Monday Message, October 12, 2021

KNOW

If you have a Confirmation retreat before November 20th, please contact Karen O’Keefe.

If you wish to join us for the conversation about Standard Operating Procedures (parish registrations, common practices, policies we always thought were policies), please mark your calendars for Monday, October 25, 2021 at 10 am at St. Paul in Greenwich. RSVP to institute@diobpt.org.

If you would like to learn more about Dei verbum, see our series on Documents that Matter.

There will be a workshop for Adult Confirmation Formation on November 13, 2021. I need a location pretty please. Any volunteers?

I will be working on the online directory this week. Stay tuned.

REFLECT

I’ve been re-reading Evangelii gaudium….

By virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization … Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization; indeed, anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are “disciples” and “missionaries”, but rather that we are always “missionary disciples.”

Accompanying another requires walking with those who are called to evangelize — which includes all the baptized — until those who are being accompanied are ready to shoulder the responsibility of accompanying others on their own. This is the great litmus test for ministry with young people: are leaders willing to walk side by side with young people and prepare them to take the great leap to do that for someone else? As St. Paul did for Timothy and Titus, leaders in ministry with young people must come to realize and teach that discipleship is not a spectator sport. “Missionary disciples accompany missionary disciples.”

-pjd

LAUGH