Bishop's Pastoral Letter: Prayer and Small Communities

“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. Each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality. If these seeds would take root in my liberty, and if His will grow from my freedom, I would become the love that He is. and my harvest would be His glory and my own joy." 

Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, 

Photo taken on December 29, 2024 @5:18pm
about the time when we discovered the bishop's pastoral letter on the internet.
The original post was on December 30, 2024 @ 12:39pm

“It’s simply a letter about how we can draw closer to Christ, and there is no controversy in that,” Bishop Malesic said. “Let’s just pray 15 minutes a day; join a small group; invite your Catholic neighbors and friends together to have a cup of coffee and talk about ‘Why are you Catholic?’; ‘How can you become a disciple of Jesus?’ I think these are the basic things.”

-from a media interview of the bishop

I invite every Catholic in the Diocese of Cleveland to read this pastoral letter in its entirety, as I have written it with each of you in mind. Make notes and underline your copy of the letter; Consider reading it more than just once. then, meet with some other Catholics who have read this letter and discuss it in a small group. Over the next year I would like this letter to be at the forefront of conversations around the diocese. 

A Flourishing Apostolic Church

MY COMMENTS ARE IN BOXES No other document, whether from the Pope, or the American Bishops, or any diocese or any parish has been as relevant to my life as this letter. It indeed seems as if the bishop has written it personally just for me. Why is that?  How can that be? First, the bishop asks us to do simple basic things. He asks us to read the letter carefully as something meant for us personally.  He asks us to begin talking about it with others.  He asks us to devote fifteen minutes a day to improving our relationship with God. He asks us to find a social network where we can share the story of our lives and discover support for our concrete unique missions of service in the world.   Second, the bishop recognizes the dignity and worth of each person and the value of personal initiatives. He suggests we personalize the letter by underlining it and making notes. He wants the letter to facilitate our conversations about these basic things. (This post consists of some of my underlines with comment boxes to start conversations). The bishop is confident that we will discover what forms of prayer are best for us personally. He understands that the best support network may be one that we form ourselves starting with families, friends and neighbors. We each have our experiences, talents and gifts; therefore, our stories and missions will be unique. If we pour our uniqueness into our initiatives, the letter will become relevant in very different yet very personal ways for each of us.  About twice as many Catholics pray daily as go to Mass each weekend. That is true for other Christian denominations.  Talking about daily prayer could become a non-threatening way of opening conversations about our spiritual lives with Catholics and other Christians. Conversations about daily prayer bypass questions about where, when and how often we go to church. These conversations should be easy if we agree with the bishop that there are many ways to pray, and that each person decides what is best. In our conversations about prayer, let us emphasize using FIFTEEN MINUTES OF QUALITY TIME each day to improve our relationship with God.  If we focus too much on fifteen minutes as a minimum some may assume the more the minutes the better the prayer. Scripture warns us against being proud because we pray more than others. We can all be equal in the desire to improve our friendship with God by fifteen minutes of quality time no matter how many minutes a day we are accustomed to pray.  Suggested Personal Initiative   We could begin our practice of fifteen minutes of quality prayer a day by contemplating the meaning of this letter for our own lives. As we underline and make our notes to share with others, let us be open to the Holy Spirit in discerning the following.  What might the letter mean for our relationship with God? For our relationships with families, friends, and coworkers?  For our relationship with parish and diocesan ministries?  How can we best tell the story of our spiritual experiences in ways that invite others to do likewise? How can we talk about our talents, gifts, and missions in ways that will not only get be supported by others by also help them identify their talents, gifts, and missions?

Fifteen Minutes in Prayer Each Day

Perhaps the most important question we all need to answer is this: What kind of friendship do I have with God? Meaning, do I know God the Father? If so, what does it mean to be his beloved son or beloved daughter? Do I know Jesus the Son, and do I allow him to know and walk with me? Do I speak with the Holy Spirit often, and do I listen when he speaks to me in the recesses of my heart? Chances are that most of us reading this letter desire to deepen our friendship with God, with each person of the Holy Trinity, and with each other.

