There is a meeting this evening, Wednesday 2nd December, of the Catholic and Single group. The purpose of this meeting is to appoint a co-ordinator of the group who will convene meetings, and keep those interested informed of upcoming events. Please come along as we move this important group to the next stage. It is so important that single Catholics who wish to meet with others have a place in the heart of our community.
Thanks,
Fr Ed
We’re facing challenges at the moment due to the rate at which our parish is growing — it’s great to be in this position, of course — but various responses are demanded of us: these are some of them.
Eucharistic Ministers
We will soon be increasing the number of Eucharistic Ministers at Sunday Mass from 5 (including me) to 8: 2 ministers at the front of church with ciboria, and 2 with chalices; at the back of church, 2 ministers with ciboria, and 2 with chalices.
Children’s Liturgy
As we now regularly have over 30 children in the Children’s Liturgy, we will be introducing registration forms, and monitoring who is present (we need parents’ contact details, and childrens’ special medical needs, for example). Safeguarding procedures are being implemented gradually. More on this in another posting.
Readers
From next Sunday, 29th November, we are introducing Prayers of the Faithful prepared by members of the congregation; the Prayers of the People will be written by the people. We are in the early stages of this ‘innovation’, but already the signs are good. I am receiving from the PoF group well composed, liturgically aware prayers; this will be an enrichment of our celebration of the liturgy of the word.
Altar Servers
Regularly now we have around a dozen servers at Sunday Mass (the numbers for the vigil Mass vary). More than ever, we need to focus on training the servers, so they can serve Mass with dignity and reverence, with a deeper understanding of the ministry they perform, and to help them understand that they minister as part of a team. We will shortly be introducing a rota for parents whose presence before Mass will be to help organise the servers, maintain an atmosphere of calm (my prayers are with them on this one!) and see to their vesting with their albs and cinctures. We are scheduling a training session soon for new servers, and a further session in January for all servers.
Social Outreach
Every time we come to Mass we pass a group/team of people at the church door who are begging for money. Should we give? As a parish we have decided to make a considered response: how can we best serve those in immediate need, those in need of longer term support, and those who are in desperate situations because of some local, regional or national emergency. Our parish council is in the process of nominating a working group who will consider requests for aid, and will make recommendations as to how we respond. As always, a strategic approach, whilst taking longer to formulate, is more effective than a knee-jerk response. In addition, this week the government has passed new guidelines which seek to restrict organised groups from demanding money from passers-by. Hopefully, this will help to make entering St Alphonse less intimidating for all who visit the church, who currently have to pass through one such group, gathered closely round the door. We are in the process of forming a parish-council group who will assess local and wider demands on our attention, time and resources, and propose to the council how best we should respond.
Liturgy
As previously noted, although we are the English-speaking parish, we are probably the most international parish in the Grand Duchy — a poll at one recent Mass registered over 40 different nationalities present. Whilst this is a richness and an opportunity, it also presents a challenge: how can we best serve such a variety of nationalities and cultures, whilst still retaining our linguistic integrity? We have a number of approaches to this question, regarding focusing on Mass settings rather than hymns (which we still have, of course, but it is difficult to establish a common repertoire), having printed Mass-sheets with readings and prayers, offering Confession, Baptisms and marriages in English and French. We are continuing to explore how best to ‘keep our borders open’ to all who are drawn to join us.
Catechesis
Many couples who come to us for Marriage Preparation and Baptism Preparation come because they are from different countries, but share English as their common language. Not only must we seek to offer accessible courses, but equally we have to facilitate translation of various documents from English into a broad variety of languages. Official diocesan forms are in French, German and Latin: we have to add English, and provide translations into, for example, Polish, Latvian, Croatian, Slovakian…. etc. Happily we have the infrastructure, made up of volunteers, which enables us to do this without too much difficulty. Nevertheless, it remains a challenge — and a sign of our unity-in-diversity. Shortly we will be introducing our adult-catechesis group, which will further resource our community and welcome new members.
