12 Ways To Catechise And Strengthen The Bonds Of Fellowship
- Host small informal home gatherings and mix in people who are well-versed in Tradition and the transcendentals - truth, goodness, and beauty - and who can gently shape conversations toward living the Faith with integrity.
- Establish the Guild of Saint Stephen for altar servers at your parish. Altar servers can be the leaven that inspires reverent worship of God among parishioners. https://www.guildofststephen.org/
- Conduct Eucharistic processions (Corpus Christi, Marian processions) to bring the light of faith into a surrounding neighbourhood, to give people permission to live the Faith and celebrate ways of living that are healthier and more beautiful than current societal norms dictate.
- Ensure the Sacrament of Penance is available every day, if even for only 30 minutes. Forgiveness and reconciliation gives people cause for peace and joy that spreads from one life to another. By purifying the faithful through challenging homilies and by making the Sacrament of Penance available every day, true and lasting relationships are formed and the Catholic identity of the parish informs and supports the wider community.
- Encourage realness. Help people understand what is real and what is good so they can orient themselves to healthy ways of thinking, ways informed by the wisdom of the saints.
- In the Ordinariate, fellowship is considered something of an "eighth sacrament." That is, the fellowship that follows Mass offers believers opportunities to awaken to the graces offered in the Mass, the blessings of God's wisdom, His healing and peace, and His life-giving Presence. Celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. Offer a monthly Requiem Mass for the memory and repose of the dead. Invite people to submit prayer requests for family members.
- Encourage people - visitors, newcomers - to introduce themselves during fellowship. Welcome the stranger as you would welcome Christ.
- Establish men's and women's groups to extend Eucharistic fellowship into daily life and to share practical experience rooted in Catholic wisdom. E.g., https://littlemorefellowsh.wixsite.com/littlemore
- Host seasonal talks: Lenten and Advent lecture series on aspects of Lent/Advent.
- Foster a rich parish and individual devotional life. Ordinariate communities are well known for their celebration of beautiful timely devotions that build identity and confidence: the shared Daily Office (e.g., Mattins before Mass); seasonal memorials and festivals that orient believers to the beauty of God's creation, e.g., Ember Days and Rogation Days, Tenebrae, Blessing of Graves, Harvest Thanksgiving, Nine Lessons and Carols. Establish a Guild of the Holy Souls. https://www.victoriaordinariate.com/holysoulsguild.html
- Offer Exposition and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at least once a week with a full hour for meditation and confession, concluding with Solemn Benediction.
- Ensure the Mass is always celebrated with dignity and heartfelt reverence.
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PSALM 37
Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right : for that shall bring a man peace at the last.
POPE LEO XIV
The right to freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, religious freedom, and even the right to life are being restricted in the name of other so-called new rights, with the result that the very framework of human rights is losing its vitality and creating space for force and oppression. This occurs when each right becomes self-referential, and especially when it becomes disconnected from reality, nature, and truth.
ST AUGUSTINE
The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.
SAINT PHILIP NERI
The greatness of our love of God must be tested by the desire we have of suffering for His love.
ANTONIN SCALIA
Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility. Liberal Education makes the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman, it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life. These are the natural qualities of a large knowledge, they are the objects of a university. But they are no guarantee for sanctity of even for conscientiousness; they may attach to the man of the world, to the profligate, to the heartless.
MARCUS AURELIUS
There is but one thing of real value - to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.
MARK TWAIN
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
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