In October 2024, I attended a Pastor Workshop hosted by the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. In one of the sessions, one of the seasoned pastors from that archdiocese mentioned how he had developed the practice of offering an annual State of the Parish address the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The thought was to situate his reflections on the previous year in the context of gratitude for all of the blessings they had received, serving as a reason to be hopeful for the year ahead. Inspired by this, I offered my first State of the Parish homily last November on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and I am happy to continue that tradition this year as well.
Included in this bulletin, you will find an insert with some numbers which highlight certain aspects of the state of the parish over the past year, including financial numbers, sacramental numbers, and Mass attendance. Though these numbers give some insights into the past year, they only provide a small part of what has taken place over the past year. As I have been preparing for this weekend, reflecting on all that has taken place, there is a word that describes what I am feeling regarding the current state of our parish, and what I expect looking forward. That word, likely not surprising, is hope.
Admittedly, my view may be somewhat biased toward this theme as it has been the underlying topic of all the bulletin articles that I have written over the past year, having offered a paragraph-by-paragraph commentary on Pope Benedict XVI’s beautiful encyclical on Christian Hope, Spe salvi. My reason for examining this document is due to Pope Francis declaring 2025 to be a Jubilee Year of Hope, so that theme of hope has been very much front and center.
Though I will reflect more specifically on my reasons for hope for our parish in my homily for this weekend, I will highlight one here. An aspect of this past year that gives me so much hope for the future is the large number of weddings in which I have been involved. At one point, there were four weekends in a row with weddings here at the Cathedral. I had the privilege of celebrating three of those, and though I did not celebrate the fourth, I had the joy of doing the marriage preparation for that couple. In addition to the several weddings celebrated here, I also attended other weddings outside of the parish, most recently last weekend in Indianapolis for a former student of mine from the time I taught at St. Anthony High School in Effingham. Related to these weddings is the joyful news from several other recently-married couples who have shared with me that they are pregnant or have welcomed new children into their families over the past year.
During a time when it seems as though Catholic weddings and baptisms have declined, this past year has shown that that trend is not a given, but that it can be turned around. The skeptic might doubt such an optimistic view, but I see these instances as reasons to be very hopeful for the future of the Church, both here in our parish, and on a larger scale in the Church. Please pray for these young couples and for their families. They will be a key part of the future of carrying on the life of our parish that we have all been blessed to receive from those who have come before us.