From Father Nathan...

Dear Friends at Saint Frances Cabrini Parish and Saint Mary’s Immaculate Conception Parish:

Praised be Jesus Christ!   What is a parish?  There are handful of segments of Canon Law that define what a parish is based on our ancient Catholic understanding.  Note that in reading and approaching the Church’s laws, it is critical to remember that they represent our theology put into concrete practice.  And, at the heart of our theology is the truth that in the person of Jesus Christ, God has visited and still lives among his people. A Christian believes that God is active in the world and is actively seeking our friendship with him, and that this happens through the physical, concrete world.  

Therefore, when describing and defining a parish, we are talking about something that is well beyond the level of mere earthly, organizational structures and institutions.  A parish is about how we meet Christ in person so that he can befriend us and save us.  

Canon Law explains that a parish is a stable community of the Christian faithful who are under the spiritual care of a pastor, who is placed in that parish by the local bishop.  The pastor is responsible for taking spiritual care of all the souls (even the non-Christians) who live within the parish’s canonical, geographical boundaries.   He is responsible for providing instruction in the Scriptures and the Church’s faith, he is responsible for offering the sacraments, for ensuring that the sick and needy are attended to, and that the resources donated by community members are appropriately used.  At the center of the parish’s life is the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist.  

One can safely say that in the pastors of the church, along with those who assist them, Christ the Good Shepherd lives among the people.  Pastors and ministers are to be the living channels of his love, mercy, instruction, and sacramental presence so that the people of the earth can be saved from sin and death.  A parish is the community of believers that gathers consistently around the pastor, the Good Shepherd.  The gathered community is defined by the regular, Sunday celebration of the Eucharist in person, the profession of Christian teachings, the pursuit of conversion from sin, and the works of charity.  Christ is present in the community that gathers in his name.  Christians are people of in-person community, belonging to a group of like-minded believers.  In and through this community, under the care of the pastor, friendship with Christ is established.  Through their pastor, the faithful are also united to their chief shepherd who is the diocesan bishop, apart from whom no authentic Christian life can take place.  

Pastors come and go while the stable Christian community (hopefully) remains.  It makes no sense to have pastors without communities to pastor, and it is not truly Christian for individual believers to not have pastors.  As long as there exists in some location a stable Christian population, there should be a pastor to serve it.  That same community supports and loves their pastor.

Muddling all of this up in our current day and age is the reality of streamed or televised Masses, parish shopping, and seemingly endless moving around from place to place on the part of the people.  Especially with large populations of elderly or home bound Christians, connecting to the community of the parish in-person becomes very difficult. This is why since earliest days of the Church, the healthy members of the community have regularly gone to visit those who were sick to bring them Holy Communion.  In this way there was still a personal, sacramental connection if one could not come in person.  Things like streamed or televised Masses to the infirm are certainly a form of parish connection, however they are not sacramental nor are they personal, and as such they should not be a substitute for real outreach to the sick.

For those who are otherwise healthy but choose not to come to Mass in person, they diminish their connection to the parish and to Christ most especially because they lose the sacraments.  They risk committing serious sin for missing Mass without often having a compelling reason to do so beyond mere personal convenience.  

Christians believe that God does not meet us in the abstract.  The Lord lives in his community of the Church and it is in our parishes that we meet him.  These are joyful truths because we do not have to wonder where God is.  He is here most deeply and clearly when we gather.

Sunday:    Gn 18:20-32/Ps 138:1-2, 2-3, 6-7, 7-8 [3a]/Col 2:12-14/Lk 11:1-13
Monday:    2 Cor 4:7-15/Ps 126:1bc-2ab, 2cd-3, 4-5, 6/Mt 20:20-28
Tuesday:    Jer 14:17-22/Ps 79:8, 9, 11 and 13/Mt 13:36-43
Wednesday:    Jer 15:10, 16-21/Ps 59:2-3, 4, 10-11, 17-18/Mt 13:44-46
Thursday:    Jer 18:1-6/Ps 146:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6ab/Mt 13:47-53
Friday:        Jer 26:1-9/Ps 69:5, 8-10, 14/Jn 11:19-27 or Lk 10:38-42
Saturday:    Jer 26:11-16, 24/Ps 69:15-16, 30-31, 33-34/Mt 14:1-12
Next Sunday:    Eccl 1:2; 2:21-23/Ps 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17 [1]/Col 3:1-5, 9-11/Lk 12:13-21