A Parish is always on Mission

Dear Parishioners,

"To foster Sacrament-nurtured disciples of Christ who live a bold and extraordinary faith, first in the family, then flowing out into our community."

Over the last six months our parish has been discerning what the Lord is asking of us as a parish family.  This began as an earnest desire to surrender the good of Christ's parish of St. Joseph and St. Mary back to him.  What ultimately came out of these sessions before the Blessed Sacrament was a strong desire from our Lord to form you through His Heart.  Our Lord's strategy for His parishes here is to encounter you, so you may be transformed by this love.  This was brought into focus through our new mission statement, prayerfully considered, and gives a core purpose to our parish family for all our present and future activities and decisions.  A mission statement defines an organization's core purpose, its current day-to-day operations, and who it serves.  It acts as a compass to guide strategic decision-making, unite people under a common goal, and communicate our values to parishioners and visitors.

I am very excited to live out this mission here at our parishes.  Ultimately, this comes from Christ's great commission to "Go and Make Disciples of All Nations."  Our mission statement is the specific way in which our Lord is asking us to live out the Great Commission.  Key to incorporating this will be to come at this from a place of trust rather than suspicion.  Often the enemy seeks to divide us from our Lord and each other by creating and fostering an atmosphere or culture of suspicion.  He convinces us to fear what I might lose if I change or the things around me change.  Often this takes the form of anxiety named Catastrophizing.  Catastrophizing is, at its spiritual root, a failure of trust. It is the imagination running ahead of grace.  It projects the worst possible outcome onto every uncertain situation.  The enemy doesn't need to invent a catastrophe. He just needs to whisper: "But what if...?" and an unhealed wound does the rest. In a parish setting, catastrophizing often sounds like:

"If we change the Mass time, people will leave."

"If we try that ministry, it will fail like it did before."

"If we invest in evangelization, we'll go broke."

Every one of those is a "what if" dressed up as prudence but actually driven by fear.  It is a wound that tells a person that the mission will fail before it begins.  Jesus commands "Do not be afraid" more than any other instruction in the Gospels. The reason is not motivational. It is diagnostic. Fear is the enemy's preferred tool.   Our parish has received an invitation to trust from Christ to "not be afraid."  Christ desires His parish and we His Sons and Daughters to flourish.  As Proverbs 3:5-6 reminds us, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, on your own intelligence do not rely; in all your ways be mindful of him, and he will make straight your paths."  Please join me in praying for our parishes as we begin to live out this invitation from Christ.

On another exciting note, I will be leaving this Sunday after Masses to journey to the far reaches of Scotland!  It will be an adventure to hike in the Highlands, explore the Isle of Skye, crash through a castle, eat Scottish Salmon, and wrestle with Nessy at Loch Ness!  A few years back I did some ancestry digging and found I was part Scottish.  Now I will be returning to the homeland to get my kilt and toss a caber or two.  I am most excited to visit the Tyburn Covent in Largs near Glasgow.  They have a history of martyrs during the reign of Henry VIII and Elizabethan times.  I will be praying for you all as I spend time with the Martyrs!  Also, if you have any Sacramental Emergencies, please call St. Wenceslaus at 402-443-4235.

In Christ,

Fr. Luke Fleck