I’ve had a couple of real exciting weeks here at work.  I love the feeling of being part of something much, much larger than myself.  (And I’m not referring to the size of our building!) Our Town Hall Meetings were highly successful.  Over the course of two evenings we had just over 100 parishioners share with us their hopes and dreams for the future of our parish community. 

As the facilitator of this process, I felt joy to hear laughter and spirited conversation fill the Bishop Albert LeGatt Hall.  I was humbled to be leading, along with our parish staff and Parish Pastoral Council, a five year shared vision process in the Hall named after the man who is himself, an incredible visionary.

As the saying goes, “No rest for weary. (or…is it wicked?)” As soon as I wrapped up our Town Hall Meetings, my focus shifted to our Marriage Preparation Weekend, another fulfilling experience.

Our team of 18 presenters (169 years of combined marriage experience) hosted 29 couples for an amazing weekend of personal testimonies, stories, teaching and great food.  I felt renewed in my own marriage as our presenter couples shared from the well-spring of struggles and successes in their own marriages.

I have a deep sense of gratitude for those presenters who literally put it on the line in as they shared their personal stories.  The engaged couples reflected their gratitude in their evaluations.

Interestingly, these two experiences of mine have a connection.

One table from our Town Hall Meetings wrote the following newspaper headline dated February 2017:  “The Cathedral of the Holy Family has Something for Everyone!”  One of the lines taken from the article they had written reads, “Couples prepped for marriage here have lower than average divorce rate.” 

I had carried this line with me into our Marriage Prep Weekend.   I shared it with our team.  It became our prayer for all our engaged couples.  The lines from that article came back to me as I went through the anonymously filled out evaluation forms.  We discovered that 70% of the individuals who attended either didn’t want to be there or they had reservations about being there.  When asked, if this had changed for them over the course of the weekend, I am happy to report that it did for all them.  All of our couples heard or received something to assist them in their future marriages.

Even deeper than this, two individuals indicated that they had fallen away from their faith or had stopped going to church altogether.  As a result of their weekend here, they have decided to return to church and make faith an integral part of their marriages.  Can I hear someone out there in the Blogosphere shout Hallelujah, Amen!

It really is amazing to be part of something much, much larger than myself.  While the headline from our five year shared vision process is dated for 2017, I think we can write the headline today, “The Cathedral of the Holy Family has Something for Everyone!”