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| Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Mark 6:7-13 |
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| Background: Liturgical and Scriptural Reflection It can hardly be said that your typical up-to-date parish travels light. It has voice mail and a computer web page and seventy or so organizations and several committee meetings and a full parking lot every night and big athletic and drama programs and a large lay staff and a budget that runs to six or even seven figures every year. It's not exactly the sort of community you could pick up and move across the country at a moment's notice. None of this is necessarily bad. However today's liturgy reminds us once again that we must not permit ourselves to become so deeply involved with our means as to forget our ends. Which are . . .? |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a time, a parish council decided to form an evangelization committee. After all, they believed that the gift of “Good News” ought to be shared with others. So they spent a year planning how they would reach out to those within the Catholic community who did not attend Church services and also considered ways they might appeal to those who were not of the Catholic faith. They formed sub committees on a variety of topics. The sub committees met every other week and they submitted their reports to the whole council at the monthly council meeting. Unfortunately, the subcommittees spent much of their time on logistics with little attention to the content of their vision and how it might meet the needs of those who did not attend church services. So when they began offering programs based on their plan, they were very disappointed that so few new people showed up. Most of the attendees at these programs were the same folks who came to everything the parish offered. The pastor finally called the planners together for an evaluation meeting. When the planners began to express their dismay at the lack of newcomers to their programs, the pastor asked if perhaps they ought to consider why people were not attending. Could it be that in the planners eagerness to present the Good News, they overlooked the fact that they paid so much attention to the details of the programs that the substance – The Good News – became buried? * by Dr. Mary Durkin
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