Occupying the space
Our relocation to St Alphonse over two years ago has been one factor in our growth, yet it too presents its challenges. We share a church with the French-speaking congregation (Saturday 6pm, Sunday 10pm, and weekdays), the German/Luxembourgish congregation (Sunday 8.30am), and the many Portuguese/Italian/Maltese/Polish/Lithuanian/Spanish/etc… -speaking people who join us each day for Mass. As by far the biggest language-group, we sometimes run the risk of swamping the other communities: we set up our tea-coffee tables during the French 10am Mass, we reserve space for our childrens’ liturgy, we have our shoe-box stall, our Mass card/book stall and so on. All that we do is meant to be inclusive (e.g.. all image slide shows playing over the weekend on the behind-altar screen are non-language specific) but we have to be mindful that we occupy shared space, and are but part of the Church in the city and country.
Administration
At times the administrative demands of the parish are overwhelming: the sheer amount of paperwork, the time needed for all our meetings, preparation and follow-ups to meetings etc is enormous. Happily we now have a parish assistant who is able to help with various aspects of parish life, and we have a renewed parish council, eager to face into the challenges ahead. More on the parish council in a future post.
Organisational Structures
Over 50 years ago, the English/French/Dutch/German-speaking communities were organised into the Paroisse Européenne. This structure is now woefully outdated, and we are in the process (in accord with the thinking of the archbishop) of establishing new legal and canonical (Church law) structures that better reflect and represent our current reality. As with all the areas noted above, our new structures are being shaped around community, mission and growth — we are not an end in ourselves, but a part of the wider mission of the Church. It is not easy dismantling the structures that have served us in the past and re-casting them better to serve the future, but it is a necessary task. Yet another challenge for our parish council! It has become increasingly clear in recent months that other Christian communities in Luxembourg are taking notice of what we are about, and how we are approaching our mission — we are always happy to share with other communities, to pool resources and to learn from them.
We approach the forthcoming Year of Mercy in a spirit of gratitude for all that God has given to our community over the years, and a spirit of supplication for God’s guidance in the years to come.
Fr Ed
In my previous posting on Catholic, Single, I didn’t make clear that the next meeting will be announced shortly. There is no meeting tonight, Wednesday 18th November. Watch this space for announcement soon.
Thanks, Fr Ed
On Wednesday 11 November we held the first meeting of ‘Catholic, Single and Willing to Mingle’ — for single people who might benefit from meeting others in the same situation. This meeting was exploratory, seeing what ideas might emerge, and from these ideas a direction for the group should take shape. Meetings could be social, spiritual or informative, or any combination of these…
10 people were able to make the meeting, with others asking to be kept up-to-date, unable to attend for one reason or another.
The sense of the meeting was warm, interested and tentative: everyone present wondering what the result would be, and whether it would be of benefit to them and to others. I explained I would be present only as and when requested to be there.
A variety of types of get-togethers was considered — here are some of them in approximate order of popularity:
Wednesday evenings and weekends were agreed to be the best times to meet; membership to be informal, with people free to be as involved only as much as they wish to be.
This exploratory meeting was encouraging and confirmed that there are people who wish to participate, and who have much to offer. I would really value your input if you are Catholic and single, and if you are interested in becoming involved. You can contact me here.
Fr Ed
Marie Roy, a member of our parish, is a qualified Personal Coach. She writes the following:
Your full potential: explore what personal coaching has to offer
Coaching is a co-creative process whereby change is evoked and sustained in a person’s life.
As a coach I accompany you in discovering your full potential and a richer and more purposeful
professional and personal life. Throughout the coaching process, a safe, confidential place is
created where people can think about the
direction of their lives and build an essential foundation for
approaching a number of important decisions – and develop the
confidence to deal with them.
Some specific situations where coaching has helped clients include the
following: persons who feel “stuck” in a personal or professional
situation and fall into the trap of black-and-white, either/or thinking;
busy working mothers wanting to move ahead in their careers yet find
time to replenish themselves and inspire their families; adolescents
who are struggling with factors that block their success-
procrastination, disorganization – and finally persons who are “just
existing” and feeling the need to reconnect with their life purpose
and gifts. Above all, personal coaching means that you don’t have to
do everything on your own and that there’s someone who can help you to
reconnect with your resourcefulness, courage and purpose in life.
Marie’s CV and credentials are available for inspection, and she may be contacted by email
Fr Ed
International English-Speaking Community of the Parish of Luxembourg Notre Dame 