I am convinced that none of those things will matter or be effective if we are not serious about deepening our friendship with God. I invite you, if it is not already part of your daily routine, to make time for God – at least fifteen minutes of prayer a day.

I am convinced that there is no moving forward for us as a diocese unless we first move forward in our friendship with the Triune God, who will then allow us to enter into deeper friendship with each other as Missionary Disciples ....

I have already mentioned above that I encourage every Catholic in the diocese of Cleveland to spend at least fifteen minutes in prayer each day. It may not sound like much, but carving out fifteen minutes during which one puts aside everything else and dedicates that time to one’s relationship with God can be life changing. 

Again, if we compare our relationship with God to our other relationships, we know that we make time for the people whom we love most, and the people who love us most make time for us. The same is true in our relationship with God.

There are many ways to pray, and you can each figure out what form of prayer works best for your given state in life, but for the sake of your spiritual health and the spiritual health of our diocese, take at least fifteen minutes to be alone with God.

Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer each consist of about fifteen minutes of Trinitarian prayer. As the chief parts of the Liturgy of the Hours they are prayed daily by bishops, priests, and deacons. They are sung in choir or recited in common by many religious. Vatican II encouraged the laity to pray the hours with the clergy, or in common, and even alone.  The Hours have been the heart of my life since childhood. In recent decades, a large collection of liturgical music provided the soundtrack for their celebration. Although I was able to share the music with small groups at my house, the elaborate structure and costs of breviaries meant group celebrations of the Hours were out of reach.   SAINT GABRIEL HOURS When the pandemic arrived in 2020, I began collecting resources on YouTube to support our household celebration of Morning and Evening Prayer. There was an abundance of resources of varying quality and suitability. Two lay initiatives seemed most promising for widespread use since they both provided the complete approved text of the hours but in different forms. DivineOffice.org focuses on community recitation of the Hours, while SingtheHours.org provides a completely sung celebration by a cantor.  YouTube has many psalms, hymns, and canticles, some of great audio-visual quality, although these often do not use the official text. However, they are suitable for personal and group mediation upon the official text. In 2022 Word on Fire began publishing a monthly booklet. It provides the complete text of Morning and Evening Prayer and reads through like a book with complicated instructions, page turning and ribbons. This booklet and our website share a common purpose: that the Hours may be prayed anywhere, anytime with anyone.  The Saint Gabriel Hours blog provides a rich but limited set of choices each day to help each person figure out in what ways the Hours might enrich their lives either as recitation in common with others, or by singing the Hour with a cantor, or by listening to the Hours being sung, or by meditating upon the text either with or without music.   The emphasis is upon using FIFTEEN MINUTES a day to discern the place of the Hours in our lives. QUALITY time in prayer is more important than quantity. Use small amounts of time, some even less than fifteen minutes, to decide where, when and how to pray the Hours.  Anywhere emphasizes integrating the Hours into the places of our life: in the car on the way to or from work, when using the treadmill, when walking outdoors, before and after meals and meetings, during work breaks, and while doing routine tasks that don't require much attention. (The early Eyptian monks did basket weaving while a cantor recited psalms). Anytime spreads Morning and Evening Prayer across the day. We can share the opening hymn with others at breakfast, pray the psalms while walking outside, mediate upon the daily scripture readings during a work break and then share the Gospel Canticle with others at lunch. With Anyone emphasizes our ability to share parts of the Hour with others anytime anywhere either personally or virtually by texting and e-mail. Virtual resources provide more than the dry bones of the liturgical text. They celebrate the Hours with sounds and images. Most importantly they provide community, both community with those who produced the sounds and images, and community with those who celebrate the Hours with the same sounds and images at various times and places.  Suggested Personal Initiatives  Sharing the Hours is a perfect opportunity to open conversations with others about the bishop's letter, the importance of daily prayer, and to begin sharing of our spiritual lives with one another.  Discerning the place of the Hours in one's lift provides a common project whereby individuals can relate to other members of a group as well as to the parishes and institutions of the diocese.

