Day is pretty low-key around here - quite different than Mother's Day. However, based on feedback I heard afterwards, the adults loved having the kids take part. Our priest commented that he hadn't previously seen that many people in our parish smiling during a homily. And he got pulled out of the sacristy after mass to help a few visitors register for the parish - not sure whether the homily contributed to that or not, but presumably it didn't hurt.
The readings for yesterday are here.
Happy Father's Day to all the fathers here today.
In my work, we've recently concluded our annual cycle of performance reviews. It's a time for both leaders and workers to take stock: how did we do last year; what will be doing this coming year. During the performance reviews, we also award raises and bonuses. That leads to a different kind of stock-taking: am I thrilled or disappointed with my award? And how happy am I in this role at this company? Is there something better for me than what I'm doing now?
When I was taking MBA courses in the 1990s, one of the little facts they taught us is: pay raises are not satisfiers; they are dissatisfiers. That means that throwing more money at an employee is not going to increase their job satisfaction. At the most, it might assuage their unhappiness a little, for a brief amount of time. But it's a rare person who thinks to himself or herself, "I'm making too much money for the work I do." Most of us feel unappreciated and undercompensated. We work hard, we consume and digest large amounts of stress, we feel compelled to prioritize our work over our own well-being and that of our family, we even suffer in the workplace - and we feel that much of it is unnoticed and unrewarded.
I would wager that virtually every dad here today knows what I'm talking about - and every mom, too. Our parents have worked hard for us, to make our lives better. If we're fortunate enough to be able to see our dads today, or talk to them on the phone, we might consider thanking them for all the work the work they have done over the years on our behalf.
Many of us aren't happy in our work. We long for something better. You may be aware we're in the midst of a great social shift in employment. It’s been dubbed the Great Resignation. After the work disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many workers are not going back to their old jobs. It seems the time of COVID has been a time for many of us to reflect, and many of us have said, “I’m not going back to my old job which didn’t pay me enough and made me miserable. I’m hungry for something better.”
“Better” doesn’t just mean “higher pay”. I saw an article in Axios this week about the Great Resignation. The article quoted an expert who noted that company culture is an important reason that so many people are leaving their jobs. A company’s culture encompasses some of those things I’ve mentioned: is the company which employs me a place which treats me with dignity and respects me as a person? Or is it a place which exploits me, trying to squeeze out the most work for the least amount of money? Is it a place which is going to help me to develop and grow and thrive and flourish, or is it a place which offers me no path to develop my talents and abilities? Is it a place which is going to take my safety seriously, and allow me to attend to my family’s needs outside of work, and take my own workplace problems and issues seriously, or is it a place which is going to tell me to quit complaining and get back to work?
In my observation, when we dads and moms suffer at work, it’s usually because of a dysfunctional company culture. Is it too much to ask to have a workplace that allows us to thrive and flourish? Is it too much to ask that our work feed our spirits? Isn't there something better on offer?
Dads, and moms, have put up with a lot for us. Dads understand that their families are hungry for peace and security and stability, so that is what dads try to provide – even when they have to work very hard and suffer at work in order to provide it. Some dads and moms even uproot their families and move them to another country in pursuit of these good things. In the Bible, we read that St. Joseph uprooted himself and Mary and their little son Jesus, and took them to a faraway country, Egypt, because their home country no longer was safe and secure for them. There are families in our parish – maybe even families here right now – who have come to the United States for similar reasons.
In today's Gospel story, as Jesus’s healing and preaching was drawing to a close at the end of the day, his apostles advised him to send the crowd away. ‘Dismiss the crowd,’ they urged.
But here’s the thing: by dismissing us, the Twelve were trying to send us back to our old lives. If we weren’t experiencing peace in our lives before, why would we wish to go back to that? If we weren’t experiencing justice yesterday, why should we expect it will be any different today?
Jesus had a surer grasp of what we hunger for than the Twelve did. Jesus told the Twelve, “Give them some food yourselves”. He was telling them, Don’t send us back to our old lives. We didn’t come to see Jesus because we wanted to go back to our own lives. We hunger for more. We hunger for something different and better than what our old lives were feeding us.
And something different and better is what Jesus offers us. And not just for a day – forever. Jesus is offering us a whole new world – a whole new life. He wants us to stay in this new life – to stay with him. So please Jesus, don’t send us back to our own lives; invite us to stay – to stay forever. “Give them some food” – give us what we really hunger for, and we will stay.
