When I was growing up in Ireland with a household of 12 children, all of us had chores to do around the house. We called them “charges” as we were “in charge” or this or that. We all had multiple charges, some of which were always the same. For example, I cleaned the pots and pans on Monday nights and helped put out the trash on pick up day. I was the youngest, so I got the hardest charge (Monday night had pots and pans from the whole weekend as well as the Monday night dinner!) But in fairness, my brothers would feel bad for me and chip in to help me as long as I was nice to them!
I have always felt that doing my charges formed me in ways I had no idea were so important or formative. It changed me for the better and made me who I am today. Today chores are in danger of being eliminated because of multiple reasons and I fear we are missing out their rightful place of “formation and learning.” I truly believe that chores are a critical aspect of home life not because the tasks of the chores are so important in of themselves but because it helped us appreciate the workload of running a household. When I was a child, I did not understand how many things had to happen to make the household run smoothly, from the shopping, cooking, cleaning for meals, to the washing and drying of clothes, vacuuming the house, scrubbing the bathrooms and washing the bed linens. Then outside of our home it was washing the car, watering the vegetables and flowers in the garden, not to mention the annual spring cleaning of the garden and whole house! I learnt that there were always tasks to be done every day and if everyone helped just a little then no one person has to do them all.
The other aspect of doing chores that changed me was I became aware of the workload. Even if I was not able to do much in the way to help, being aware always left me more grateful for who was doing the chores. If I had time, I would chip in to help with my siblings doing their chores, assist my mom or dad with doing their tasks or at the very least offer to help and genuinely thank them after each day of work.
Why do I bring all of this up? The Church is a household for the community. There are a million tasks to make the Church run smoothly and we need everyone to help chip in. If everyone does one or two tasks (ministries) then no one person has to do them all. There is no way we could hire enough staff to do all that needs to be done in a community the size of St. Simon. The challenge for our community is that for the last few years, especially since COVID, we are relying on a smaller and smaller group of people to do all the ministries. We are really struggling with bringing back some of our major ministries because we do not have enough volunteers to help pull them off.
This is especially true for Sunday liturgies, and it takes over 100 volunteers to put on all 5 masses every weekend and we have several people who come back to serve multiple times because we are so short on volunteers (particularly Eucharistic and Tech Booth Ministers). I don’t think that is sustainable for the community long term to have such a small group of the same volunteers expected to do it all so I invite you to think about how you can help. We are hosting a Stewardship Ministry Fair on August 26 & 27 after all Masses.
We have invited Meredith Augustin from New York City (cast member of the Angotti musical JOB: The Now Testament) and Francesca LaRosa to inspire us at all Masses. After the Saturday 5:00 pm Mass, we have a light dinner, and Meredith and Francesca will also perform a concert at 7:00 pm in the Church, to inspire us through music, encourage us to get involved and participate in a ministry. It is not just liturgies that need help from volunteers. Every ministry is short for parishioners to accomplish our goals.
One great example is the upcoming Rummage Sale. While this may seem like a fundraising event or social event, it is primarily a Social Outreach and Justice event. All the funds raised go towards outreach and justice, and all the local agencies around us in the local communities are eagerly awaiting our collected goods to give them away to those in need. We cannot do this without many more hands and many more volunteers. While we have leaders from previous years, they cannot be expected to do all the work. We all need to step up and volunteer and work alongside them to understand and appreciate the work of this great ministry. This is true for every ministry. Together, let’s work together to grow our Church community and increase our impact on our wider community.
Please plan on coming to Mass the weekend of August 26 & 27 and leave some extra time afterwards to walk around the different ministry tables, take the information and prayerfully consider which ministry you will sign up for. Ideally, we’d love everyone to be involved in at least one ministry, sharing their time and talents to the best of their ability. If everyone does something, then nobody must do everything. There is enough work for everyone and not too much for all of us.
As school starts back this week, it is a good time to think and pray about how to get involved in this wonderful community and make it even better, not only for us here at St. Simon, but for those we reach out to in our local community and beyond. You can read more about the schedule for Stewardship Weekend here.
God bless,
Fr. Brendan