Develop Small Circles of Friends 

People look for community in the Church, and rightly so. We all need a small circle of friends with whom we can share our faith, in order to grow in our faith.  This sort of thing should be happening within families, which are the original and most natural of small groups. Families are called “the Church at home.” Make sure Jesus is at the center of your family life.

Small faith-related groups allow us to recognize what is universally true about our Catholic faith in our particular situations. Share what the Holy Spirit is doing in each of your lives. Don’t hide God’s action in your life from others. Share it!

I am asking pastors and parish leaders to see that such small group opportunities are available, but even more, I also ask parishioners themselves to take the initiative to create such small groups. This might be as simple as asking some of your Catholic neighbors to come over for a get-together. 

COMMOWEAL LOCAL COMMUNITIES According to its website, “Commonweal fosters rigorous and reflective discussions about faith, public affairs, and the arts, centered on belief in the common good.”  Commonweal Local Communities (CLCs) “gather in their local communities for critical conversation on the issues that matter most. Each community determines their goals, set-up, meeting times, and the readings best suited for them.  About Commonweal On Sunday, last November 17, I received an e-mail message that I had not seen in more than three years "New Member for your Commonweal Local Community."  Instantly the idea formed. November, the Centennial Issue of Commonweal was an ideal time to begin to reinvent Commonweal Local Communities. On November 23, I put a first draft on this website analyzing what the CLC did in the 29 meetings between September 13, 2017, and February 24, 2020, when the pandemic forced us to cancel future meetings. I argued we should abandon the model of attempting to bring mainly subscribers together in one CLC. Rather we should empower subscribers to create a network of with a variety of small groups in homes, parishes, and elsewhere. The key to success would be inviting friends who are not subscribers using the five free links per month allowed by Commonweal. I proposed binding this network together virtually on our website with a variety of contributors and comments.      Models for Reinventing Commonweal Local Communities I was planning to send e-mails to members after the first of the year asking each individual what they thought of my ideas. Then came the discovery of the bishop's letter on December 29, 2024, which profoundly changes the environment for reinventing our CLCs. The letter proposes that everyone join a small group and encourages personal initiatives to create such groups.  "I would like each and every Catholic in the Diocese of Cleveland to be able to identify his or her mission of service in the world. The People of God are the front-line workers for Christ in our society. Your apostolate, flowing from your baptism, is to transform those within your sphere, those you encounter on the journey of life. Use the gifts God has lavished upon you in ways that build the Kingdom of God on earth in the image of what the Kingdom of Heaven will be like: a place of peace, love, and joy."  Commonweal certainly has an abundance of concrete material relevant to service in the world. Two recent articles on grief by Paul Lauritzen, emeritus professor of John Carroll, are find examples. Should Grief be Considered a Medical Disorder?   Why We Need Graveyards. We need many CLCs to fulfill the potential of Commonweal to support the People of God as front-line workers with very specific missions.  Suggested Personal Initiatives First imagine how various types of CLCs might enrich your life. A household CLC, a parish CLC, a Lake County CLC, and a diocesan wide CLC would help although they would be composed of very different people and focus on very different issues. Second, began thinking about what type of CLC might benefit friends, people whom you know sometimes just casually other times fairly well. Considering just the people who I have met in the Cleveland CLC, I get very different answers.   Third, take a look at the models post. Which models seem to be the best ways of attracting as many people as possible into as many different CLCs as possible. Fourth begin discussing the models with others by sharing this post and the models post with friends.

Knowing and Telling One’s Own Story

St. Athanasius said, “God became man so that man might become God.” Of course, we will never be God, in the strictest sense, but we are meant to be like God. In the eastern-rite Christian churches it’s called theosis; in the West we call it becoming a saint or becoming holy. God became human so that we humans can become God-like, or holy, or saints who have been perfected by God. Jesus said it this way: “So be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48). Jesus came as one of us to make us one with God.

What is your story? What has God done in your life? How has your life changed because

of your participation in the life of the Catholic Church?

