The Spirituality of the Parish
By Monsignor Vincent J. Grimalia, V.G. 

When we explore the elements of parish spirituality, we can approach it from different perspectives that shed light on significant elements of spirituality itself. We can look at the parish from the perspective of the passage of the Acts of the Apostles that inspired our Diocesan Mission Statement, and see it in terms of word, worship, community and service, or by reflecting on the gifts and responsibility of unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. However, this article will look at parish spirituality from the perspective of vocation, communion and mission.

Spirituality of Vocation

Our Diocesan Mission Statement begins: “We the Catholic faithful…are called.” Our Diocesan Pastoral Plan for Vocations states: “This statement speaks of vocation; it says we are all called. Through parish self-study and pastoral planning for the mission of evangelization, we answer the call; we respond to our vocation. Evangelization then becomes our work of calling others to their call from God or, in other words, to their vocation.”

In his Message to the European Congress on Vocations, the late Pope John Paul II noted: “Life has an essentially vocational structure…All human existence is therefore an answer to God… there is no doubt therefore that the ecclesial community’s commitment to the pastoral care of vocations is most serious and urgent. In fact, every baptized person must be helped to discover the call that in God’s plan is addressed to him and to make himself available to it.”

The primary place for promoting a culture of vocational awareness is the local parish. Our Pastoral Plan for Vocations notes that promoting vocations is an integral aspect of the new evangelization. Vocation awareness and the human search for meaning guided by faith are connected.

In Dilecti Amici, Pope John Paul reflects on the call of the rich young man and the search for meaning and vocation in these words: “What must I do so that my life may have value, have meaning?” This earnest question comes from the lips of the young man in the Gospel in the following form: ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’

“Is a person who puts the question in this form speaking a language still intelligible to the people of today? …when we place ourselves in the presence of Christ, when he becomes the confidant of the questionings of our youth, we cannot put the question differently from how that young man put it: ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Any other question about the meaning and value of our life would be, in the presence of Christ, insufficient and unessential.”

Several years ago, when he was archbishop of Munich, Pope Benedict XVI shared this reflection on Acts 2:42-27: “Human life is, in the first place, a search for meaning, the search for some message that can show me my path and give me direction.”

The parish as a community of disciples can and must be a place that supports the search for meaning and personal vocation through faith. An enriched awareness of vocation and the development of a culture for vocations is an important aspect of parish spirituality.

What is the understanding of the parish concerning the promotion of vocations? Is there a developing culture of vocational awareness? Do people pray for vocations? Do parishioners encourage and invite people to see their life in terms of vocation and mission? How can the parish promote vocations as an aspect of evangelization and ordinary pastoral care within the parish? How does the parish assist its members in their personal search for meaning through faith? This is one area where the parish pastoral council and parish self-study can help develop an awareness of the importance of creating a vocation culture in every parish.

Spirituality of Communion

On the night before he died, Jesus prayed: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one. (John 17:11)”

The mystery of communion begins with our relationship with the Blessed Trinity, and is strengthened through the Eucharist and the life of charity it enables us to live, so that the great commandment is put into practice in our daily lives. When we fail in charity and justice, when we create divisions and factions rather than reconciliation, we fail to live the great commandment and do not have a Eucharistic consistency in our lives.

The Eucharist is the source and summit of the life and mission of the Church and each parish. In the letter, The Mystery and Worship of the Eucharist, Pope John Paul II noted: “Just as the Church ‘makes the Eucharist’ so ‘the Eucharist builds up’ the Church.”

The Eucharist has consequences for our lives.

Pope John Paul II noted: “The authentic sense of the Eucharist becomes of itself the school of active love for neighbor…The Eucharist educates us to this love in a deeper way; it shows us, in fact, what value each person, our brother or sister, has in God’s eyes, if Christ offers Himself equally to each, under the species of bread and wine. If our Eucharistic worship is authentic, it must make us grow in awareness of the dignity of each person. The awareness of that dignity becomes the deepest motive of our relationship with our neighbor… The sense of the Eucharistic Mystery leads us to a love for our neighbor, to a love for every human being.”

When looking at itself in terms of communion, the parish needs to see how it expresses unity and is building community. How does it deal with factions and cliques? Is it a welcoming Catholic community or is it tainted by racism and prejudice? Is it more ethnic than Catholic? How do staff and volunteers cooperate and collaborate? How are parishioners, visitors and neighbors treated by the parish staff and volunteers? How are the phones answered? How are requests answered?

