Mission Matters: June 20, 2017
This week’s “Parish Table Talk”: Lead with the Beautiful; Celebrating ordination; Faith of the fathers; plus this Thursday’s blog post.
Watch for this Thursday’s post:
Locusts & Wild Honey and the Life of the Parish, by Johanna Coughlin, Director of Respect Life Office
Parish Table Talk
• Lead with the Beautiful: When Fr. Robert Barron spoke at the Mid-Atlantic Congress several years ago, he shared tips for carrying out the new evangelization. One of his tips was to “lead with the beautiful“. A new study in England shows just how effective this is with young people, with visiting a beautiful church building being a surprisingly high reason cited by young converts. How are we using the beauty of the Church to reach people young and old?
• Priestly Ordination – an Archdiocesan celebration: This Saturday Deacon Kevin Ewing will be ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Lori in the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. His ordination is a cause of joy and celebration for the whole archdiocese, and a good opportunity for us to teach about the gift of the priesthood. There are videos about the sacrament and about the call and other resources you may want to use to help your parishioners share in the joy of a new priest for the Church.
• Father’s Day and Dad’s role in Faith: The national celebration of fatherhood reminds us of the gift of fatherhood, and for the work of evangelization we are also reminded of the many studies that show the unique importance of the role of the father’s religiosity in passing on the faith to children. One study in 2000 showed that when the father doesn’t ever attend church, only 2% of children that grow into adulthood will attend church with nearly none of them ever becoming Christian. Share below what resources, efforts or ideas you have for strengthening the faith of the dads in our parishes. How are you reaching out to those families whose father rarely accompanies them to Mass or faith related activities?
St. Michael in Poplar Springs will be holding a retreat Friday evening, August 25th and Saturday to discuss our vocation as fathers including prayer, loving our wives, loving our children and charitable authority. Our speaker will be Devin Schadt who co-founded the Father’s of St. Joseph an apostolate that works for the renewal of authentic fatherhood. Devin has also written a number of books including “Joseph’s Way: The Call to Fatherly Greatness” and “Show Us The Father.” He has a talk called “Pure Fatherhood” available on FORMED.ORG.
We made our formal announcement to the parish this weekend on Father’s day. The event is open to all.
More information tied to the retreat can be found at: http://smpschurch.org/church/LEAD
Information related to Devin can be found at: http://josephswaybook.com/ and http://fathersofstjoseph.org/