Pastor’s Corner — October 20th, 2024
S3 Campaign Update
Bishop Boyea is calling on the entire parish to make a gift to the Stewardship for Saints and Scholars campaign. Your support of this campaign will impact the future of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Lansing and our parish for generations to come. Thank you for your continued discernment and support for this important campaign.
Things are off to a good start. I encourage you to pray the campaign prayer for success of the campaign at St Pat’s and to pray for our hard-working campaign volunteers who are giving of their time and hearts. (Just a reminder–if you receive a call from one of our volunteers, please take the call or return the message. If you received a pledge card in the mail with your campaign materials, please prayerfully discern your gift and return the card in the envelope provided as soon as you are able.)
Many thanks for your generous support!
Preaching Series Update: Week Two This Weekend
Last week I preached Week One of our four-week preaching series on the “Lay Commitment to the Foundations of the Common Good” in which I outlined some of the temptations we face when approaching politics and also gave five things to consider as we vote as Catholics in this election. If you missed it, you can watch it here.
This week we hear about the foundational principle of the dignity of human life, which undergirds the whole of Catholic Social Teaching. Being for the dignity of human life means defending with maximum determination the right to life: “The common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights-for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.” (Pope St. John Paul II, Christifideles Laici, 38) Are we voting to defend innocent human life with maximum determination?
Sharing Your Faith with Confidence: November 20th at 7pm
Have you ever struggled with sharing your faith with your family or friends? What do you say to them that might help them consider faith in Jesus, or come to Church?
This is just a “save the date” for a workshop on how to share your testimony with simplicity and joy with a world that desperately needs to hear it. The “Sharing Your Faith with Confidence” workshop is led and taught by the Priests of our local Parish grouping: St Patrick’s, Old St Patrick’s, Holy Spirit and St Mary’s. I’ll be doing the main teaching. The event will be held at Wednesday, November 20th at 7pm at Holy Spirit Catholic Church. Hope to see you there!
Updating Contact Information
Christina, our front office manager, is asking that if you have any updates to your contact information such as address, email and phone number to please let her know in the parish office.
Healthy Communication with Staff
It has come to my attention in the past month that multiple members of our parish staff have been mistreated by some parishioners. The form of this mistreatment was unhealthy/aggressive communication to staff when they were trying to help some parishioners. Of course, communication is at the heart of good relationships and when there is disagreement/conflict we need to attempt to communicate in the healthiest way possible. Doing so with love can be challenging, but it’s all the more important in our culture where judgmental criticism, gossip, and backbiting is so prevalent.
For a few years now, we have at St Pat’s School our Healthy Communication Agreement that we ask all school families and staff to sign. The purpose of this agreement is to achieve and protect a culture of healthy communication in which people resolve conflicts with a collaborative framework from a place of charity. Personally and directly bringing a concern to someone in a clear, respectful and charitable way to resolve an issue not only is the best way to clear up misunderstandings which are often at the cause of such conflict, but also help us resolve those situations in a collaborative and constructive way. I think our vision for healthy communication at the school has really helped us protect a culture of respect and love in the school community.
When healthy communication is not followed, however, when out of anger someone first assumes the worst of a person and shares their (often false) judgments of people with others in gossip and then proceeds to not address directly the person, people really get hurt. It’s really hard to witness this in a school, parish, family, workplace or local community, especially when people involved are Christians.
So as a reminder, if you have an issue with someone (at school, parish, family, work, community, etc) I encourage you to first take your feelings to the Lord in prayer, give the person the benefit of the doubt, and personally and directly express your concern to the person at hand in a clear, respectful and charitable way to try to resolve the issue. Gossip, passive aggressiveness, or anonymous communication never resolve anything.
What happened was not that serious, but people felt hurt nonetheless. Let’s give each other some serious grace in this time. I just want to remind all of us, especially in this time of tensions in families and coworkers about the election, to strive for healthy communication so we can witness to the love of Christ.
Your servant in the Lord,
Fr. Mathias