Are there efforts to avoid division? Are there ongoing attempts at reconciliation? How do parishioners understand their responsibility to share in the mission of the parish? Do people volunteer out of a sense of service or a need to control or be important? Are new people welcomed into parish activities and services?

Writing in the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, Pope John Paul II made a concise statement that can guide the work of pastors and Parish Pastoral Councils when involved in parish self-study and pastoral planning.

“To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God’s plan and respond to the world's deepest yearnings.

“But what does this mean in practice? Here too, our thoughts could run immediately to the action to be undertaken, but that would not be the right impulse to follow. Before making practical plans, we need to promote a spirituality of communion, making it the guiding principle of education wherever individuals and Christians are formed, wherever ministers of the altar, consecrated persons, and pastoral workers are trained, wherever families and communities are being built up.

“A spirituality of communion indicates above all the heart’s contemplation of the mystery of the Trinity dwelling in us, and whose light we must also be able to see shining on the face of the brothers and sisters around us. A spirituality of communion also means an ability to think of our brothers and sisters in faith within the profound unity of the Mystical Body, and therefore as ‘those who are a part of me.’ This makes us able to share their joys and sufferings, to sense their desires and attend to their needs, to offer them deep and genuine friendship.

“A spirituality of communion implies also the ability to see what is positive in others, to welcome it and prize it as a gift from God: not only as a gift for the brother or sister who has received it directly, but also as a ‘gift for me.’ A spirituality of communion means, finally, to know how to ‘make room’ for our brothers and sisters, bearing ‘each other's burdens’ (Gal 6:2) and resisting the selfish temptations which constantly beset us and provoke competition, careerism, distrust and jealousy. Let us have no illusions: unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become mechanisms without a soul, ‘masks’ of communion rather than its means of expression and growth.”

Spirituality of Mission

Writing in his Apostolic Exhortation on the Laity, Pope John Paul II focuses on the responsibility every Christian has to share in the mission of the Church: “Bearing fruit is an essential demand of life in Christ and life in the Church. The person who does not bear fruit does not remain in communion: ‘Each branch of mine that bears no fruit, he (my Father) takes away’ (Jn 15: 2).

“Communion with Jesus, which gives rise to the communion of Christians among themselves, is an indispensable condition for bearing fruit: ‘Apart from me you can do nothing’ (Jn 15:5). And communion with others is the most magnificent fruit that the branches can give: in fact, it is the gift of Christ and His Spirit. “At this point communion begets communion: essentially it is likened to a mission on behalf of communion. In fact, Jesus says to his disciples: ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide’ (Jn 15:16).

“Communion and mission are profoundly connected with each other, they interpenetrate and mutually imply each other, to the point that communion represents both the source and the fruit of mission: communion gives rise to mission and mission is accomplished in communion. It is always the one and the same Spirit who calls together and unifies the Church and sends her to preach the Gospel ‘to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8)

“The mission of the Church flows from her own nature. Christ has willed it to be so: that of ‘sign and instrument... of unity of all the human race.’ Such a mission has the purpose of making everyone know and live the ‘new’ communion that the Son of God made man introduced into the history of the world…”

In a June 15, 2007 letter to priests Pope Benedict XVI stated: “Let us think of the missionary importance of our parishes which are as it were, the connective tissue of our dioceses.”

In his Apostolic Exhortation on the Christian Faithful, Pope John Paul II also noted: “The ecclesial community, while always having a universal dimension, finds its most immediate and visible expression in the parish. It is there that the Church is seen locally. In a certain sense it is the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters (90).”

Pope John Paul noted: “The parish is not principally a structure, a territory, or a building, but rather, ‘the family of God, a fellowship afire with a unifying spirit,’ ‘a familial and welcoming home,’ the ‘community of the faithful.’ Plainly and simply, the parish is founded on a theological reality, because it is a Eucharistic community.”

These insights need to be understood by all Catholics, and they lead to some further questions. Do the parishioners look at their parish in terms of mission or maintenance? Do parishioners understand their responsibility for the mission of the Church and parish? Does the parish community see itself in communion with neighboring Catholic parishes, with the diocese and the universal Church? Does it have a mentality of parochialism or congregationalism? Does it have a sense of diocesan communion and actively participate in the mission of the diocese and live the diocesan spirituality? Does the parish see itself as a “cell of the diocese,” a part of the “connective tissue” of the diocese?