Dear Parishioners,

I am grateful for all who helped put on the events this week. It was a quite a lot to pack into one week. The Mass for Our Lady of Fatima, the Mass for Pope Leo, the Gala, the reunion, and the ground breaking; all these events were important for our mission field. The work that went into preparing for them was immense, and I am so grateful for all who helped put them together.

As we move into the summer months, parish life does usual-ly hit a different stride. It’s not that there’s nothing to do, but the week has a lot more flexibility in it. If I have never been to your home and you want to invite me over sometime, this might be a good time to arrange a visit or a dinner or a social call. I’m always grateful for the chance to meet people on their home turf. You can also reach out to Dcn. Jim Kirzeder and Dcn. Roger Marks for a visit, too. We are all willing to visit as we can. There is something beautiful about being welcomed into people’s homes.

I want to share some thoughts after meeting with people last Thursday to discuss and share about the celebration of Mass in the ad orientem posture. (Remember ad orientem is when the priest faces the tabernacle and prays the eucharistic prayer on the other side of the altar then is typical currently). I was grateful for those who came to share their thoughts. I was grateful for those who took part in the survey. It is clear that we don’t all think alike on this element of the celebration of Mass. We can ask is that okay? Is it okay to have a diversity of preferences with regard to this matter? Doing an experi-ment to share this way of celebrating the Mass together was a good thing. I think it brings up the reality that we don’t always agree on these small t traditions of the church. It is sometimes good not to emphasize these little differences and try to smooth them over. How-ever, sometimes it is good to take note of them and realize that those differences are there. When we acknowledge those differences, we can sometimes make sense of what our experiences are, and why people feel what they feel. Sharing about how we feel doesn’t always lead to resolution, but it almost always helps me understand other perspectives.

I can see there is a real hunger for tradition among the younger generations. They have a desire for order, for reverence and for a return to some of the traditional expressions of the Catholic litur-gy. Likewise in our elders, there are some who are a little discouraged or chagrinned that we would return to those things they thought were left behind.

But both groups are living their faith in the church, so how do we stay together, united in worship and living out our call to gather for the celebration of the Mass? I think it is unquestionable that it will require some give and take. It’s okay for us to be stretched by each other, and to accept things differently than we would prefer. I can tell you as a priest, I do this all the time. If I had my way, I would follow as closely as I could all the things that are in the roman missal, and the Second Vatican council documents. But we aren’t there, and we might never be there. There are little things when we celebrate funer-als or weddings sometimes you make concessions to try to accommo-date for where people are at. There have been times when I’ve had to bite my tongue, or make the best of a situation. This has happened in every assignment I have ever been in, and when I talk to my brother priests it happens all the time.

We do our best to take what the church gives us and follow it… but there’s also an element where we accept that the people we minister to, the people we are in community with, the people who are faithful to coming to Mass are all in different places. And further-more, on this question of ad orientem, the church allows both. There-fore, as Catholics we ought to be open to celebrating Mass either way even though we may have a clear preference. This is what sets us apart from other organizations… even other religions. As 

Catholics, our unity is in Christ, not in our preferences. We stay with the Lord even as we experience this tension of living together in communion with others who think differently. This is a beautiful witness to the world when we can live this way.

On a practical note… by now you might be asking what are we going to do father…? I think there’s a clear appetite for both postures of celebrating Mass, so I can see that we will likely have some celebrations of ad orientem in the future. However, I will likely pick one Mass to celebrate ad orientem during certain seasons of the liturgical year. For now, I am grateful for the participation and the willingness of people to share both their joy, their fears, their concerns and their hopes. Be assured my desire is to follow Jesus together and we can’t forget… this is our goal.

In Christ,

Fr. Eli