Why belong to a parish?
Membership is more than
being on the mailing
list for envelopes
By Kathie Amidei
Special to Parenting
I met Laura at a neighborhood picnic. We were hovering around the sign-up
sheets for "Adult Dinner Nights" and "Children's Play Groups."
She was debating the thought of joining a playgroup. I'm not sure when the
"Evangelization Angel" visited me, but I seem unable to pass up
an opportunity to invite practically everyone I meet to our parish community.
"Oh," I perked up, launching into my favorite subject. "Why
don't you come to the Mom's Group at our church? It has all the benefits
of a playgroup for your child but, in addition, you'll have an opportunity
to have a little time for prayer and reflection. You'll also have a chance
to be with other women who are raising children and are likely to share
your beliefs and values."
"Well, maybe," Laura said. "I'll think about it. Do you
have to be real religious?"
"You just have to come," I answered her. "Really, there
are no requirements. An open heart and an open mind are a good start. Come
and try it."
"Well, I'll think about it. Thanks," she said, a guarded smile
sneaking out.
This conversation with slightly varied scenarios, locations and names
has been repeated in my life many times over the past few years. I've become
comfortable with the invitation. I really delight in any first step into
a faith community that a person makes. When the person is a parent it is
even more special because I believe so strongly children benefit from being
raised by a loving parish as well as a loving family.
Beyond the invitation, "Welcome. Come in," there is so much
more I want to share, but like any love expressed, it takes time for that
message to unfold. I have come to love being part of a parish community
and have come to realize the priceless value of our faith tradition.
I'm happy to share what I've learned on this journey of parenting but
I don't want to overwhelm my new friends. If they would ask me, "Why
should our family belong to a parish?", I would say, "As a parent
of young children one of the best things you can do for your family is to
seek out a parish community where your family can worship, learn and grow
in your faith."
Here are a few thoughts on parish membership:
IDENTITY
As a young mom, I didn't understand how strongly the culture of our times
could impact my children. Media, technology, diverse moral values are all
too quickly a part of our children's lives. In the earliest years we can
screen much of what our children hear and see. Language, visual images,
television programming, music, personal contact are greatly under our control.
Parents are wise to diligently attend to this screening process until the
time that, with one more tight embrace, they leave us to live in a college
dorm or start their lives as independent young adults.
In spite of our care and concern, however, wise parents also recognize
that the inevitable and important socialization process into the world causes
us to lose some control over everything to which our children are exposed.
Through preschool, soccer, swim lessons, playing in the park, travel, watching
television commercials, and listening to radio news, the diversity of the
world touches the world of our children.
One response is to believe we can create a bubble around our children.
It would be comforting to think we are the only influence on our children
but we aren't. Beyond that, this position, in the extreme, does not seem
in the spirit of the message of Jesus. We cannot teach our children to be
a healing, forgiving, loving, justice-seeking presence in the world if we
reject that world. Simply, rejecting the diversity of the world seems counter
to the Gospel.
A better response would be to build a strong faith identity. We Catholic
parents are offered the strength of a Catholic heritage through our sacramental
tradition, Scripture, ethical and moral teachings and our shared liturgical
life. As a parent, I continue to conscientiously monitor the influences
in my children's lives. I have devoted considerable energy to helping my
children experience and learn about their Catholic faith and heritage.
We cannot do this from our home alone. We leave our home to join others
weekly, to stop our lives and be with the community to worship at Mass.
We note the liturgical seasons and their meaning and connection in our lives.
We prioritize the study of our faith. We spend a lifetime learning what
it means to be a follower of Jesus. We try to contribute who we are and
what we have to the community and to the ways it reaches out to serve those
in need beyond our community. It takes time and energy and focus to raise
a child in a "Catholic culture," its history, heritage and living
tradition. This is not easy or automatic but it has become clear to me I
couldn't raise my children alone. I needed the strength of a living vibrant
community, where together we love and lead our children.
VALUES
The values our children are taught are continually reinforced within
our faith community. Compassion is exemplified by heartfelt care when sickness
or death of a loved one touches us. A concern for justice is taught but
also made real on mission trips where our teens come face to face with poverty.
Humility is taught and practiced in the willingness to serve, connecting
back in our tradition to the willingness to wash feet and let our feet be
washed on Holy Thursday. Joy echoes in our community in the wholesome fun
we share in youth groups and our mom's groups. Forgiveness is taught as
a part of our moral code, witnessed in relationships and ritualized in our
sacramental tradition. The meaning of love is personified in examples like
Mother Theresa. Love is held up as the greatest value and as the measure
of every moral teaching.
A parish offers a community of mutual support for adults, adolescents
and children. There is great diversity in a parish community. We are old
and young, conservative and not so conservative, rich and poor and in between,
strong and struggling, kind and crabby. But we gather around a shared belief
in God who gave us Jesus. We gather together to worship God and to begin
again and again to follow the way of life and love Jesus showed us. There
is guidance in this kind of community. There is comfort. There is challenge.
TRADITION
A Catholic parish opens a door to 2,000 years of a heritage of friends
... leaders, lovers, teachers, saints and fellow strugglers who wanted to
know and follow Jesus. Their stories are our guides. They are available
to us in Scripture and through the tradition of our church. Their spirit
is available to strengthen us through prayer and through valuing the spiritual
journey. Their love endures and is available to touch our families today.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus are the core of the parish
community. It is a map or guide about the truest, deepest reality of how
to live and how to order our priorities in life. In this gathered church
today, through prayer, Scripture, church teaching, and serving others we
come to know Christ and to enter more deeply into relationship with God
who is love.
RITUAL
I could not invite someone into a Catholic parish and not hold up, with
great affection, the gift of ritual in the Catholic tradition. Ritual in
the Catholic tradition has changed over time but it endures in each generation
in some form to help us remember and reconnect us to God's presence. Personally,
it has been the ritual of our church that has helped me feel most at home
in times of joy and helped me find my way home in my deepest despair.
The rituals of our sacraments celebrated throughout our liturgical year
remind us to recognize the connection between the events of our lives and
the love of God. When we baptize each person we are reminded this is a child
of God, to be treasured as a sacred gift. Each time we celebrate the Mass
together we are reminded that God's Word and God's presence in Christ are
the most important nourishment in our lives. Each ritual communicates something
of the eternal into our everyday.
(Amidei is director of religious education and youth minister at St.
Anthony Parish, Pewaukee.)
Parish membership
is give-and-take
relationship
When considering whether to join a parish community we can ask ourselves
these two questions:
What can I give here?
What will I receive here?
In many ways the first question answers the second question. Too often
we ask it in the wrong order. In many years of belonging and working in
Catholic parishes I've never met anyone who focused on the question, "How
can I serve this parish community and its mission to bring Christ to the
world?" who did not feel value in that community or feel valued by
that community. Each one of us has a gift to contribute. Time, music, cleaning,
cooking, teaching, consoling, coaching, praying, encouraging, caring....
What we genuinely offer in service for the good of others comes back to
us a hundredfold.
Does this sound complex? Abstract? In reality it is simply lived. We
become community by gathering to worship regularly, by being ourselves and
sharing our gifts. In the ordinary acts of giving and receiving, "me"
becomes "we." When we wrap our religious experience in human arms
God becomes real in our families and in our faith communities.
Welcome. Come in. | 
chnonline@archmil.org