The challenge of telling our stories is that we have very different life experiences. Saint Ignatius found he could talk about spiritual experiences if other people went through the same series of meditations on the life of Christ within the same framework which are now called the Spiritual Exercises. The common framework of the bishop's letter may help us in formulating our own personal stories. After underlining the letter, I chose the setting that I had underlined the most to make a condense version of the letter, and place comment boxes where I wanted to initiate conversations.  Reading and Discussing A FLOURISHING APOSTOLIC CHURCH Within the comments boxes I have placed some indications of why I chose to make comments but not my final comments. There is a link to my final rather lengthy commentary on my website. If you underline first then check my condensed version then comment on each section first then check my final comments you will begin to experience the Letter's potential to highlight our commonalty and differences. Catholic Christian living is not about a one-time conversion, but about a lifetime of conversions, of authentic growth in friendship with God. Conversions are changes in our way of thinking about ourselves, God, humanity, the world. Certain events shape our lives. Merton's Seeds of Contemplation became a guide to the contemplative dimension of my life. A public high teacher gave it to me as a gift; we became life-long friends. My thirty- day retreat as a Jesuit novice has had a profound effect even though I did not become a Jesuit; likewise my undergraduate years at a Benedictine college, Saint John's University. My interdisciplinary doctoral training in both psychology and sociology enables me to understand behavior from both perspective. Four years as a voluntary pastoral staff member in Toledo was a deep experience of Christian community. My transition from being an academic research to an applied mental health researcher unleashed my creativity.   However, a better word is spiritual leadership which is not to be confused with religious leadership coming from either office in the church or from church teachings. Spiritual leadership comes from our charisms. “For the exercise of the apostolate, the Holy Spirit Who sanctifies the people of God through ministry and the sacraments gives the faithful special gifts also (cf. 1 Cor. 12:7), "allotting them to everyone according as He wills"(1 Cor. 12:11) in order that individuals, administering grace to others just as they have received it, may also be "good stewards of the manifold grace of God" (1 Peter 4:10),to build up the whole body in charity (cf. Eph. 4:16). From the acceptance of these charisms, including those which are more elementary, there arise for each believer the right and duty to use them in the Church and in the world for the good of mankind and the building up of the People of God, in the freedom of the Holy Spirit who "breathes where He wills (Apostolate of the Laity, Chapter 2). Therefor the apostolate is about charismatic leadership. However, for most people charismatic leadership means extraordinary individuals and gifts which was not the intention of Vatican II.

Evangelize

It is true that we live in an age saturated by screens and information, and that a majority of young people spend a great deal of time on the internet and social media. We must ask ourselves, are our parishes present online? Are we reaching out to our parishioners and potential parishioners online with the Gospel message? Do we have a social media presence that is filled with hope and joy? Are our websites attractive and easy to navigate? Can people easily find us and our Mass times? Can they easily identify what is offered for visitors and inquirers? Can they find a community to meet in person? Have we consulted our younger parishioners to ask for their help as “digital natives” in this regard? If not, it is time we begin. These are tangible ways we live out our call to be missionary disciple.

Television, Time Use, Lent and the Divine Office In the above post on the PrayTell liturgy blog back in 2011, I argued that we should fast from television during Lent and use the time to good things for others and praying the Divine Office. Total leisure time had increased from 1965 to 1995. However increased television time not only absorbed time freed up from paid and unpaid work it had reduced the number of hours spent socializing, reading and listening to stereo. One explanation for its rise is that Television is easily available for view anytime in small chunks whereas many other activities, e.g. church activities require large chunks at specific time. Divine Office.org had recently become available as a podcast so that meant that we could pray the Hours anytime in small chunks of time.  When the pandemic arrived, my best friend and I decided to live together since she is immunocompromised and both of us lack family supports in the area. In our search for resources for the Hours we discovered Saint Meinrad which celebrates Vespers. It was also our place for Sunday Mass at the height of the pandemic. They continued to sing the Mass and Office without masks; they completely isolated themselves because of their elderly monks.  More recently we discovered Saint Cecelia in Boston whose Sunday Mass draws thousands from across the country and even around the world. Hundreds of people from across the country now come to their retreats.  Contemplative community Some of us Commonweal bloggers founded our own blog which I will call NEWBLOG (not its real name). The blog really doesn't want publicity or new members, nor appear to be using the Commonweal name or competing with it.  After all these years we still exist. There were about a dozen at first, we are down to half a dozen now. We each do about a post each week and comment on each other's post daily. I spend about fifteen minutes a day. We do basically what CLCs do we critical conversations on the issues that matter the most, sometimes nation issues, sometimes using articles from various sources,  NEWBLOG is a very diverse group; about equal numbers of men and women, about equal numbers of practicing and nonpracticing Catholics, about equal numbers of former Republicans and Democrats (all who hate what the parties have become). This diversity interacts in complex ways. We are from different parts of the country and different disciplines. It all makes for good conversation almost on a daily basis.  Everyone deserves a virtual CLC as well as an in-person CLC

