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The Outcasts Among Us

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

This parish has a wonderful reputation in the archdiocese. We have good and holy priests, deep roots, a beautiful church filled with Catholic families, and numerous vocations to the priesthood and religious life. When I tell practicing Catholics outside “the Bubble” of St. Michael where I work and worship, they know this place and tell me I am blessed.

Many of you have had the same experience—so a few facts may come as a surprise. For example, did you know that any given fall, only about half of the parish’s school-age youth are enrolled in either the LIFT program or the Catholic school? Or that each year we see a spike in LIFT enrollment among families with children in the sacrament grades—second grade for First Holy Communion; ninth and tenth grade for Confirmation—followed by a drop of about 50 percent after First Holy Communion, and nearly 100 percent after Confirmation? This tells us two things: first, the number of St. Michael youth enrolled in religious education on a regular, year-after-year basis is probably closer to 40 percent, and second, many of the Catholic families in our parish come for the sacraments but form no abiding relationship with Jesus, the Catholic Church, or the Body of Christ—the community of the faithful—present here.

Something is missing, even here in this beautiful, life-giving parish.

I was blessed to make a silent retreat to Demontreville a couple weeks ago. During one of the meals, we listened to Fr. Greg Boyle recount his work among gang members in Los Angeles, and I was struck that these young men were searching for what we all want: a place to belong. That got me thinking: who are the outcasts among us here in St. Michael? Who, in our parish, is just looking for a place to belong?

Perhaps it’s the broken family who struggles to make connections because the kids are only here every other week. Perhaps it’s the single mom who can’t attend MOMs Group because she works long hours—and wouldn’t know what to talk to the other moms about anyway. Perhaps it’s the immigrant family who finds themselves awash in a sea of white, worshiping in a way that is as solemn and foreign to them as they may appear to many of us.

Or perhaps it’s the young family that’s just settling in: Mom’s a cradle Catholic; Dad is coming around—with two young kids and an infant, juggling work and family and faith, swept along in the rush of baseball games and birthday parties. They told the priest five years ago they would raised their children Catholic, but honestly, they don’t know where to start. Mass is a struggle. They’d like to get involved, but maybe they’ll wait until First Communion. Hopefully things will settle down by then.

Those of us who feel at home here are deeply blessed, but we can sometimes forget where we started. At one time—perhaps as children, perhaps as adults—we had basic questions about the faith we were afraid to ask. At one time, someone—a priest, a friend, a stranger—took an interest and nudged us toward God. At one time, we were all on the fringes of faith and could have tipped either way. To our great benefit we fell into the open arms of Jesus.

So let’s benefit others in the same way, recognizing that the best way to deepen our own faith is to follow Christ in spreading the gospel and making disciples. Let us look for the outcasts among us, invite them in, and walk with them up the narrow path to the Cross, and our salvation.

Blogger’s Note: This article appears in the Sunday, August 23, parish bulletin.

Our Hope Demands Change

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

I don’t know about you, but I avoid the news like the plague. No matter the source, the media today is a place of constant conflict, and it’s easy to get caught in the ceaseless spin cycle and feel as though everything is falling apart around us. It’s easy to lose the perspective that we are in this world, but not of it. And once we lose that perspective, it’s easy to lose hope.

But as Catholics, our hope is in God and transcends this world. Specifically, our hope is in a personal God, who loves each of us enough to become like the least of us: wriggling and helpless in a Bethlehem stable; hungry and homeless on the road to Egypt; hard-working and cash-strapped in the wood shop in Nazareth; hounded and criticized by His own people; persecuted and abandoned by those who should have known and loved Him best. Jesus’s perfect and total Yes to the Father finally silenced the steady drumbeat of Nos that had echoed through the ages since the fall of Adam and Eve. He lived, He died, He rose again—we know this through the words of the prophets, the witness of the apostles, and the blood of martyrs. Never before have so many sacrificed everything—their very lives!—for so outlandish a claim as a God-Man who let himself be humiliated and slaughtered only to rise again from the dead. Who would die for such a thing? If you had any doubt in your mind, would you give your life?

Thousands of people have, from Jesus’s day to the present. We believe far more these days on less credible evidence, and yet we’re skeptical of this?

When the apostle Thomas encountered the resurrected Jesus in the flesh, his famous skepticism was transformed—he declared, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus replied, “Blessed are they who have not seen and have believed.”

