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No one does it all now
BY FR. PHILIP KENNEDY

By our baptism, we all have a share in the ‘priestly mission’

Lay leaders prepare to hear and celebrate God’s Word.

Lay leaders prepare to hear and celebrate God’s Word.

Once or twice a year I have the opportunity to speak with older Oblate priests and diocesan missionary priests about what the missions were like fifty or sixty years ago. I need to keep in mind, during these discussions, that the priest usually did just about everything that needed to be done to evangelize and foster the faith in distant mission centres.

There were heroic groups of religious women who operated clinics and hospitals in remote areas, under straitened circumstances, and sometimes schools and hospices. But the greater part of catechizing and counselling, and preparation for the sacraments, and the ministry of grieving and support, and day-to-day moral guidance, then celebration of Holy Mass, was done by the priest. All these tasks would have been conducted in addition to the enormous amount of time the priest had to devote to just surviving and the upkeep of his dwelling, and travel to faraway places to perform the same ministry in a different locale.

Lay formation participants during one of the training sessions at the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre’s Ministries Program.

Lay formation participants during one of the training sessions at the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre’s Ministries Program.

Things have changed. Now there is not the same number of clergy to be posted in fairly small mission communities, so those priests we do have don’t cover the same places with the same regularity as once was the custom. That does not mean that there is no ministry to the people in distant sites. It was realized long ago that the faith community belongs to the people, and the cultivation of the faith could well be done by lay people in their own towns and missions. By our baptism, we all have a share in the “priestly mission,” to spread the faith and encourage the holiness of others.

So the growth of lay leadership in the many churches and missions is not meant to replace the priest, but does an essential work, in preparing the members of a community to hear and celebrate God’s Word, and live in the peace of a true Christian church, in anticipation of the priest’s arrival to celebrate Mass and the sacraments.

This issue of our magazine gives fine illustrations of the good work done by lay leaders, and the effects their efforts have on the people in their midst.

I am encouraged that the participants in the many lay leadership structures that we assist financially each year always have such good things to say about their centres of learning and preparation in ministry. The Jesuit missionaries operate the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre, near Espanola, Ontario, which for many years has offered lay leadership education for First Nations Catholics, especially with its Native Deacons’ training process, and various retreat situations. Father Douglas McCarthy, the director, ensures that past and present lay participants at the centre can go out to the ten nearby missions and be active signs of faith life, and other adult native students go out even farther afield, to more distant mission sites.

Helping to keep the faith alive is essential in the furthest missions, and the role of the lay Catholic has proved to be the most valuable gift of talents we may have.

© 2011 Catholic Missions In Canada Charitable BN # 119220531 RR0001