Forgive me if you’ve heard me ramble about this before, but one of my favorite things that I have learned about ministry as a pastor (and not just as a carefree vicar, like
Fr. Jeff…) is that a parish budget is a fundamentally theological document. Archbishop Schnurr, himself a man trained in finances, says that the quickest way to find out what is important in a parish is to take a look at where they are spending their money. If it is truly important to them, they will back it up with resources. If it isn’t, they won’t. Simple as that.

There is a beautiful dovetail in that lesson, which is on display in the Gospel this week, and a new document that the Vatican has put out concerning parish life and priorities.
In St. Matthew’s account, Jesus encourages His disciples to be willing to sacrifice everything in order to prioritize Faith. Sell whatever you must in order to secure Faith in your life. He even adds the detail that the man who finds treasure in the field doesn’t just go to buy that field, he goes to buy it “with great joy”, because he recognizes the reward in store for him. We should be willing to pay any price to achieve, maintain, and deepen our faith, even our lives, if necessary.
 
Along these same lines, this new document from the Congregation for Clergy calls for a     fundamentally Mission-inspired rethinking of  the way we do things in our parishes, even if it means making great sacrifices. I am still working my way through the document (I have a great many things to read these days), but there are two challenges that I ask you, my brothers and sisters, to prayerfully consider as we constantly seek to renew our parishes. First, to find a       willingness to go outside of what is normal and customary for the sake of revitalizing our parish communities, and second, to place evangelization at the center of everything
we do.

Parishes, because they are stable communities with all kinds of history and rights, are often slow to change. We fear doing anything new for many reasons: because it’s untested, it might mean having to stop doing something else, or just because it goes against institutional inertia. But the rewards for being open to new modes of parish life are great. We are warned in this document about the bitter fruits of refusing to rethink our ministry. We must avoid, at all costs, a parish that “appears to be more interested in preserving a nostalgia of former times as opposed to looking to the future with courage.” The work of a parish is too important to refuse to renew frequently.
 
The document is also forceful in pointing out the complementary roles of the priests, staff, and parishioners in the work of the Church. We all have a role to play in inviting others into a deeper relationship with Our Lord, and there is much more to the role of the laity than to simply tell people to “ask Father”, or “Call my priest”. Because you are all called to live and work in the world around us, you will come
into contact with people that the staff and I will never meet, and your witness and influence in their lives can be the difference between them never knowing God’s love for them and giving themselves entirely to Christ. Your prayer life, your commitment to growing in holiness, your outreach, can be the kindling that lights someone on fire for Jesus. This document urges us to “make a generous commitment to the
service of the mission of evangelization, first of all through the general witness of (our) daily lives, lived in conformity with the Gospel, in whatever environment (we) are in and at every level of responsibility.” This is the fundamental work of our lives and the fundamental work of the parish: to worship God, to evangelize, and to serve the poor.
Please keep our parish communities in prayer and commit yourself to making whatever sacrifices are necessary to make them burning furnaces of the love of Christ in the world.
 
Prayers always,
Fr. McC