That’s us: believers in an unseen Christ. Blessed are we who persist in the faith.

Of course, as Catholics we still encounter the living God, just not by sight. We encounter Christ in His Body, the Church, and in the sacraments—particularly the Holy Eucharist. We know that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Jesus by His own words: “This is my Body…This is the cup of my Blood.” Jesus is God, and just as in the Creation story, what God says, is.

This is Good News—the Best News, in fact, and we are obliged to share it. It’s not enough to just accept Christ’s mercy and grace, or receive His Body and Blood. We are called to be disciples: not dependants, and not simply students, but followers, who learn, live, and spread the Gospel. No one encounters God without changing, and indeed Jesus says whoever wishes to be His disciple must pick up His cross and follow. If we are unwilling to change our behaviors and priorities; to work, suffer, and die for the sake of the Kingdom, we are not yet full-fledged disciples.

Why should we care? Because it takes disciples to make disciples. We can’t lead others to Christ if we aren’t following in his footsteps ourselves. Fr. Mike Schmitz reminds us that Jesus gave us one job to do while He is gone: go and make disciples of all nations. When He comes back, it won’t matter that the car is waxed; the laundry, folded; or the recycling, sorted. He’s going to look around to see if we did that one thing. Our hope demands change.

Blogger’s Note: This article appear in the Sunday, July 19, parish bulletin.

Are We There Yet?

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment
Gabe, napping in the minivan…

Back in my newspaper days, I wrote a column each Tuesday called “Almost There.” My bride and I were young parents of two preschool boys at that time, so “Almost there!” was a constant refrain wherever we went. But the name also captured the sense that we were on the verge of putting it all together—of making sense of marriage and family life, and of my newfound faith and fledgling career as a writer.

That was more than 15 years ago, and that sense has never left. The novelty of feeling so close to understanding wore off years ago, however—as a result, I am prone to asking our Lord like the spiritual child that I am: “Are we there yet?”

The answer, invariably, is no.

This world so loves achievement that we have turned even baseline accomplishments like participation and attendance into certificates and celebrations. In what other facet of life besides our faith do we commit ourselves to weekly participation, devotion, and study, year after year, and discover that we have done only what is expected of us?

We long for recognition of our efforts, and this longing even skews our perception of the sacraments. As children and as parents, we are pleased with having made it to Mass or Confession, but sometimes forget that these are not ends in themselves, but means by which we conform ourselves to Christ and reorient ourselves toward Heaven. We treat both Confirmation and Marriage as the culmination of work already done rather than the beginning of something new. The certificates we receive look for all the world like diplomas, when in fact they are birth certificates!

The path to Heaven leads out of this world, and among those born into humanity, only Jesus knows the path in its entirety—so we have no choice but to follow Him and go where He leads. Since we cannot know the path ourselves, the only way we can help others get to Heaven is to teach them to follow Christ who said, “I am the Way.”

Road trip!

How does one follow Christ? St. John of the Cross writes, “God carries each person along a different road, so that you will scarcely find two people following the same route in even half of their journey to God.” As a result, we need to teach others where to find God and how to engage Him—in the Church; through scripture, prayer, and the sacraments. And we need to do this as a community. Why? Since there are as many paths to sanctity as there are unique persons, each of us will resonate with others in ways that no one else can. Somewhere in this parish, someone needs your example!

Fr. Robert Barron shares a story of Jewish academic and Catholic convert Edith Stein, now St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who before her conversion went into a cathedral to admire the architecture and saw a woman still laden from her day’s shopping, kneeling and rapt in silent prayer. This simple act of devotion struck the future saint profoundly, advancing her on the path toward holiness and heaven. Who knows what saints we will help to create simply by showing up each week to bend our knees in prayer and worship?

Blogger’s Note: This article appears in the Sunday, June 14, church bulletin.

The Sacraments Keep Us Catholic

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

“At last the most wonderful day of my life arrived, and I can remember every tiny detail of those heavenly hours … How lovely it was, that first kiss of Jesus in my heart—it was truly a kiss of love.” – St. Therese of Lisieux, describing her first Holy Communion

Last month I was blessed to witness nearly 140 young people from our parish and school receiving their first Holy Communion. They were, by and large, reverent and excited—and those I spoke with personally understood at least in concept that they were receiving Jesus’s Body and Blood under the appearance of bread and wine. I hope at least a few of them remember the day with the same deep joy and devotion as St. Therese expresses above.  I’m almost certain, unfortunately, that a few have not been back.

