Called to
Holiness and Mission: The Parish and
the Search for Meaning
By Monsignor Vincent J. Grimalia, V.G.
As we pray for an openness to the Holy
Spirit and await the final decisions and
directives of Bishop Martino, it is
important to recall some very basic
information about the goal and components of
Called to Holiness and Mission: Pastoral
Planning in the Diocese of Scranton. In
his September pastoral letter, Bishop
Martino stated: “Simply put, the purpose of
the Pastoral Planning is to lay the
groundwork for the spiritual and pastoral
renewal of the Diocese of Scranton. This
requires looking at every one of our
structures to see if they are the right ones
for our times to carry out effectively the
Church’s mission of evangelization, which is
the proclamation of the Gospel and the
ministry of reconciliation.”
The Paschal Mystery in Our Lives and
Pastoral Planning
Pastoral planning is based on the gifts of
reason and faith. Bishop Martino noted:
“As a people of faith, we must look at our
present experience of pastoral planning in
the light of the paschal mystery of the
death and resurrection of Our Lord. ‘Amen,
Amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat
falls to the ground and dies, it remains
just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it
produces much fruit’ (John 12:24).
“During this Year of Saint Paul, we should
use his instruction to appreciate how much
we need to understand the paschal mystery as
we live our lives. Let us reflect
prayerfully on Paul’s words to the Romans:
‘Are you not aware that we who were baptized
into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? Through baptism into his death we
were buried with him, so that, just as
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory
of the Father, we too might live a new life.
If we have been united with him through
likeness to his death, so shall we be united
with him in the resurrection’ (Romans
6:3-5).
“Change, especially when it involves loss,
can cause much stress and profound pain.
This is precisely the ‘dying’ Our Lord is
referring to in speaking about the grain of
wheat falling to the ground and dying.
Saint Paul is talking about the same dying
in addressing the Romans. Believing the word
of God as expressed by Jesus and Saint Paul
will keep before our minds that in Christ
our dying leads to life. Truly, I do
appreciate the hurt we experience when one
familiar, beloved parish church is replaced
by another. Let us, however, put our faith
to work. It will empower us during these
times of change and loss to keep our focus
on growth, strength and new life.”
Several years ago, when he was Archbishop of
Munich, the Holy Father shared this
reflection on Acts 2:42‑27, the
scripture passage that inspired our Diocesan
Mission Statement: “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 must
develop a culture that promotes and
encourages seeing life as a vocation and a
responsibility.
Dr. Viktor Frankl spent his life studying
the importance of meaning in the lives of
people and ways that people discover
meaning. He noted that meaning can be
discovered through three general ways:
through activity, experience and attitude.
The first way of finding meaning, through
creative activity, includes: doing one’s
job, community involvement, helping others,
becoming a volunteer in a charity or
community organization. For Catholics,
stewardship of time and talent, and active
participation in the mission of the Church,
can be a way of finding meaning in life.
Living our faith and promoting the mission
of the church can also help a person find
meaning in their life as they help others
find meaning.
Life as Vocation and Responsibility
Called to Holiness and Mission: Pastoral
Planning in the Diocese of Scranton
is built upon the understanding of life as a
calling or a vocation. Called to Holiness
and Mission is not merely structural
reorganization – which is an important first
step in the process of pastoral and
spiritual renewal – it also involves a
search for meaning inspired by our Christian
faith.
In his Message to the European Congress on
Vocations, Pope John Paul II wrote:
“Life has an essentially vocational
structure. In fact, the plan for it stems
from the heart of the mystery of God: ‘He
chose us in him [in Christ] before the
foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and blameless before him’ (Eph 1:4).
“All human existence is therefore an answer
to God, who makes his love felt especially
on some occasions: the call to life; the
entrance into his Church's communion of
grace; the invitation to bear witness in the
Christian community to Christ according to a
completely personal and irreplaceable plan;
the definitive call to communion with him at
the hour of death.
“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. It will thus be
easier for those who receive a special
vocation of service to the kingdom to
recognize its value and generously accept
it. In fact, it is not a question of
educating people to do something, but of
giving a radical direction to one’s
existence and of making decisive choices
that guide one’s future for ever.”
