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"If you knew the Gift of God.." Preaching and Formation in a Florida Parish
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April 7, 2023Among the many gifts I received through my brief collaboration with the Glenmary Home Missioners early in my Dominican life was the opportunity to get to know and collaborate with Sue Blum Gerding and Isaiah Ministries. Sue entered the Catholic Church as an adult after an Evangelical upbringing. She brought her evangelical energy and joy along with abundant native intelligence and social skills and was a major force in promoting and equipping her new Catholic family for the evangelizing mission. Sue showed me that it was possible to incorporate lay leadership formation into parish mission preaching.
So when two former students—Liliana Ronderos and MaryKay Arroyo—from the Rice School of Ministry in the Diocese of Venice (FL) contacted me and asked me to preach a Lenten Mission in their parish in mid-March, I agreed on the condition that they let me do it the way Sue taught me to do it. Happily, they along with their pastor, Fr. Rafal Ligenza, agreed. We had to adapt, but essentially it meant that there would be a local team of parishioners who would assist me to preach the mission in word and in ritual. It also meant that an essential aspect of the mission would be supporting outreach to the poor through the ministry of the Congar Institute.
The team of fifteen parishioners generously agreed to gather for a full-day retreat on the Saturday before the mission. We built community, shared faith, and assigned ministry tasks for the Monday-Wednesday mission. Some of the members were invited to preach with me by sharing an experience of faith around the topic of the evening. Each evening, we met prior to the event to plan and pray and after the event to evaluate and give thanks to God. Many reflected on the faith experience that they had, simply observing fellow parishioners’ inspiring engagement with each evening’s focus and ritual. Some observed that the experience was a first for them on many levels.
During my time, I had the opportunity to observe how the parish was already active in showing the face of Christ to the local community, especially by hosting and running the largest food pantry in the area. I met with women who gathered each week to study the Bible together and I had the opportunity to meet with the local chapter of Dominican Laity.
Although I once did it regularly, I had not preached a parish mission in a very long time. I decided to try it as an experiment, to see if this can become an effective means to introduce more people to the mission of the Congar Institute and invite them to participate in our mission. I could see the wisdom in Sue’s approach. Her focus was on forming missionary disciples, including a discipleship that was expressed in support of ministry with underserved populations. What I discovered was that it can also be an important means for forming the laity to understand their co-responsibility for the church’s being and activity, as Pope Benedict put it.