Our approach to preparing children for First Confession and First Communion in recent years has increasingly fallen on their parents. In one sense, this is as it should be: the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that, through marriage, “parents receive the responsibility and privilege of evangelizing their children” and “should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of the faith.”

On the other hand, many parents do not feel equipped to share those mysteries, being uncertain themselves about the Church’s teachings on Reconciliation and the Eucharist. And while we provide families with workbooks to help them teach their children, these are poor substitutes for the level of love and support young Therese had in the months leading up to the sacraments. Her desire to make a good confession and to receive the gift of the Eucharist consumed her completely, and everyone in her family and community fueled her understanding and love for the Lord in whatever way they could.

As a parish, we can certainly do more. Beginning this fall, First Reconciliation and First Communion students will have an extra class or activity (in addition to LIFT) each month dedicated to sacramental preparation and a deeper understanding of the great gifts of Christ’s love and mercy we find on the altar and in the confessional. But this is no substitute for the evangelizing witness of parents leading a sacramental life in which their Catholic faith is a top family priority.

This is true for two reasons. The first is this: because children naturally observe and imitate their parents’ actions and interests, parents don’t have to have all the right answers, but it helps if you do the right things. Secondly, the sacraments are defined as outward signs instituted by Christ to give us grace—in particular, sacramental grace, which strengthens us to live according to our faith and state in life. The sacrament of Matrimony, for example, confers upon the spouses the graces needed to live in union as husband and wife, come what may.

The same applies to the sacraments of Confession and Communion. They strengthen us to resist temptation and seek communion with God, to forgive and seek forgiveness, to love sacrificially—in short, to be holy men and women of God. Each time we receive them, we are changed for the better. And when our children imitate us, so are they. What better way to ensure our kids remain Catholic?

Blogger’s Note: This article appears in the Sunday, May 24, church bulletin.

What’s Keeping You?

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

It’s been nearly eight months since I left the University of Minnesota to work full-time for our parish. At some point in each of my previous jobs, I looked around and asked myself, “Jim, what are you doing here?” Thankfully that has yet to happen since I joined the church staff, but I don’t doubt that it could—work is work, after all.

Faith is work, too. It’s hard sometimes to believe in a good God with so much wickedness in the world, including within the Church. It’s hard to do the right thing when so few people agree on what the right thing is, even within the Church. It’s hard to pray or read or learn more about Jesus, to drag ourselves to Confession, or to haul the family to Mass each Sunday when so many Catholics just…don’t.

I’ll bet at least once you’ve sat in church, looked at Father and the people gathered around you, and asked, “What am I doing here?” It’s a worthwhile question to consider. According to data collected by the Pew Research Center, not only do most U.S. Catholics say they attend Mass once a month or less, but many disagree with the Church’s fundamental teachings regarding marriage, contraception, and the sanctity of life. Yet they persist in calling themselves Catholic. What’s keeping them in the Church?

Well, what’s keeping you? Is it habit or family tradition that brings us here week after week? That makes us seek the sacraments for our children? Is it a hope we hold out for the next generation, even though we may have lost it for our own? Is it a hollow ache in our chest that insists there must be something more to this life? Or is it the peace that radiates from altar, the tabernacle, the Eucharist—peace the world cannot provide?

This month the adults in our LIFT classes focused on the Mass and Holy Communion. We heard the deeply personal testimony of one of our youth ministry volunteers on her own struggles with her Catholic faith—and ultimately, on how she could never turn her back on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Jesus said, “This is my body…This is the cup of my blood”—and so it is. Jesus is God, and God’s words are the very words of Creation. They bring about exactly what they say.

I’ve said more than once that if we as Catholics truly understood who was present in the tabernacle, nothing could keep us from Him. We would fill the pews to overflowing, bring family and friends to a personal encounter with Jesus. We would gladly sacrifice to spend time at His feet, listening to Him, learning from Him, serving Him.

And yet I don’t do these things. We don’t do these things.

The red lamp above the tabernacle signifies that He’s always there. What’s keeping you?

Blogger’s Note: This article appears in the Sunday, Jan. 25, church bulletin .