Bulletin column from December 19, 2021

Dear Friends at Saint Frances Cabrini Parish and Saint Mary’s Immaculate Conception Parish:

Praised be Jesus Christ! As we celebrate this weekend the 4^th Sunday of Advent and make our way into the final days of preparation for the great feasts of the Christmas Season, the Church offers for our meditation a familiar and beautiful Gospel scene: the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth.

Even before Christ is born, while he is still in the womb, a community of the faithful is gathering around him. The Blessed Mother and her cousin Elizabeth are presented to us as two kindred spirits, two believers of the chosen nation of Israel, and two disciples of the Lord. They come together to share the knowledge of God’s abundant blessings to each of them and to affirm the reality that God’s favor extends well beyond their persons, reaching ultimately to all the world. As such they, and this scene, are a mini version of the whole Gospel story of Jesus Christ that takes root and shape in the community of the Church. Their encounter with each other is an early manifestation of the grace and favor of God that seeks to bestow upon all of humanity, beginning with those who fear him.

In light of this understanding of this scene, I have often thought of the Visitation as an illustrative model or type of parish life. Is this encounter not the same as a community gathered around a Catholic altar, in the house of God of a church building? At the center is the Word made flesh, alive in the midst of his people, on the altar and in the assembly of the faithful. A parish is a place where fellow believers share the knowledge of being blessed by God with a multitude of graces, and they take strength in each other. In a parish God is praised, the gifts of prayer, time, and charitable affection are shared, and a witness of God’s universal plan of salvation is offered to the wider world. A parish is, or ought to be, a visible proof that God keep his promises.

What does God promise most fundamentally? That he can generate life in realms where it would not exist otherwise. In the Visitation scene this includes a previously barren womb and also a virgin womb. The biological generativity is both a result of, as well as a further cause of, the spiritual generativity of grace that grows in the heart and in the soul of the believer. A parish is a place of profound spiritual generativity, where God fosters in life in realms that, apart from his power, it cannot exist otherwise. From the parish and out to the wider world this divine generativity must spread.

A parish is a zone of generosity that is the fruit of thousands of personal acts of sharing and sacrifice, offered out of love for the Lord. The same zeal of charity that prompted the Blessed Mother to go in haste to see her cousin is what animates the heart of parish life and allows parishes to be powerful agents of good. A weak or dying parish is one in which this zeal of charity and devotion has cooled. Conversely, a strong parish is one in which there is no shortage of devotion, much like the encounter in this Gospel scene.

To put it all another way, and in the light of these late Advent days, a parish is a place where Christ seeks to be encountered, shared, praised, and ultimately born anew. A parish is a privileged place of preparation for the coming of the Lord because it is a privileged place of meeting the Lord. God has come and he will come again. May we find him in the heart of our parish, in the midst of the encounter of discipleship.