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A Note to Parish Leaders
 Life
After Sunday is a catechetical resource for parish and
small group community life. We do not propose an elaborate new
program, but a simple way of drawing closer to the person of
Jesus Christ through the pursuit of closer friendships in the
parish. “In Jesus Christ, God himself was made man and
allowed us, so to speak, to cast a glance at the intimacy of
God himself,” teaches Pope Benedict XVI. “And there
we see something totally unexpected: in God, an ‘I’
and a ‘You’ exist. The mysterious God is not infinite
loneliness, he is an event of love” (Pentecost 2006).
 This
extraordinary “event of love” for each one personally
is the event that men and women are called to experience in
the life of the local Church, most specifically in the parish.
In close friendship, we discover the love of another for us
personally, even with all of our faults and difficulties. When
this intimacy happens through Christ in the Church, parish community
life becomes more than an isolated obligation, service or volunteer
opportunity. It becomes a place to experience and receive Divine
Love. It becomes the experience of the fullness of human life
caught up into the Mystery of God through the gift of the life
and love of Jesus Christ.
Small group communities exist in many parishes, thanks to programs
like Bible Study, Renew, Teams of Our Lady, etc. Many parishes
also offer small group opportunities during days of recollection,
retreats, stewardship and sacramental formation sessions. With
23 timeless topics and a variety of small group packages to
enhance current parish programs, Life After Sunday
can be a friendly tool to help parishioners have a more passionate
experience of Christ's love lived everyday in the local Church,
with a growing appreciation for the essential bond between the
parish, diocese and the Universal Church.
"A Long-Term Crisis in the Parish"
While in Boston attending the installation of Archbishop Sean
O’Malley, Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, then president
of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, sat with a reporter
for The Pilot to talk about the crisis in the Church.
“Many of the problems that we are experiencing in the
priesthood, I think, especially the sexual abuse, are due to
a crisis, not just an acute crisis, but a long-term crisis in
the parish and in the community of the parishes that is lived
out. Part of it is rooted in the fact that people do not
really experience love within the parish; it is a place in which
they really do not trust one another enough to be able to experience
the forgiving love of Jesus as that is mediated by the
community.”[emphasis ours]
We believe the Cardinal has articulated well the most pressing
need for the new evangelization in America today. In many
parishes, relationships among parishioners can be casually indifferent
in a way that often does not communicate Christ’s passionate,
merciful love for each person “in the flesh.” As
a result, the personal experience of God’s love can appear
as distant as the impersonal contact with a fellow parishioner;
faith in the Presence of Christ can become increasingly difficult
to recognize in the breaking of the bread, in the Word and in
the faces of the people in the pews or on parish committees.
In the meantime, many Catholics attend Mass on Sunday, but then
live the rest of the week without the mystery of the intimate
Presence they have just received, a Presence who longs
to permeate their lives every day. While many Sunday Catholics
make an earnest attempt to live their faith, they still experience
the faraway God of isolated Christians in the popular culture.
In 1971, singer Marvin Gay voiced the weary resignation of many
believers today:
“Jesus left a long time ago/ said
he would return. He left us a book to believe in/ In it, we
got a lot to learn”
(Marvin Gay, “Wholy Holy,” from the album, What’s
Going On).
 When
Jesus is experienced only as One who “left a long time
ago,” when parish leaders organize and plan as if they
are on their own with only “a book to believe in”
and “a lot to learn,” they may worry that everything
is principally up to them. Failing to recognize and live the
mystery of Christ’s living Presence in their midst, some
parish leaders now fall back on calculating practices of the
secular culture to “build community.” Some parish
councils rely entirely on corporate models for planning, organization,
communications, leadership skills and team-building. Even models
of catechesis are often based on “values education”
and psychological methods, rather than the real encounter with
the Person who lives at the center of all existence. While many
pastoral initiatives are well-meaning, there can be little fruitfulness
among the persons the Lord has gathered unless there is first
a foundational appreciation for his love…for his movement…for
his mystery in their lives. In the midst of the very real work
of parish life, Christ calls parishioners to shed their dependence
upon secular practices alone and retrieve a real sacramental
view of human life as his Body, lived through, with
and in HIM in union with his Spirit of Love for the Father.
Clinging to Christ in Everyday Life
Inspired by the words of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict
XVI, Life After Sunday seeks to help parishioners see
that intimacy with Jesus Christ—an intimacy that begins
with recognizing his living Presence in the heart of the parish—is
the key to the new evangelization and the discovery of the truth
and destiny of each human person. When parishioners have an
encounter with “the forgiving love of Jesus,” when
they have the experience of being brought into his “event
of Love” with the Father and the Holy Spirit as a member
of his Body in parish life, then they truly begin to live Life
After Sunday.
"If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing,
absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great,"
says the Pope. "Only in this friendship are the doors of
life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential
of human experience truly revealed. Only in this friendship
do we experience beauty and liberation."
With Cardinal Stafford and the Pope, we believe that this intimate
friendship with Christ is meant to be experienced in a deeper
way within the larger community of the parish, within smaller
groups of friends that can help each other recognize the Presence
of Christ in the sacramental life of the Church and experience
that Presence “in the flesh” through their enduring
bonds of friendship with each other.
We believe this is the "Intimate Path" to the new
catechetical literacy so essential to the evangelization of
culture today. Begin your journey of the “new evangelization”
now. Walk through the Intimate
Path here on this site and discover how you can help your
friends “see what you see” in God’s unexpected
“event of love”!
He is here.
He is here as on the first day.
He is here among us as on the day of his death.
He is here forever among us just as much as on the first
day.
For every day.
He is here among us all the days of his eternity.
His body, that same body of his, hangs on the same cross;
His eyes, those same eyes of his, quiver with the same
tears;
His blood, the same blood of his, bleeds from the same
wounds;
His heart, that same heart of his, bleeds with the same
love.
The same sacrifice causes the same blood to flow.
A parish shone with an everlasting brightness, but all
the parishes shine eternally, for in all the parishes
there is the body of Jesus Christ.
The same sacrifice crucifies the same body, the same sacrifice
causes the same blood to flow.
The same sacrifice offers up the same flesh, the same
sacrifice sheds the same blood.
The same sacrifice sacrifices the same flesh and the same
blood.
It is the same story, exactly the same, eternally the
same, which happened in that time and in that country
and which happens on all days in all days of all eternity.
In all the parishes in all Christendom.
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— Excerpted from The Mystery
of the Charity of Joan of Arc by Charles Péguy |
›› Suggested
Uses For Parish Life
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