And that is exactly what Jesus gives us – what our spirits and souls hunger for. Jesus is establishing a kingdom where the Bread of Life is abundant – it's much more than we can consume. That food is Jesus himself. That is what he offers us here – he offers us himself, his body and blood, to transform us. Jesus, thank you for feeding us what we hunger for.
Anyone process on Corpus Christi? The new priest had everyone walk around the parking lot. I presume he carried the Host around, but Raber went to TV church and I did early morning prayer with the Episcopalians, so not sure what that was about. Corpus Christi processions were big in the Middle Ages.
ReplyDeleteI miss my Dad on Fathers Day. He was one of those 1950s fathers, emotionally remote, most likely to show affection by teasing or giving you $10 on the QT when my mother wasn't looking.
As an adult he was more talkative, and I learned more about him as a person, about his feelings as a father (terror), and about his family. It was a privilege to care for him in his final week.
That whole high-ritual aspect of Corpus Christi has never been a thing around here. Our parish has never done a Eucharistic procession - in fact, I've never done one anywhere. To me it sounds like one of those macabre processions from the 2nd Godfather movie.
DeleteThere is a sequence before the Gospel, to be sung or recited, but they always skip that around here, too. I remember doing it once as a kid.
I talked to my dad on the phone yesterday. I guess he's a little on the remote side, too - maybe more so now than when I was a kid. He had a very intense personality when I was a kid. He's much mellower now. Part of it, I'm pretty sure, is his anxiety meds. I hope they help him, but they also sort of "sanded down" the intensity of his personality, and I have to say, I miss that part of him.
I can't think of anything particularly macabre about a feast day procession. They used to be opportunities for the parish and its selected vendors (who would kick a percentage back to the parish) to make tons of money off tourists, who would hang around for a few days of food, fun, and entertainment. Imagine your county fair with packs of dogs running loose and no Port-a-Potties, and there's your medieval festival.
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DeleteFeast day processions are popular in many European countries. Even those that have really low mass attendance- like Spain. A few years ago we were in Dubrovnik during the Corpus Christ feast. Dubrovnik was built during the midieval era, and is very well preserved. So it felt almost like we were back in midieval times while watching the procession around this ancient walled city. It didn’t begin until after dark. There was a definite sense of ancient Christianity in the procession with the candles, chanting, prayers, hymns as they made their way towards the church. If you ever find yourselves in Croatia (a magnificent country to visit) during a major feast be sure to seek out a church or cathedral. The feast days are also official legal holidays.
DeleteJean and Anne, as you describe the medieval processions, they do sound like a lot of fun. Jean, I don't know whether you've seen Godfather Part II. There is a religious procession in it during the climax to the first act, and it is a bit macabre, or at least it struck me that way. But of course that's Coppola's version, designed for purposes of his film, and he used overtly Catholic ritual in all three of the Godfather films.
DeleteWe didn't have a procession in our parish, but we did read the sequence (the shorter bracketed version). The homily was about the feast of Corpus Christi. The priest did do a blessing for fathers after the prayers of the faithful. Then he incensed the altar, the gifts, and the people.
DeleteI like the sequences. There are only three now,; for Easter, Pentecost, and Corpus Christi. I guess there used to be more of them. The one yesterday was the English translation of Thomas Aquinas' "Lauda Sion".
Yes, we watched that just a couple months ago, but I can't place it. Both parts I and II often show Catholic ritual juxtaposed against the code of the Cosa Nostra. Thinking especially of Michael at the Baptism renouncing Satan while his goons shoot a bunch of people.
DeleteIf you have a lot of fancy statues, monstrances, canopies, vestments, reliquaries, crucifixes, censers, and the like, you can have a heck of a procession.
Most American churches don't have anything like what makes for good spectacle, so they trudge in a circle behind the priest in the parking lot looking embarassed.
"Most American churches don't have anything like what makes for good spectacle, so they trudge in a circle behind the priest in the parking lot looking embarrassed."
DeleteLove that image :-). Yeah, we're not really much of a processional people anymore. We're losing the knack for public ritual. Even a graduation ceremony is something to disrupt rather than enter into the spirit of.
Every year, I urge our parish to bless the palms outside on Palm Sunday and then process into the church. They look at me like I'm smoking something which is now legal. We're mostly a private people nowadays, or so it seems to me.
