Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
I made my Cursillo in November 2006 at the Josephite Pastoral Center in Washington, D.C., and sat at the table of the amazing graces.
Two weeks earlier, I’d been on my first-ever parish council retreat. It was one day, held at a beautiful wooded setting that was just inside the Beltway, but felt a world away from the hustle and bustle of DC.
It was a day of good work, ministry leaders getting to know each other, thoughtful discussion and sharing, plans for the coming year. It was already dark when about twenty of us went into the center chapel for a closing Mass.
Our pastor, Gerry Creedon, struck an entirely different note in his homily than I’d ever heard back at the parish. There, his themes generally were social justice or stories about growing up in a very large family in County Cork or his years of ministry in the Dominican Republic. At the retreat center, he was challenging, almost scolding. His message was that yes, we had accomplished some things and written up some nice plans, but what if? What if we were like the early Church, and gathering threatened our lives? What about the early martyrs? What about the martyrs of today?
“What are you doing to bring souls to the Kingdom?” he asked.
I spent a lot of time contemplating that challenge on my Cursillo, and found myself coming up woefully short but not really knowing what to do about it. Then I kind of forgot about it, until now.
None of us on that parish council retreat envisioned a pandemic that would mean closed churches for weeks or months, and an entirely different experience at churches able to reopen. Financial donations are down, and religious institutions are laying off or furloughing staffers and reducing services for those on society’s margins just when they are most needed. There are fewer hands available, fewer dollars to buy food or clothing or medicine other supplies. Nice plans have fallen by the wayside.
Gerry died a few years ago, but I think I know what he would have done. He wouldn’t have stayed safe in the rectory. He would have figured out a way to charm or guilt or beg people like me out of more money than we’re used to giving. He would have come up with ways to distribute whatever his parish bought with those dollars. Some people who didn’t really need assistance would have gotten help dollars, because there wouldn’t have been a lot of forms to fill out. He would have borne witness.
And so I’m wondering anew: What am I doing to bring souls to the Kingdom? Maybe we should all be considering that—and doing it intentionally in whatever way we’re called. My personal pledge to God going forward is to think about it every morning—and to have an answer, small or large, every night.
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