Serve

II would like each and every Catholic in the Diocese of Cleveland to be able to identify his or her mission of service in the world. At the end of Mass, we often hear, “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.” This sending must not remain vague or abstract. Each of you must identify a concrete mission, a place where you have been commissioned by the Lord to take his love through service to those in need. There are countless missions and apostolates to be lived out, and I am asking each of you to prayerfully consider where the Lord is sending you on mission to serve others here in our Diocese of Cleveland

MY MISSION TO DEEPEN FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD AND NEIGHBORS  THROUGH DAILY USE OF SMALL AMOUNTS OF TIME (E.G. FIFTEEN MINUTES A DAY  WITH THE HELP OF VIRTUAL RESOURCES AND COMMUNICATIONS   SAINT GABRIEL HOURS  Discerning the place of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours in one’s life using a small number of YouTube links each day to the full text of the Hours recited by a small group, the full text sing by a cantor, also well as additional settings for the hymn, psalms, canticles, and Lord’s prayer plus links to the daily Mass readings as substitute for the brief readings.  Each post contains a directory of pages giving suggestion of how to use these resources to celebrate the Hours Anywhere, Anytime, with Anyone.  The blog is designed so that the user needs no other resources such as books, lectures, meetings and programs. However the user is encouraged to share this endeavor with small networks and groups in order to build community support for one another.  Individuals, groups, organizations and parishes are encouraged to support this grassroots endeavor by advertising it on their websites and by developing additional resources, especially blogs or websites that provide  material such as songs, lectures, group discussions, and celebrations of the Hours that customize the Hours for a particular community.  LAKE OHIO WEAL  Resources for the development of Commonweal Local Communities(CLCs) oriented to the environment of Lake County Ohio using resources from Commonweal, a variety of data oriented articles that are not behind paywalls, and reviews of books. The aim is to create a virtual community of readers as well as facilitate the development of a variety of CLCs in homes, parishes, and various organizations.  Participation in a CLC does not require having a subscription to Commonweal nor being a Catholic although both will make things easier.   The resources of Lake OHIO WEAL are organized around a vision of voluntary spiritual leadership along the dimensions of : Leadership, (Human/Social/Cultural) Capital, Time, Spirituality, Voluntarism (Friendship), the Bible, and Prayer.  This overall vision may be of wide use beyond Lake County Capital is defined as the accumulation of labor in various forms especially though the use of small amounts of time in a thoughtful planned manner such as improve of our skills (Human Capital), to improve our interpersonal and institutional relationships (Social Capital) and improve shared understandings and experience (Cultural Capital).     CLEVELAND COMMONWEAL LOCAL COMMUNITY NETWORK  This blog was designed to facilitate my role as contact person for the Cleveland CLC.  As we establish more groups within the network, I envisioned adding a contact person for each new group who will also become a contributor to the blog. For the time being I will retain the role of being the person who receives new sign-ups from the Commonweal website, consulting with the other contact persons for each group.    “ In addition to a meeting facilitator, it is imperative to have good communication as a group. We recommend having one point-person for communications that does not rotate. This role includes sending out emails or making phone calls a week (or more) before the meeting with a confirmation of the location, time, and discussion topic clearly stated. This person should also be willing to be in touch with Commonweal when there are new sign-ups in their particular community. Though this role is not a major time commitment, it is a huge asset to the success of these groups.”