I always honor my husband on Father’s Day. But not my own father. This homily seems to assume that everyone in the congregation had a father who put his wife and children first. Who loved his children and often made sacrifices for his children. My father was not this kind of father. I do not have a single fond memory of my father. My husband is the kind of loving father to our sons that I did not have. I am proud of our sons for many reasons, but I am most proud of them as husbands and fathers. So I honor my sons also on Father’s Day. They have a wonderful role model. But not every child grows up with a good father. Perhaps my experience with my own father is among the reasons I find it so hard to truly believe that God is love. I want to believe it. I have made a choice to act as though I believe it. But, the truth is that it’s very hard for me to really believe it.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest obstacle for me- the teaching that the Father sent the son to suffer and die - to atone for human sin. Atonement theology, taught by the church and most of Christianity, does not paint a picture of a loving God.
DeleteI did think about your point that not every kid actually has a good father. When I gave the homily, I modified it a bit on the fly to say more along the lines of, "A good father works hard to feed his family." On the whole, I don't know whether dads are more problematic than moms, but my sense is, they are. But maybe that's not fair, either. When there is a divorce, it's usually the mom who gets custody. There are resentful fathers out there about that.
DeleteAnne, I can understand about atonement theology being problematic. The agony in the garden can be problematic, right?
DeleteYes - there are many problematic scriptures. You have little faith that people like me, or even Margaret Renkl, experience Gods more closely in nature than within church walls, within formal religion. . My favorite spiritual writers tend to be non-conventional. When I read their work I feel less lonely in my spiritual quest. Today I came across a quote I was not familiar with from one of my favorite spiritual writers - Anne Lamott.
Delete< em> “I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.”
Nature helps me to believe that God is love, at least some of the time, in spite of the Christian insistence on atonement theology.
experience God, not Gods. :)
Delete"You have little faith that people like me, or even Margaret Renkl, experience Gods more closely in nature than within church walls, within formal religion. "
DeleteI do understand that nature can be a window to God - a source of revelation. I just think our discipleship needs to be communal, including communal worship. Of course, communal engagement introduces many new potential issues, some of them very serious, and I will try harder to be sensitive to those - I understand they can pose obstacles that can seem insurmountable.
Betty and I celebrated Corpus Christi virtually at the National Shrine. They always have the Sunday noon Mass livestreamed, but in this case, it was also on EWTN, etc. They have excellent audio and visual coverage. A first-rate choir of cantors as well as organist. They use all of iconography of the Shrines many spaces to enhance the celebration.
ReplyDeleteOf course, they did the sequence. And they had a procession at the end of everyone out the East side and then around to the main entrance where the Sacrament remained displayed just inside the doors for anyone who wanted to adore by kneeling on the shrine's steeps. The Knights accompanied the procession with a canopy over the priest carrying the monstrance. I suspect some of them formed an honor guard inside the door.
As usual in these big time TV productions there was a bishop celebrant. In this case the Archbishop of the Military who presumably lives in D.C. He is also on the board of the Shrine.
His homily was designed to be a part of the role out of the bishops three -year plan to increase understanding and reverence for the Eucharist, i.e., get them folks back to church.
His dramatic opening of a priest giving communion to a dying woman ended with the phrase “we never know when a communion may be out last communion.” My immediate reaction was high out of touch this guy is. A large percentage of his virtual audience was probably like Betty and me, who haven’t been to communion for years. Not many people today receive communion in a hospital or nursing home from a priest. Most of the time communion is from a deacon or lay minister. When my mother was still alive there was a choice between priest and deacon. My mother always said yes to the deacon because he came in talked and prayed with her, but the priest just gave communion.
The archbishop did finally get around to the pandemic and the desire to have us all back in the pews because livestreamed Masses are NOT real Masses. He did not overemphasize the last since the Rector of the Shrine is building his America’s Catholic Church around the idea that there are many homebound people around the country who want a high-quality liturgy, and that there are even people who after they go to their parish liturgy earlier in the morning still tune in at noon for a high-quality liturgy. If Betty and I are able to go back to parish liturgies in the future, we will likely continue to tune in Sunday noon Shrine Mass. Virtually liturgy is not an either or, it can be a both/and.
