Last Sunday I gave a short retreat of two hours to our catechists and ministers. Thank you to all who came and invited ministers from other parishes. I shared the highlights of the two books I plan to use as a guide for us in the year ahead as we re-group after the summer and grow our ministries. I mentioned the first book last weekend called “Tiny Habits” by BJ Fogg and the second book I have mentioned before called “Together” by Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General.

 

In his book “Together” Murthy explains the greatest health risk for US citizens today is “loneliness.” While it is intuitive that loneliness is one of the root causes for mental illness, it is less obvious that loneliness could be a root cause for cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes as he proposes. But when one thinks about it for a few minutes it makes sense. If I feel lonely then I am likely to be more anxious about social interactions causing stress reactions triggering cardio issues. In turn that might cause me to eat the wrong foods to ease my anxiety which in turn can cause obesity or diabetes when taken to the extreme. The conclusion makes sense when one thinks about it.

 

While the book goes into great detail about the data supporting the connection between these diseases, it really focuses on the call to action to address loneliness. The feeling of loneliness is an alert system of the human body in much the same way that hunger and thirst are alert systems. When we feel hunger or thirst, we reach out and eat or drink something. If we feel lonely, we need to connect with someone. It would be beneficial to call or visit someone to build up connections again. Murthy then challenges all civic and religious organizations to step up and increase their efforts to get people connected with each other again. We know this to be very true with our experience during the COVID pandemic days. We need to connect with friends and family to feel fully alive and fully human.

 

With that challenge in mind and our own general response to COVID, we are focusing on “community” for the year ahead. The theme for the year is “One Community in Faith” at both the school and church. We hope to engage all of us in habits that will build our community back up again to pre-COVID conditions and beyond. That sounds straightforward but we know that we need to be deliberate about our behavior to grow our community. 

 

This week with the catechists, liturgical ministers and pastoral staff, I used the “Tiny Habits” book to analyze and ask the question – what specific action items can we take that would make us a welcoming, kinder, non-judgmental, and inclusive community? After a process of brainstorming, discussion and analysis, the conclusion was there are three simple steps we can take:

  • Smile 🙂
  • Greet one another, and 
  • Talk to each other! 

 

We all agreed that these three simple actions are easy to do and will have a high impact on all parishioners, especially new parishioners visiting for the first time.

 

So here is the challenge for all of you. Can we make an effort to build our community with these three simple steps? We start when we get to the church campus and not just when we enter the Church. We smile and greet one another as we walk into Church. If we can get an opportunity to talk to one another then we can chat with them not just inside the church but on the way in and on the way out and not just to our friends but to ALL people. At the very least, we can smile and greet them. This costs us nothing and being kind to one another makes such a difference.

 

In a special way this weekend, we celebrate community as we host our Stewardship weekend (the first since the pandemic) and I ask everyone to sign up for a new ministry (there are ministries for all and for those of you with full family lives, some have some small time commitments but every little bit helps run our Church and programs here at St. Simon and beyond). As I mentioned last week, we are hosting a concert with Francesca LaRosa tonight, Saturday, August 26 at 7:00 pm. Meredith Augustin, our new Music & Liturgy Consultant is here from NYC and will join Francesca. It is going to be an amazing evening of music and praise with a special ending to the evening in candlelight. 

 

If you are joining us for Saturday 5:00 pm Mass, we are offering a lite dinner after Mass before the concert, please register here. We encourage you to come to any Mass this weekend as Francesca will be playing and singing at ALL Masses! On Sunday, our popular Donut Sunday returns with our Ministry Fair and we are having Pizza Night after Sunday 5:00 pm Mass.

 

I ask you to peruse the tables at the Ministry Fair and to pray about where your role might be in our community. All of us have time and talents to share … what is yours? I look forward to seeing you this weekend, let’s smile at each other and greet one another enthusiastically!

 

God bless,

 

Fr. Brendan