Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - June 5, 2016

For more than a year, we have been finishing the Universal Prayer (the “Prayer of the Faithful” or the “General Intercessions”) with Bishop Zubik’s prayer for the initiative On Mission for the Church Alive! This initiative is an important response to the changing conditions in the Church, as we strive to build the strongest parishes now and for the future. This is something that will touch every parish in the diocese by the time it is finished in 2018. And so the bishop wants to be sure that every parish and every parishioner has a voice in the process.

One way to accomplish that goal is for every parish to name six On Mission Parish Team Leaders. These leaders have been going through training in recent weeks, and now they are preparing to take the next step. Our St. Malachy leadership team is:

                                              Sharon Cercone
                                              Rosemary Corsetti
                                              Timothy Davis
                                              Edward Kantz
                                              Anita Astorino Kulik
                                              Daniel Trocchio

The Leadership Team is to collaborate with me as well as with the Parish Pastoral Council and Finance Council. They will also be the primary ambassadors of the initiative to the parish.
The diocese has a working agreement with the Catholic Leadership Institute to help lead this program throughout our area, and CLI is helping to generate some preliminary “models” for each area of the diocese. Our parish’s team will be taking part in consultation sessions to study these models and to generate feedback on them. That process will include studying the models themselves, but it also includes soliciting and collecting ideas from all of our parishioners. Your insights are important, and the On Mission Commission is providing tools to our team to help them get the best possible understanding of what our future direction should be.

Bishop Zubik has asked every parish to take this weekend to publish the names of the team members in the bulletin, as I have done here, so that you will know who is involved in the process for this parish. But above all, he asks us to pray. We do not take on a major initiative such as this one without imploring the guidance of the Holy Spirit. To make such major decisions without openness to God’s would be to court disaster. So please pray for the Leadership Team named above. Please pray for Bishop Zubik, the Diocese of Pittsburgh and all our priests (including me), and please pray for the success of the initiative On Mission for the Church Alive!

                                                                                      Father H