on the move

Aug 4, 2024

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Late last week after almost two months with a Franciscan community in Assisi I began the final stage of my five-month sabbatical travelling to a place and to people I have grown to know well and love much over the past fifteen years.

The weeks with the Franciscans, a community of ten friars, was a great gift for me. Their welcome, friendship, openness, conversation and kindness gave me a life-giving experience of community life and I am very grateful to them.

The Assisi weeks also included study at an Italian language school. I’ve made some progress advancing beyond greeting strangers and ordering coffee, but language learning is much easier when young. I should have worked harder in third-form French.

And so I spent last Friday travelling.

The train network in Italy makes moving from one place to another fairly easy and early Friday evening I arrived at my destination, a tourist-free town in the Emilia-Romagna region an hour south of Milan. I will be based here for the next four weeks, arriving back in New Zealand early September.

For the past four months (June-July in Assisi and April-May in mid-west USA) a constant theme of conversations, supported and guided by my reading, has been the awareness that almost ninety percent of baptised Catholics in New Zealand have little contact with the liturgical life of the church community. We know the same is true for “Catholic” Ireland, and a priest from Poland (where almost 100% of the population are baptised Catholics) who was in my Italian language class commented that fewer than five percent of his city parish in Poland connect with Mass.

I have become even more aware of this reality in reading the Fifth Gospel Living project reflections which I have received for the book which will be published later this year. Those who have contributed remind me that the primary measure of faith is not Mass attendance but whether people in some little way experience a desire to be in relationship with Christ..

In the preface for Fifth Gospel Living I reflect on this:

“In our time this realisation has come to a head with the overwhelming majority of those who were baptised and raised in Christian denominations having little regular contact with the Sunday worship. Yet when I meet with these people I discover that while traditional religious practices may not feature in their monthly diet, they often speak of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in a way that is real, lively and mature. This leaves me wondering if they have left the Church or if the Church has left them.”

Within hours of my arrival on Friday I was at dinner with friends (pic above) – sharing pizza flowing from (master-chef) Paolo’s pizza oven. While we talked and laughed about everything the high-point of the evening was when each of us shared our experience of God in the ups and downs of life since we last met a year ago.

Christ was certainly present and active at our table.

At Sunday Mass yesterday morning my gaze wandered around the fabric of the old (11th century) church building, well worn and visibly in need of repair. The structure itself is simple and beautiful. It’s just a church – no meeting space and no coffee machine or kitchen.

But it was clear to me that this church community is in a very healthy state with people of all ages connecting and re-connecting immediately after Mass arranging to meet at local bars, cafe’s and playgrounds and gather again for food and drink during the week ahead.

These people understand that while Sunday Mass is the source and summit of life, when the Mass concludes with the priest’s instruction to “Go” this mandate for mission is to be taken seriously since Monday to Saturday the Church is most visible not so much in parish buildings (churches and parish offices and meeting spaces) but in parishioners’ families and workplaces, clubs and cafes and sporting and social venues.

This is great news for us in Aotearoa since while we have little success in getting people into church buildings, (even despite our efforts to provide a variety of attractive facilities), healthy people are seeking to live abundantly in families, workplaces, clubs and cafes…

The call to each of us is to GO and join them.

140 years ago Newman put it well:

I sought to hear the voice of God
and climbed the topmost steeple,
but God declared:
Go down again
I dwell among the people.
John Henry Newman

 

8 Comments

  1. Great stuff Fr John. I’d go one step further: Sunday Mass often presents as nothing like a pinnacle of life but rather as a comedown from real life. For this reason I more often than not in the 95 pc rather than the 5pc. But I’m still here on this site! Which I think proves your point.

    Reply
  2. That was great food for thought reading. Thanks

    Reply
  3. Lets use the church building space as our market

    Reply
  4. I was recently in a Baptist “church” with my little grandson for Mainly Music and when I left the building to go home I looked up above the doorway and read “You are now entering the Missionfield”.

    Reply
  5. We gather together throughout the week for a variety of activities at our church. Some are church related, some not. But Jesus is there whether it’s at the community lunch or at book club. As well as at mass. We gather together and enjoy each others company and being in his house. I love your photo Father John. How lovely for you to be so welcomed! And blessed

    Reply
  6. We have five adult children all in family relationships yet only one family are involved in a parish. Yet all have their own spirituality and prayer life. For us Sunday Mass is a very important time for feeding our faith and for community. We’re blessed to be able to practise our faith and to share it with our family.

    Reply
  7. This is brilliant Father John,
    I remember being in an Anglican Church in Gisborne in the mid 80’s, 40 years ago and a guy from England, whose name I can’t remember, standing on a chair so he could be seen (he was short) and telling people to go out into the market place. He was with John Wimber Vineyard Ministries.The market place is certainly not coming to us.
    Anne.

    Reply
  8. Thankyou Father John for your words of wisdom and encouragement. What we find in the unexpected
    often brings one closer to God.
    Every day is a new beginning and those we meet or talk with can be God to us! Ann

    Reply

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