Faith‑Inspired Search for Personal Meaning
In Veritatis splendor, sections 7 and
8, John Paul II stated: “ ‘Then someone
came to him…’ In the young man, whom
Matthew’s Gospel does not name, we can
recognize every person who, consciously or
not, approaches Christ the Redeemer of
man and questions him about morality.
For the young man, the question is
not so much about rules to be followed but
about the full meaning of life. This
is in fact the aspiration at the heart of
every human decision and action, the quiet
searching and interior prompting which sets
freedom in motion. This question is
ultimately an appeal to the absolute Good
which attracts us and beckons us; it is the
echo of a call from God who is the origin
and goal of man’s life.”
Pope John Paul continued: “The question
which the rich young man puts to Jesus of
Nazareth is one which rises from the depths
of his heart. It is an essential and
unavoidable question for the life of every
man, for it is about the moral good
which must be done, and about eternal life.
The young man senses that there is a
connection between moral good and the
fulfillment of his own destiny.”
Likewise in the document In Verbo tuo,
we read in section 14: “At the school of the
Word of God the Christian community welcomes
the highest answer to the question of
meaning which rises up, more or less
clearly, in the heart of each person. This
response does not come from human reason,
even if it is always dramatically provoked
by the problem of being and one’s destiny,
but from God. It is He who gives the key to
clarifying and resolving the big questions
which make man a questioning subject, ‘Why
are we in the world? What is life? What is
there beyond the mystery of death?’
“...The meaning of life, today, rather than
being sought out, is being imposed: either
from what is lived in the immediate or from
what satisfies our needs, the conscience
becomes ever more obtuse and the truest
questions remain elusive.
“Therefore the task of pastoral theology and
spiritual accompaniment is to help young
people to question their lives so that, in
the decisive dialogue with God, they can
formulate the same question as Mary of
Nazareth: ‘How is this possible?’ (Lk 1:34).”
In Dilecti Amici, Pope John Paul II
gave another reflection of the search for
meaning, vocation and the call to holiness:
“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? Are we not the generation whose
horizon of existence is completely filled by
the world and temporal progress? … But at
the same time it is clear that, 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.
“For Christ is not only the ‘good teacher’
who shows the paths of life on earth. He is
the witness to that definitive destiny which
the human person has in God himself. He is
the witness to man’s immortality. The Gospel
which he proclaimed with his lips is
definitively sealed by the Cross and the
Resurrection in the Paschal Mystery. ‘Christ
being raised from the dead will never die
again; death no longer has dominion over
him.’ In his Resurrection Christ has also
become the permanent ‘sign of contradiction’
before all programs incapable of leading man
beyond the frontier of death. Indeed at this
frontier they silence all man's questionings
about the value and meaning of life. In the
face of all these programs, the various ways
of looking at the world and the various
ideologies, Christ constantly repeats: ‘I am
the resurrection and the life.’
This awareness and the understanding that
pastoral care of vocations is an integral
part of the new evangelization gives focus,
direction and motivation to our pastoral
plan. It is hoped that this plan will
encourage parishes to develop a vocation
culture and promote vocations to the
diocesan priesthood in a meaningful way in
each local parish culture. Pope John Paul II
reminds us: “The pastoral care of vocations
springs from the mystery of the Church and
places itself at her service.”
The Parish as a Culture Promoting Vocation
Awareness and Evangelization
In In Verbo tuo we read, “The
theological foundation of the pastoral care
of vocations, therefore, ‘can only arise
from an assessment of the mystery of the
Church as a mysterium vocationis’
–a mystery of vocation.”
Pope John Paul II further stated:
“Consequently, by its very nature, pastoral
work for vocations is an activity ordained
to the proclamation of Christ and to the
evangelization of believers in Christ. This
then is the response to our question:
precisely that the theology of pastoral
work for vocations is rooted exactly in the
Church's call to communicate the faith.”
In Pastores Dabo Vobis (# 35),
he stated: “The Church, being by her very
nature a ‘vocation’, is also a begetter and
educator of vocations. This is so because
she is a ‘sacrament’, a ‘sign’ and
‘instrument’ in which the vocation of every
Christian is reflected and lived out. And
she is so in her activity, in the exercise
of her ministry of proclaiming the Word, in
her celebration of the Sacraments and in her
service and witness to charity.”
