December 6th , 2009
One Thousand Voices
Last Monday we had a closing celebration with the parishioners who were part of the One Thousand Voices mission. Over a three week period, hundreds of people of different ages and with different cultural backgrounds gathered in each others’ homes to get to know each other better. Out of those meetings came a greater sense of belonging and relating to others. As one participant said, “The only place I ever saw that people held hands at Mass was at Saint Brigid’s. Yet though we held hands, we didn’t know the person we were next to. Now we got to know each other and it makes a difference when we pray together as brothers and sisters.”
At the closing celebration people had a chance to meet even more parishioners, and through prayer, song and witness talks, we were able to celebrate what had happened in our groups.
When the facilitators of the groups recently came together to report on the themes that were discussed in the groups, it became clear that there were a lot of ways that people were interested in getting involved in our parish life. Different members of the parish staff described their ministries so that people could choose to follow up and get involved where they felt called.
But the overwhelming number of conversations in the groups revolved around some aspect of spirituality and we invited those present to consider whether they would like to be involved in developing creative ways of growing spiritually in all aspects of our community -- at mass, of course, with families and children and the elderly and everyone in between. people came forth to put their names in a basket, indicating that they would like to become involved in helping with the spiritual development of our parish in the year 2010.
This is stewardship at its best. It wasn’t that the parish leaders had a need for “somebody to help” in some kind of project. People in our parish are recognizing a direction to go in and they felt called to consider what kind of gifts they can bring to our parish family. How will this all turn out? We’re eager to find out. We’re confident that the Holy Spirit is working through this process to bring us closer to God and to one another.
