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LIFT Links: Holy Week and Easter Traditions

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment
Icons of Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter

I’ve been a little lax on LIFT Links lately (that’s a lot of Ls) — and now, as we’re headed into Holy Week and the Easter Season, I need to make up for lost time.

First, the basics. Until I met and married Jodi, I was vaguely aware that Palm Sunday was the Sunday before Easter, the Good Friday was the Friday before, and Easter was a pretty big deal–right up there with Christmas. At some point early in our relationship, my bride informed me that her family attended Mass at least three (and sometimes four or more) times during Holy Week, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. As I’ve said more than once, they went to church on days I didn’t know church was open!

St. Liborius Catholic Church, Polo, SD

Jodi’s family, and many of the other parishioners at St. Liborius Catholic Church in Polo, SD, went to church at every opportunity during the Holy Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, and morning Mass on Easter Sunday. Today, our family goes on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and either Holy Saturday or Easter Sunday. It’s a beautiful way to enter into that period of uncertainty and darkness, then light and joy, that Jesus’s disciples experienced between the Last Supper and Christ’s Resurrection.

One more thing before I share some links: attending Mass on every Sunday and all Holy Days of Obligation is one of the five Precepts of the Catholic Church — the minimum requirements to be a practicing Catholic. Receiving Holy Communion is not required every Sunday, however, receiving Holy Communion at least once during the Easter season (which is Easter Sunday through Pentecost Sunday) is required. Receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation once a year is also one of the precepts — and since being cleansed of all serious sins is required to receive Our Lord worthily, Lent is a great time of year to get to Confession so you can receive Holy Communion at Easter.

Now, some links:

Have a blessed Holy Week and Easter, friends!

Call—and Response

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment
Given March 11, 2015

I spent two days in St. Paul last week, training to become a VIRTUS facilitator. VIRTUS is the archdiocese-approved program for helping church employees and volunteers keep our children and youth safe from abuse. A number of the presenters spoke of feeling calledto protect kids—and I immediately felt out of place, not because I don’t want to keep kids safe, but because by primary motivation for signing up to become a facilitator was, “Somebody’s gotta do it.”


But over the course of the training the leaders encouraged us to think more deeply about our motives, and I learned something about myself. I told the gentleman next to me, “Our church is like a second home to me and my family—we’re there all the time!—and if there’s anything I can do to make it safer, so that my family and other families can feel at home there, I want to do it.”

Maybe there was a deeper call there after all. 

Two weeks ago I announced that we were putting together a new team of people to help shape our faith formation programs going forward. So far, Kathy and I have received 20 responses about joining the LIFT Crew—15 yes and 5 maybe—from current and past teachers, FFAC members, small-group facilitators, and more. Only one person I’ve spoken to has said no, and even she shared an hour’s worth of great ideas from more than a decade of teaching kids in our parish.

Think about that for a moment: We have people in this community who have been sharing their faith with children for ten, twenty, even thirty years! We have a committee of dedicated parishioners who work behind the scenes to create, promote, and improve LIFT with little public recognition of their time, effort, and results. We have people who are committed to praying specifically for the success of our programs and the conversion of souls. We have teens who, without knowing or asking what it might entail, have said, “Mr. Thorp, I saw that you are looking for people to help with LIFT—sign me up!”

We are surrounded by people who love the Lord and want to live out His call to make disciples. That’s a beautiful thing.

And it works: these people are setting a high bar that others respond to with more prayer, more service, more love. Last Wednesday I went to the archdiocese for training, then hustled back to St. Michael to prepare for LIFT and Confirmation classes. Kathy and both priests were gone, two Confirmation teachers were out, and another was running late. Two out of three videos were malfunctioning, and the mic in the gathering space wouldn’t plug in. I joked that my goal for the evening was to survive.

At the end of the night, one of our catechists handed me a picture. It was a pencil drawing of a “spiritual bouquet” from her Confirmation class, with each flower labeled with an act of sacrifice and love her teens had pledged to perform for me and my family in the coming weeks. Prayers, chaplets, and rosaries. Holy Hours in the Adoration chapel. Pain and suffering. Offered up for my family and for me. What else can I do but reciprocate?

Christ calls us to love, and we respond. Love begets love begets love. It’s a beautiful thing.

Blogger’s Note: This article appears in the Sunday, March 22, church bulletin .

We Need You on the LIFT Crew!

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

I’m not a fan of change for the sake of change. I am a creature of habit, a lover of tradition, and a big fan of consistency. Don’t get me wrong: I like to make a difference and improve things. But as a former boss of mine used to say, “A horse is easiest to ride in the direction it is going.” So it’s nerve-wracking for me to share the first significant change to how we approach faith formation at St. Michael Catholic Church, and invite you to be a part of it.

Eight years ago, I was elected to the Faith Formation Advisory Committee (FFAC). The FFAC is an group of parishioners that meets once a month to advise and support parish staff regarding LIFT and related activities. Over the years, FFAC members have been faithful, thoughtful, hard-working … and frustrated. In my own experience, the frustration stems from a sense of powerlessness. No matter how good the intentions or bold the ideas, the FFAC itself was never in a position to make a real difference.


Meanwhile, youth ministry at St. Michael has grown and thrived since it adopted its core team approach. The idea behind a core team is to engage people who are called to a particular ministry and willing to do whatever it takes to help it succeed through prayer, planning, and action. We have these people involved in the LIFT program today—motivated and joy-filled parishioners who go the extra mile to draw people closer to Jesus and His Bride, the Church, but who have never been asked for their prayers, ideas, or support beyond their current niche. And we need them to help build a better LIFT program and grow it!

