Joseph
Recently we received a book in the Office of Catechesis called “A Church on the Move”by Joe Paprocki. Joe is a good thinker and writer – and he is going to be the keynote speaker at our next Catechetical Formation Day, in August 2017. This, along with the fact that the subtitle is “52 Ways to Get Mission and Mercy in Motion,”sparked my curiosity.
Joe states in his introduction that the key “to having a church on the move is not to wait for the messiah-pastor to arrive. Nor is it to remodel the sanctuary, open a café, hire 10 professional musicians or install giant projection screens for all liturgies – as good as some of these things may be. The key is to focus on the one treasure the parish can deliver that secular society cannot, and that one treasure is Jesus.”
There was much more to this introduction, and I found myself getting excited about Paprocki’s very positive encouragement about where the Church has been and is, and how we can move forward. I encourage everyone concerned about the Church to read this introduction, but it is not the heart of this article.
I moved on to Chapter 1 (and these are short chapters), and I have not gotten any further. This is because this chapter hit me in a personal and deep way. The chapter begins with this quote from Pope Francis to the Bishops of Zimbabwe in 2014, “Fearlessly proclaim the Gospel of hope, bringing the Lord’s message into the brokenness of our time, tirelessly preaching forgiveness and the mercy of God.”
From this powerful challenge comes the next sentence, “The key to reviving any parish can be found in church basements all over the country.”
What?!
My immediate thoughts were the many church basements I have been in, the tables, the chairs, the dim lighting, etc. and I completely missed the point. What do we find in many church basements? Twelve-step meetings.
“People don’t go to 12-step meetings because they like the music. They don’t go because of how the space is decorated. They don’t go because the seats are comfy. They don’t go because the food is good. They go because they are broken and that they cannot fix themselves through an act of their own will. They accept the fact that they need an intervention.”
I spend a lot of time asking myself why my family, many of my friends and so many others just do not seek out church. Deep down I know that brokenness is the reason. This article was an intervention to me especially as I continue to pray for and with my nephew Joseph. Joseph is a heroin addict. Those words are so hard to write. I want my family to be perfect and whole and joyful. But we are not.
Joseph lives south of Boston where addiction is rampant. There have been two major documentaries produced that focus on this specific geographic area. On the street where my sister lived as a single mother with her three children, including Joseph, many of the kids, now adults, have died from heroin overdoses. It is heartbreaking. It is reality. At this writing I can count five overdoses with two more ending in death just in the past two months. I do not want to get that phone call.
I was one of those people who never thought that this would happen to my family. We are such a connected family. We love each other. But we are broken. We are broken and in need of an intervention. How do we proclaim the Good News to our families, our church, in their brokenness? How do we teach about an all-compassionate and loving God, the communion of saints, the resurrection of the dead to people who are hurting, incomplete, and lonely?
Paprocki writes, “For a parish to be effective today, it must focus on brokenness that is part of the human condition and that all of us share.”
Before we can teach doctrine, we must address brokenness. You don’t hand a person in need of an intervention a Catechism. We offer hope to brokenness as the Body of Christ.
The 12-Step process is a model for evangelization and catechesis. Small groups who come to know each other by name, surrendering all to God, sharing stories of brokenness and healing, sponsoring each other in the journey, reading from the Big Book (in this case, the Scriptures) and being open to God’s intervention, Jesus Christ. Finally, Paprocki adds, “It is no accident that the Church’s liturgical year begins with Advent, a season in which we focus on our need for an intervention.”
May we see Advent in a new way this year. May the in-breaking, the intervention, of God in our lives, through the hands and hearts of others, reveal to us the hope that is Jesus Christ.
