5 minute read
Living Out the Lord's Plan in Our Area Catholic Community
By FR. BEN KOCIEMBA, Pastor
Happy New Year! As we approach the Lenten season, God continues to make His dwelling among us! Though admittedly, it can be harder to identify sometimes in our current challenging times, God still follows through! As Catholics, not only do we celebrate and encounter the real dwelling of Jesus through our worship and prayer, but we have also been entrusted with mediating Jesus to others. Therefore, as a Church, we are blessed by God so that others can be blessed through us. In other words, we are stewards of God’s blessings and dwelling! Therefore, stewardship is essential to our Catholic faith and way of life!
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As we begin this new year, I would like to propose a few focuses for us as a faith community. The first is to practice stewardship as a way of life. I felt strongly through my personal prayer back in the fall of 2019, along with discerning this together with our parish councils, that the stewardship way of life was something we were called to in Little Falls. We have so many people with great faith and with generous hearts that are ready to make a difference! As stewards, we recognize that God constantly blesses us! In gratitude, we choose to respond generously with our time, talent, and treasure. In doing so, we find our greatest joy and meaning when we make our lives a gift! I was so excited in the last two months how many people came forward to do just that. They offered their time during the Advent and Christmas seasons. People volunteered to put together Christmas cards, care packages, along with personally delivering them to parishioners! People offered to decorate our churches, run our livestream equipment, and welcome guests at Christmas Masses.
Growing in the Stewardship Way of Life
In efforts to grow in the stewardship way of life this last year, we did a number of things. We engaged in a comprehensive Tri-Parish survey to receive feedback and know better the needs of our community. We sent out monthly newsletters to celebrate people living the stewardship way of life. We conducted a leadership retreat back in September for leaders in our parish to explore more in-depth what the stewardship way of life looks like. We are continuing to explore the stewardship way of life by beginning our parish council meetings and staff meetings with reflecting on the US Bishops Pastoral Letter: Stewardship: A Disciple's Response. We had a successful campaign to take care of the urgent needs of one of our beautiful churches. This year, we will engage in a meaningful commitment process from February into March where we will be challenged to commit time, talent, and treasure together.
As an extension of our stewardship way of life, we also are called to a second focus. This involves Area Catholic Communities. Bishop Donald Kettler of the Diocese of St. Cloud has called us to collaborate with our neighboring parishes to make a new six-parish Area Catholic Community. As a Tri-Parish, we are called to collaborate with Sacred Heart in Flensburg, St. Stanislaus in Sobieski, and St. James in Randall.
Collaboration and Transition
I would like to recap what has been done so far. Starting in the summer of 2019, two representatives from each of our six parishes were selected to be on an Area Catholic community committee to begin planning for the transition. We met as often as biweekly up to January of 2020 to establish goals with action steps and timelines. Seven areas of goals emerged:
- Religious Education
- Youth, Young Adults, and Young Families
- Worship and Sacraments
- Operations
- Communication
- Stewardship
- Welcoming and Hospitality
Throughout this process, we asked parishioners in our parishes for their input, including ideas for what we could call our ACC. Eventually, “Haven of Mercy” became the name of our Area Catholic Community. We submitted all of our goals to the Diocese of St. Cloud, where they were reviewed and approved. All of these goals are posted on our Tri-Parish website under the heading “ACC.” With the COVID pandemic, our process took a hiatus for several months as we dedicated our efforts to outreach and safety during the pandemic. Currently, we are returning to our planning process. We are adding a year to most of our timelines for our goals and action steps.
We are engaging the ACC planning process because we are stewards of the material and spiritual goods of our families and parishes that make up the Haven of Mercy Catholic Community. We entrust our plans to the Lord, with the Holy Spirit to guide us on our way. We realize that our needs and concerns today are drastically different than even 20 or 10 years ago. We continue to see large changes to the demographics of our area including industry, small farms, and traditionally large family sizes. This is true for our entire Diocese of St. Cloud. We’ve also seen changes to the current situation of the number of priests in our diocese. And, while it certainly would be ideal to have one priest for every parish in our diocese, this is not a current reality.
In looking forward, the Lord has a plan! We seek to be stewards of that plan. We are reminded in Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews: “Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” What Paul implies is that Christ is no less present to us today than he was many years ago to the first Christians! Christ still calls us to live and proclaim the Gospel, and to do so with great joy! We continue to look to the Holy Spirit for wisdom as we plan, generosity as we call forth the gifts of each member, and fortitude that we may persevere in the ordering of our six parishes as one HAVEN OF MERCY Catholic community. I assure you that there will be much communication in the months ahead as we move forward with the ACC process and coming together as six parishes.
As we begin this new year of 2021, we are still greatly blessed by God! Let us move forward with prayer and confidence! May God bless you and your families this new year!
