Pastor’s Letter: November 17, 2024

Pastor’s Letter: November 17, 2024

15 Nov 2024 | Posted by: chadmin

Dear St. Philomena Parish Family,

I hope you all are blessed and well this week! This week, as I was driving to the farm for my day off, I was able to connect with a friend of mine who has been on a long journey toward joining us in the Catholic Faith. I’ve known him for much of my life—he has really grown from someone more on the margins of Christianity to really growing as a man of prayer…to now truly searching for the full truth and desiring to live it more and more each day. He has been striving to learn more about our Catholic beliefs…and just recently shared me a beautiful moment of faith where he recognized how the teaching of Jesus in the Gospel of John, Chapter 6, is present and alive in the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. His faith is really growing rapidly—and I am looking forward to an opportunity to be together with him and his family for a celebration of the Mass!

After having this chance to catch up with my friend, I also was reflecting back on these last weeks and our review through the Five Foundations for our Diocese. I am thankful so many people have been engaged and interested in how they can help us grow. A good number of people commented on the various Foundations, appreciating the opportunity to understand them more—and also hopefully continuing to integrate them more in our prayer and daily living. One of the ways we can practically do that is by picking back up with a challenge from the Eucharistic Revival.

Right before we started reviewing the Foundations, you might recall I mentioned about the “Invite one back” initiative from the Eucharistic Revival. At that point, I asked you to pray for someone who was away from God or away from the Church. I’m happy to say the Eucharistic Revival leaders have put together a guide to help us through that prayer, as well as next steps to take. If you haven’t seen it yet, the full guide can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/EucharistWalkWithOne.

For a short summary, here are the highlights from the Eucharistic Revival website, laying out Four Stages of Spiritual Companionship. These stages can help us prepare and then go forward with an invitation to invite someone back to join us here at the parish.

Four Stages of Spiritual Companionship

1. Identify—Don’t just pick someone. Ask God whom he wants you to accompany on their journey home to the Church. He will point you to the person he has in mind and open doors for the conversations that need to happen.
2. Intercede—As soon as the Lord lays someone on your heart, begin to pray for them! Ask God to remove whatever obstacles are making it difficult for this person to draw closer to Christ and his Church. Pray for the grace to be able to accompany them well.
3. Connect— Look for ways to build a deeper relationship with this person. Get together with them for coffee or lunch. Listen deeply for promptings from the Holy Spirit as you get to know your friend’s joys and struggles. Share with them some of your own.
4. Invite—Follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit. When the time is right, invite your friend to take a concrete next step in fostering a personal relationship with Jesus and the Church. This might mean joining you for a small group or Mass on Sunday.

Hopefully, seeing this layout gives an overall picture of the steps we’ve been invited to take. In the full guide, you will find more practical tips like: writing out a list of names of people you know and then taking that list to prayer/adoration and ask the Lord to identify who you should reach out to. Additionally in the full guide, you will also see some tips for things parishes can be doing together. I’m happy to say some of these are already built in here at St. Philomena. We will continue to look for more opportunities as a parish, including a practical workshop we’ll hope to host in the coming year.

Know of my prayers for this week ahead!

In Christ,

Father Luke