I don't see the phrase "...we never know when a communion may be out last communion" as being out of touch. There was a day when my communion very nearly was my last. It was the day we were in the car wreck I spoke of previously. We had been to Mass earlier in the day. But I'm glad God wasn't ready for us yet. I would consider having the last sacraments a great comfort.
DeleteI understand the value of livestreamed Masses for the homebound. But O do believe there is value in being part of the physical assembly.
I think that personality plays a big role in individual religious choices. So some prefer worshiping with many people, others prefer to pray with just a small group, or even alone. Some prefer liturgy while others prefer non-liturgical prayer. Some focus on the music. Others prefer silence. Our evangelical friends and relatives are drawn by an emphasis on scripture teachings and lots of praise music. The Eucharist is not important and communion is celebrated only occasionally l You, Stanley and Jim feel strongly drawn to large community worship and the formal Eucharistic liturgy. Jack seems mostly drawn by the Divine Office and other monastic traditions. He feels no need to be physically present with a large group of worshippers. His focus is on the music and the artistic esthetic. I prefer praying alone or with a small group, with an emphasis on silent prayer. I prefer the holy sense I experience in natural environments to the artificial environment of enclosed buildings. Jean seems somewhere in between, not requiring physical presence, though appreciating it, and comfortable with more formal liturgy and prayer. I realize I could be wrong. Maybe Jim actually doesn’t much like the constraints and rote aspects of liturgy and the GIRM, but thinks it’s necessary.
DeleteThe “I” before “You” after “occasionally “ is a typo. Sigh.
DeleteI actually feel drawn to both formal liturgy and contemplative prayer. And finding God in Nature.
DeleteI agree that worshipping in a parish with other believers is what God expects and offers us for our comfort. I have asked Raber to try to make sure the Last Rites are offered if possible, Anglican or RC, don't care which. I yearn for Communion and a sense of community with others, but I have never found much sustenance in any church community. That fault is a result of my own poor social skills. I am attune to spiritual inspiration from literature, art, very occasionally music, nature, and my friends. I can sometimes feel God's presence at Mass if nobody talks to me.
DeleteMy prayer life has been shaped by solitary contemplation found in Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation and his desire to live a solitary life, by the Divine Office of the Benedictine tradition (let nothing be preferred to the Work of God), and by the Jesuit practice of finding God in all things.
DeleteI have been deeply immersed in all these very different forms of prayer and have not felt them to be in conflict with each other. They have all played prominent roles in my life.
I also don’t think these are only forms of prayer. I have found my life to be greatly enriched when others have shared their forms of prayer with me. I have not though my prayer life in all its various forms to be a model for others to imitate other than to say that in the mansion of heaven there are many forms of prayer.
While the forms of prayer that I have practiced are associated with three very different forms of Christian life, that of solitude (desert monasticism), community (Benedictine), service to others (Jesuit), I don’t think that any of those forms of life are superior to one another, or that we have to choose between them (unless we join a religious community) but rather part of the riches that Catholicism makes available through the charisms of religious orders and many saints.
I don’t think that fixed person dispositions plays a large part in either our prayer preferences or our preferences for Christian spiritualities (lifestyles). Rather we are shaped by the experiences that have been made available to us that leads us to the uniqueness of sanctity that is God’s gift to us. Ultimately each of us is shaped by the Spirit acting through both external circumstance and our own interiority.
It's worth considering that the first disciples "planted churches" (as our Evangelical friends might put it), but it wouldn't be accurate to call whatever it is that they founded "parishes". What seems true to me is that, in each place the first disciples went, they preached the Good News, and some people joyfully received it and were baptized. They gathered periodically in 'house churches' to have scriptures read to them, and perhaps other sacred writings (including such things as letters to the community from Paul, which would have been revered but didn't yet have the same scriptural status as the books of the Old Testament), celebrate the breaking of the bread, sing psalms and sacred songs, catechize, and so on. They surely developed a communal life - no doubt sharpened by the need for protection, as they were widely persecuted, not only by the Roman authorities, but also by defenders of Judaism and perhaps by others.
ReplyDeleteWhat I've described here is my understanding of the earliest form of communal discipleship, and in my view, these elements are the essence of it.
I don't claim much knowledge regarding the evolution of the parish, but as an administrative unit, it's surely not as old as Christianity. As I understand it, parishes didn't exist in vast tracts of Western Europe during the period which, in my schoolboy days, was called The Dark Ages.
