Anniversary of the Dedication of St. Matthew Church
St. Peter tells us in his first epistle that we are living stones, being built up into a spiritual house to offer acceptable sacrifice to God through Jesus Christ. This building is important because it reminds us of what we are called to be. We each have our different gifts and talents. But when we are shaped and placed together, united in a single purpose, we form something beautiful that aids in the worship of God.
As we celebrate the Anniversary of the Dedication of this church, I wanted to share with you what the leadership team (me, Amanda Williams, Mike Wilson, and Jason Tower) discerned for how we will continue into the future as a parish; how we exist as the invisible temple that this visible temple makes present. We, with the help of the Catholic Leadership Institute, worked hard over three one-day sessions in the fall, to make sure that we clearly understood and could articulate what makes St. Matthew Parish St. Matthew Parish, as well as how God calls us, not only statically, but dynamically, to continue His work of spreading the Gospel. And I want to communicate with you our parish purpose, vision, values, and priorities, with the hope that we can each find ways to work together to be purposeful, guided by our vision and values, and working towards the priorities that we believe God has given to St. Matthew.
The parish purpose and vision give us the “why” of St. Matthew. Why do we exist as a parish? What motivates us and moves us? Our purpose, as discerned by my leadership team, “is to use beauty and truth to inspire and develop disciples to transform the secular order by the grace of God, for His glorification and the edification of man.” That’s a mouthful, I know. But basically, we focused on two of the transcendentals, beauty and truth, as a way that we form disciples. And why are we trying to form disciples? Because the world is not as it should be. The world is not as God created it. But we can work together, by His grace, to make it more like it should be, more according to the plan of God. And this not only glorifies God, but also builds us up into the people God wants us to be. You can see this purpose each week on the front page of our bulletin. It’s meant to be a reminder to each of us of why we exist.
As to our vision, the big view of what we want to be and accomplish, “We are a Roman Catholic parish in the heart of Flint that worships God with reverence, forms disciples, and serves the physical and spiritual needs of our neighbors in communion with the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” Our purpose could be applied to any parish. Our vision puts our purpose in our particular context of where we are (“in the heart of Flint”) and what we do (“worships God…forms disciples…serves the…needs of our neighbors”). But what we do is not by our own imagining, as if we create the Church. Our vision happens within the context of the one Church that Christ established, which, as Lumen gentium states, “subsists in the Catholic Church.”
That vision is made manifest in our values as a parish. The leadership team discerned three values of St. Matthew Parish that are important to everything we do: reverence; faithfulness; and family/community. By reverence, we mean that we “strive to promote the awe and respect that is owed to God.” How do we do this? By following the rubrics the Church sets out for the celebration of the sacred liturgy; by allowing time for sacred silence so that God can speak in our hearts; and by appropriate posture and dress, so that the way we carry ourselves and present ourselves in parish life manifests how we live in wonder and awe in God’s presence.
By faithfulness, we mean that we “support fidelity to the Magisterium and the 2,000 year history of the Church.” So many love to be only what is happening now. We stay faithful to what the Church officially teaches, and how that has been revealed to us by God over the entire history of the Church, not just before or after the Second Vatican Council. How do we do this? By incorporating legitimate liturgical traditions; by promoting orthodoxy and refuting heresy; and by striving to imitate Christ in all that we do. In this way we show that we are truly Catholic: welcoming all that is good, while preserving the world as salt from all that is bad.
Lastly, by family/community, we mean the value we place on every human life from natural conception to natural death. How do we do this? By supporting families of all ages; by welcoming families into our parish by what we say, but also by what we do; and by helping families create a strong domestic church, a strong place in their homes where God is present.
Based on these values, then, we are currently prioritizing the support of the Domestic Church, the family; evangelization and apologetics so that we can share the faith with others; and community outreach, so that we may serve Christ in the least of his brothers, as He says in Matthew 25.
So what? A lot of ink was spilled, but does it make a difference? Again, if we are going to continue to be built into the spiritual temple of God, then we have to have an organizing plan. We cannot simply exist and hope that we’ll all come together, anymore than the bricks, plaster, paint, marble, etc. just existed and then came together without any effort. All that we do as a parish should fit within these paradigms, paradigms that we did not create so much as discern that God wants us to use. When you’re donating your money; when you’re volunteering; when you’re asking for this or that activity or program; all of it should fit into one of these categories that I have outlined for you today. And if we do that, we will continue to grow as a parish, and form a new generation of disciples who will carry out the Great Commission which was given to us by Jesus Christ [who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever. Amen].