Bishop's Pastoral Letter: Prayer and Small Faith Sharing Communities
From the National Catholic Register:
Cleveland Bishop's Pastoral Letter Puts Prayer at Forefront
The faithful are encouraged to take 15 minutes to commune with the Lord daily
to ‘draw closer to Christ’ and ‘do more than the minimum.’
“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.”
Fifteen Minutes in Prayer Each Day
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.
Small Faith Sharing Groups
I am encouraging each Catholic in the Diocese of Cleveland to become part of some small faith-sharing group, whether it is formal or informal, a bible study, a book club, over a cup of coffee, at dinner, or in a breakfast club. Meet with each other to discuss the truths of our Catholic faith, the beauty of our belief in God, and the strength we have when we know we have become God’s beloved sons and daughters. 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.
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.
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. 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 Personal Mission
Praying with Christ Every Day.
Anytime. Anywhere. With Anyone.
My website provides virtual resources for celebrating Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer each day. 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.
Virtual resources liberate the Hours from the priest's breviary and the monk's choir into the daily lives of anyone with a digital device. The website allows the user to choose to hear the hours recited by a small group or completely sung by a cantor, or the use the Word on Fire monthly booklets that read straight through like a book. By choosing among the resources, each user can shape a celebration that fits their time and place.
Morning and Evening Prayer each take about fifteen minutes. However, the website encourages users to discern the place of the Hours in their own life by setting aside fifteen minutes a day for prayer. The emphasis is upon a quality fifteen minutes rather than upon getting the whole Hour prayed. If the opening hymn is inspiring one can play it again, and/or reflect upon it. The website also provides links so that one can use the daily Mass reading options rather the short lesson of the Hour.
The strategy behind fifteen minutes also encourages users to find small amounts of time that spread Morning Prayer across the whole morning and integrate the Hours into our daily life. For example, one might take a brief walk outside and listen or sing along with the opening Hymn and psalms, then after eating breakfast, one might find a quiet place to read and meditate on the Gospel of the day, followed by the Gospel Canticle, litany, and the Lord's Prayer. One also might integrate others by inviting them on the brief morning walk or discussing the Gospel reading at breakfast.
Over several decades I have participated in a variety of faith-sharing groups such as RENEW and Bible Study. In this post I argue that Commonweal Local Communities (CLCs) may be seen as a spiritual movement of persons and communities engaged in the practice of reading Commonweal or other materials on issues that matter most in the light of faith centered on belief in the common good.
Therefore CLCs are part of what Pope Francis in the Joy of the Gospel has called "an ecclesial renewal which cannot be deferred” "I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.”
Catholics are members of multiple communities: households, families, neighborhoods, parishes, workplaces, professions, civic associations, etc. Some of these communities may be strongly Catholic, others nominally Catholic or Christian, and some may have some or many members who are of little or no faith. “Critical conversations on issues that matter most” will vary widely depending upon both the type of community and the faith of its members. The resources CLCs use in addition to Commonweal will also vary. Some may use mostly Catholic resources, others mostly biblical resources, and others mostly secular resources. Therefore, there is no one size fits all model for a Commonweal Local Community or gathering.
Anyone who is a subscriber to Commonweal can start their own CLC in their home, neighborhood, parish, workplace, public library, etc. Commonweal's generous five articles a month will provide an article a week making possible even weekly meetings.
Depending upon the “missionary spirit” of the Commonweal subscriber, a Commonweal Local Community may be focused upon the “issues that matter most” to families, to a network of friends of a particular household, to a parish, a city, a county, a workplace, profession, or to particular political, economic, or environment issues, etc. The key element that should make them Commonweal Local Communities is the practice of reading articles and/or other materials with a spirituality centered on belief in the common good
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