Growing In Faith: During A Walk In The Dessert, Look For Hope

~ I’m entering the season of Lent this year with a very full heart. I carry worry about the future of our church and Pope Francis’s health, I worry about our country and our world, and I worry about the economics of regular families like mine.

I carry confusion and anger about events happening around me. I want to wield my anger as an effective tool to shape the world, but I don’t want to shape my heart with bitterness – and I don’t want to be an angry person.

I also enter Lent with a heart that desires renewal. Over the next 40 days, I want to draw closer to Christ, follow in his footsteps, and try to figure out how to flip tables of money changers and connect with empathy to the outcasts of our society like He did.

I am gifted with the opportunity to serve our community by working in the parish office daily and because of this, my worried, confused heart simultaneously carries a strong sense of hope. Hope is brewing; the Holy Spirit is deeply at work in our school and parish. Do you know that:

• So far in this fiscal year (since July 2024), we have baptized 34 children? That’s as many children as we baptized in each of the two previous fiscal years, and we’re only two-thirds of the way through!
• In addition to the “Becoming Catholic” program for adult initiation that happens regularly at our Church, Gwen Heithaus (CRE) and I have also been preparing seven middle-school and high-school students for Sacraments of Initiation this year? This is in addition to their peers already preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation.
• Children at our school are asking their parents to allow them to be baptized?
• I am regularly asked for coffee, lunch, and phone calls with neighbors or community members who have questions about how to have a life of faith or maybe want to experience our church?

This has all been very unexpected.

I can’t help but think that the Jews in Jesus’s time probably struggled with feelings of worry, confusion, and anger, too. They were an oppressed people, waiting for God to free them, and they desired renewal. Then, they got a Messiah who was… not what they expected.

This Lent, please pray for the people in our community who hear God’s (possibly unexpected) call and are walking towards Sacraments of Initiation. May their faith and “Yes!” remind us of the renewal, hope, and strength God offers each of our hearts.

Throughout the year, we present an article in the bulletin each week on a variety of topics, written by a member of our Parish staff or ministries on a rotating basis.