In our own day, different models of communal Christian life are all around us. The most successful Evangelical megachurches are a magnitude larger than a typical Catholic parish. These entrepreneurial church founders will leverage technology to create satellite sites, remote worship centers, networks of affiliations, and so on. None of these are quite the same as a parish staffed by a pastor but rolling up to a bishop who, legally, owns the property.
Personally, I think it's fair to say the parish model is under duress these days. There aren't enough priests, and in many places, there are no longer enough people. Others have turned into geriacracies with an aging priest and aging staff serving aging parishioners but few younger families joining the parish; in such places, funerals significantly outnumber baptisms and weddings. Many parish schools have closed or consolidated, calling into question the distinctively American parish identity as an education center presenting an alternative to public schooling.
In my view, a forward-looking American Catholic leadership would be looking at alternatives to the parish model - imagining alternatives, and experimenting with some of them. Some of this happens already: there are "liberal" parishes, "conservative" parishes, and other boutique faith communities. The church (actually a chapel) where my wedding took place was a college chapel which had assumed an identity as a sort of alternative parish; adult members far outnumbered the students to whom the Newman Center was supposed to cater.
It is true that in immediate post-apostolic times they didn't have what we we would call "parishes". As you point out, they were persecuted, and were more or less underground. However the parish model is certainly many hundreds of years old, going back well over a millennium. Sorry, I can't work up any enthusiasm for mega churches or boutique churches. I suppose it is a symptom of how fragmented our society has become.
DeleteThey have been having meetings here to try to figure out how to cover weekend Masses in the years to come because we have so many priests aging out or dying, and very few to replace them. The congregation numbers are actually not hurting that badly; there are still people coming, and they are still supporting their local churches. But they are having to group the parishes into clusters to get some kind of coverage. There are copious meetings and copious reams of e mailed published stuff being sent, but moving the " umbrellas" around of who is covering what isn't going to solve the problem.
A side effect of all this is that the deacons are becoming much more busy. It is almost a full time job for some of them.
DeleteWell, maybe someday the PTB will overcome their revulsion towards sex and allow married men to be priests.
DeleteAnne, I think that is what will happen eventually. The logical thing would be to allow deacons to be ordained priests, if they feel called. Would probably mean further education, and I'm guessing it would be the younger guys. People our age probably wouldn't want to do it. Of course they would have to pay them a just wage, which might be a sticking point.
DeleteI don't think that would completely solve the shortage, because Protestant churches which have a married c!ergy still have a vocations problem. But it would help. And might change the culture in some needed ways.
I don’t know about Protestants in general - maybe they have a vocation problem, I really don’t know, but since the small, non- denominational evangelical churches have been closing at a fast rate in recent years it seems there should be a surplus. About 5 years ago the Episcopal diocese of Washington DC actually suspended applications to the priesthood for a few years because there was such a surplus of priests that they had to slow down the pipeline. The ECUSA priests have several years of full time seminary but many of the evangelical pastors are essentially self- taught and are called by their congregations to lead them. There is also a full- time Methodist Divinity school (seminary?) in DC. But, in rural areas with really small parishes, the EC churches have had trouble hiring priests because there aren’t enough parishioners to support the salary and benefits for the priest and his or her family. There is no shortage of EC priests in the parishes in cities and suburbs as far as I can tell - they generally offer good salaries and benefits.
DeleteCorpus Christi mass ended with the exposition of the Holy Sacrament. Eventually, everyone piled out, a few remaining groups engaged in noisy conversation, until no one was left except the deacon and myself. I waited until he removed the pict and placed it in the tabernacle. He gave me a wave as he left, perhaps appreciative that one civilian stuck around.
ReplyDeleteI've never understood the correct response for expositions. Are you supposed to stay for a specific time? Say specific prayers? It's very weird if you weren't raised up to it.
DeleteSometimes it’s really weird for cradle Catholics who grew up with it. Every time I see a monstrance a gold object with rays coming out of it - and people worshiping it I think about Indiana Jones. Sorry - but I do. I can’t imagine what people unfamiliar with Catholicism must think.
DeleteUnfortunately, the "history of the parish" has not been written, largely because there is not much historical paper documentation, and the subject is far too vast and diverse.