So beginning now, we are recruiting for the LIFT Crew—parents, teens, teachers, greeters, worker bees, prayer warriors, and people just looking to make a difference—to help reshape LIFT for next year and beyond.  We want to get more people involved to deliver a better program. Because the emphasis is on calling and commitment, the LIFT Crew will not be elected or capped at a specific number. However, we will identify a LIFT Leadership Team, a subset of the LIFT Crew to help provide direction for the overall group.

The FFAC has agreed to continue to meet until this team is in place, but plans to disband once it’s up and running. I am reaching out to individual people I hope will be interested, but I’m also looking for volunteers and nominations. Specifically, we are looking for people who would commit to at least a year of service in one or more of the following areas: Family Faith Formation, First Reconciliation/First Communion, Confirmation Prep, Hospitality, and Prayer Team.

We have a vibrant parish filled with faithful people who love the Lord and want to serve. We also have a tremendous opportunity to reshape LIFT in a way that better reflects its original intent and purpose: Learning In Faith Together. I hope that you will prayerfully consider the call to join our Crew. If you have questions or wish to volunteer or nominate someone, please drop me a line. Finally, please pray for our parish and our program!

Blogger’s Note: This article appears in the Sunday, March 8, church bulletin .

Confessions of a Struggling LIFT Parent

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Over the past several weeks, 114 parishioners completed our anonymous LIFT Mid-Year Survey. We received a good balance of responses across all four LIFT nights and all grade levels; we heard strong, positive feedback; very frank and consistent negative feedback; and lots of great ideas about things we could do differently. The results of the survey are available on the church website, stmcatholicchurch.org, by clicking the Faith Formation tab at the top of the page.

I take your feedback seriously, not only because it’s my job, but because I’m a LIFT parent, too. I know firsthand what it’s like to remember the night before LIFT that you haven’t even asked your kids about their homework, let alone helped them with it. I know that it’s harder to motivate myself to attend LIFT as my kids get older. I know that some nights, we’re lucky to remember to say Grace as a family before we scarf a late supper and fall into bed.

I know it’s not easy—but I’m convinced we can make it easier. Below are a few examples of things I agree that we should work to change in the coming year:

  • LIFT stands for Learning In Faith Together, but families are separated and learn completely different things.
  • The goal is to help parents to be the primary teachers of their children, but we don’t really help—we give you tons of content and expect you to figure it out.
  • Another goal is to build community, but our only adult interactions are in small-group settings that are easily the most uncomfortable and least liked aspect of the program.
  • For the price of the program, too much of the teaching falls on the parents—especially in terms of sacramental preparation.
  • At a certain point, it no longer makes sense for parents to be required to attend classes year after year with their children—and if it becomes an obstacle to their children attending, nobody benefits.

On the other hand, I also know that staying involved in LIFT has made a difference in my family. I know that when we finally remember our LIFT homework, the kids know what to expect and buckle down to do it—and since they’ve been involved year after year, the lessons aren’t as hard as they used to be. I know that the more Jodi and I model sacramental living, the more the kids pick it up and reflect it back to us. And I know there is no more powerful motivator for an adult to keep growing in their faith that to have their children pulling them along.

Certain aspects of the LIFT program will not change in the coming year. Family catechesis will remain the core model, and the price of the program is what it is in order to balance the budget. Our goal is to build a LIFT program that delivers on its promise of Learning In Faith Together, that provides better value for the cost, and most importantly, that grounds St. Michael families in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church.

St. Augustine writes, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Getting LIFT right won’t happen overnight. But when it does, I believe families will come, not because they are required, but because they want to—because their hearts long for God, and they know they can find Him here.

Blogger’s Note: This article appears in the Sunday, Feb. 22, church bulletin .

LIFT Links: Lenten Edition

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Ash Wednesday is this week, marking the beginning of Lent, the penitential season that prepares us for the joy of Christ’s Resurrection at Easter. Too often we treat Lent like a do-over for our New Year’s resolutions or a chance to jumpstart our diet before swimsuit season. But Lent isn’t meant to be about loss–we fast to gain, to grow spiritually.

To that end, this week let’s look at few links on what Lent’s really about, and how to live it as a family.

One last thing: every year, people ask about “taking Sundays off” from your Lenten sacrifices. Some people insist that since Sundays are a feast day and not counted in the “40 days of Lent,” your sacrifices don’t apply to Sundays. Others say that a person out to be able to make it through the entire Lenten season, Sundays and all, without “stumbling” or “giving in.”

It is true that Sundays aren’t meant for fasting and aren’t counted among the 40 days of Lent. It may also be true that if you absolutely cannot abstain from whatever-it-is for the full Lenten season, you could be overly attached to it. My advice to my own family: decide now which you are going to observe and stick to it. If you think it would be a good disciple for you to go beerless or chocolate-free on Sundays, too, I don’t have a problem with that. Just remember that Sunday is a feast day and find ways to treat it as such. But whatever you do, don’t decide that a different day is going to be your “day off”– it’s not a day off; it’s the Lord’s Day, which makes it special — and don’t decide two weeks into Lent that maybe you could have a little just…this…once. That’s a slippery slope that quickly slides from Sundays into other days, too!