ReplyDeleteWe know that after Constantine "Cathedrals" emerged across the empire under support of the emperor who saw "bishops" as supporters of the empire much as "pagan priests" had been in the past. However, Cathedrals were far too small for all the Christians. Many of the large Christian assemblies took place in the cemeteries on the edge of cities which housed the tombs of the martyrs. Again, even these were not large enough for all the new Christians. Much recent evidence has focused upon the fact that "house churches" were the normal place of Christian gatherings for several centuries after Constantine. We don't have a lot of records of these gathering but they were quite likely under the control of the owners of the houses more than the local bishops. And since women played dominant roles inside households (but not in the public arena of the city) women household leaders likely functioned much like bishops, priests, and deacons did in the public arena.
The development of the modern parish system within the larger cities faced not only competition from martyr's shrines, and household churches, but also from urban monasteries of both men and women who attracted people to their services build around the liturgy of the hours. In contrast to the Cathedral hours organized around fixed psalms and canticles, the monastic liturgy of the hours was built around chanting the whole psalter in sequence.
As civic life declined in the West, rural monasteries became the replacement for large landowners and city centered life. Their Divine Office became far more choral as they became economic centers of Europe. At one place in this development, they were estimated to have controlled a third of the land in Western Europe; at one the great Western Councils there were more abbots than bishops! Their monks took upon themselves the Christianization of the tribes that had invaded.
As cities emerged again in Europe a great network of guilds emerged which had strong religious dimensions. These also competed with parish organization of worship. Finally, all the new religious orders with their "third orders" competed with parishes. All the educational and social service institutions also competed with parishes.
The reality is that both pre and post Vatican II American parish models owe much more to the Protestant voluntary congregations than to historical models of Catholic life which was always far more diverse institutionally than the Protestant congregational model.
Vatican II caused a great renewal of parish life here but not in Europe. We developed the ministry of deacons and lay ministry far more than has most of Europe largely because of the voluntary nature of church support in the USA. A lot of Post Vatican II renew in Europe has taken the form non parish associations. Most of them conservative built around personality cults. Francis is now clamping down on them especially on the personality cults.
That all sounds right to me. Parish priests hated the Beguines, who got most of the funerary busine$$ in the later Middle Ages.
DeleteNot sure how parish priests feel about "retreat centers." There are a couple of these in my area. Most parishes have oversized, unused meeting spaces leftover from when there were schools and bingo. These could be repurposed to host retreats and various other money-makers, but the retreat centers are nicer.
The local parish uses the hall once a month, if that, for a wedding, funeral, or fish fry. CCD and RCIA are being done at the sister parish. Not sure if anyone has done a cost/benefit analysis, but my guess is that it costs way more to maintain than it yields in revenue. Probably would save $$ to tear it down.
I’ve read several articles recently about churches using some of their land to provide community gardens. Here are a couple of examples.
Deletehttps://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/create-a-community-garden
I would think that churches could figure out ways to contribute to the overall community by repurposing underused facilities. Buildings could be used for a wide variety of community purposes - subsidized daycare, subsidized after- school care, overnight shelters for the homeless, senior daycare centers, perhaps even a few housing units - separate bedroom suites that share space for tv, recreation, cooking and dining, free or nearly free medical clinics for the working poor who don’t qualify for Medicaid but don’t earn enough to buy health insurance, using volunteers. The list is endless.
Yah, I've given up making suggestions. There is no interest in community gardens, day care centers, movie nights, cooling centers, blood pressure checks, blood donation, etc. Too many old people without much energy. I am certainly one of them.
DeleteLOL, must be nice to wonder what the parish is going to do with all their spare real estate. Ours has to use every last square inch of it, most of which is double or triple purposed. The social hall is also the school cafeteria, also where the K of C meets. And since it is a basement, it's where to go if the storm sirens blow. The adoration chapel doubles as the cry room for weekend Masses.The convent, since there aren't any nuns here anymore, was repurposed as a preschool and daycare. The school goes up to 6th grade, but they added preschool and before and after school daycare in order to retain enrollment. It seems to have worked.
DeleteThe tight space is probably because back in the day the parish was founded and staffed by Fransiscan order priests with a vow of poverty. They didn't waste anything, though the church itself is quite beautiful. But also no wasted space. They could have used an extra restroom. There was no rectory originally, because the priests lived in a monastery off site. A parishioner bequeathed a small house to the parish, and that is now the rectory.
I think parishes in the US are mostly relics of the golden age of mediating institutions in American civic and communal life. Some people *rely* on them, but few see it as their responsibility to *sustain* them.
ReplyDelete