Under the Fir Tree

A Continuation # # # The last three posts stayed close to the altar. Spiritual life, Sunday Mass, the sacraments: each one asking, from a different angle, whether the parish is genuinely rooted in encounter with Jesus Christ. Whether the liturgy is prayed. Whether the sacraments are forming people or merely marking them. This post steps back to ask what makes all of that sustainable. Not a program question. A people question. Specifically: who is leading the parish, how are they formed, and are there enough of them to carry the mission without burning out the few who always show up? The Examen placed its leadership questions immediately after its worship questions for a reason. Beautiful liturgy and a broken leadership culture can coexist for a while. They can't coexist indefinitely. Eventually the strain shows up in the worship, in the pastoral care, in the pastor himself. # # # The necessary outcome for this discipline is precise: a growing group of spirit-filled, wise people are...

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked about Sunday Mass. This one asks about the wider sacramental life of the parish, and a pattern that runs through almost every finding the Examen surfaced. Sunday Mass is the central sacramental act of parish life. But the sacramental life of a parish is wider than Sunday. Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Confession, Marriage, Anointing, Holy Orders: these aren't separate religious services the parish happens to provide. They're the ongoing encounters with Christ through which the Church does its most essential work. The question the Examen pressed isn't whether the parish administers them. It's whether it administers them in a way that actually forms people and draws them deeper into belonging, faith, and mission. Those are different questions. Most parishes answer the first confidently. The second is harder. # # # The trap worth naming at the outset is this: in ordinary parish experience, sacraments tend to get treated as m...

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked about the root. This one asks about the most visible expression of it. Spiritual life is the parish's orientation toward God. Sunday Mass is where that orientation becomes concrete, public, and observable. It's the one moment in parish life when the whole body gathers, when the parish's actual relationship with God is on display, when the newcomer forms a first impression and the longtime parishioner is either fed or quietly confirmed in their drift. Everything the previous post described, the Eucharist as center, liturgy that's prayed, confidence in the Gospel's power to transform lives, either shows up here or it doesn't. # # # It helps to start with what Sunday Mass is actually for. Not a service to be delivered. Not a box to check. Not even primarily a community gathering, though real community forms here. Sunday Mass is the parish's central act of worship, the place where heaven and earth meet in the most co...

A Continuation # # # The previous post looked at the structure of the 17 questions. Now we begin where the Examen begins: spiritual life. Spiritual life sounds like one item on a list. It isn't. It's the condition that makes everything else on the list possible or impossible. A parish can have a functioning Finance Council, a trained hospitality team, a cleaned-up facilities plan, and a broken spiritual life. What it produces then is well-organized drift. This is why the Examen placed its first questions here. Not about programs. Not about budgets. Not even about Mass attendance, though that matters. The first questions asked whether the parish reflects genuine confidence in the Gospel, whether it provides a life-giving encounter with Jesus Christ, and whether it actually believes that faithful proclamation transforms lives. Those are not administrative questions. They're the questions underneath every other question in the Examen. # # # It helps to say plainly what spiritu...

A Continuation # # # The previous posts established something simple: a mirror, not a report card. And a discipline, not just a program. But before walking through the disciplines one by one, it helps to look at what the Examen actually asked. Most people who know the Parish Examen happened have a general sense of what it covered. Fewer have read the 17 questions carefully. That's worth fixing. Not because the questions are remarkable on their own, but because the way they're organized reveals something important about how the archdiocese understands what a parish is for. The questions weren't random. They follow a deliberate sequence. And that sequence is itself a kind of theology. # # # The 17 questions move through four areas. The first three questions ask about worship, sacramental life, and confidence in the Gospel. Does the parish celebrate the Eucharist as the center of everything? Is the liturgy faithful and prayerful? Is Confession available and encouraged? Is ther...

A Continuation # # # The previous post gave us a mirror. The Parish Examen didn't issue a verdict. It asked us to look honestly at parish life: what's strong, what's strained, what bears fruit, what merely fills the calendar. That kind of honesty is uncomfortable and necessary. It's also just the beginning. A mirror doesn't renew a parish. What we do next does. So this post asks the first practical question after any honest examination: What kind of parish are we becoming, and what does it take to get there? The answer isn't more programs. A few more definitions help before going further. Program: an organized activity with a start and stop. Discipline: a steady habit that forms parish life. Fruit: visible growth in faith, hope, and love. Health: the parish's life working as it should. Programs matter. Alpha matters. OCIA matters. Bible studies, youth nights, service projects, retreats, sacramental preparation: all of it matters. But programs are means, not ...

Over the coming weeks I'll be sharing a series of reflections on the Parish Examen, part of Mission Renewal in the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon. The Parish Examen was a prayerful and practical look at parish life: what's healthy, what's strained, and where the Lord may be inviting us to deeper renewal. The Examen asked: What's strong? What's weak? What bears fruit? What merely fills the calendar? The process wasn't a report card. It was a mirror. A parish, like a soul, needs examination before renewal. We can't strengthen what we won't name. We can't heal what we refuse to see. And we can't follow the Holy Spirit with closed eyes. What did we actually hear? That's the question after any honest examination. Not: What do we wish we had heard? Not: What can we spin? Not: What will make everyone comfortable? Just this:  What did we hear? So this series will ask one steady question: What kind of parishes are we becoming—and what faithful step...

You know that hour at the end of the day when nothing has quite exploded, and yet something in you is already on its knees? The dishes are still in the sink, filmed with grease. The email lies unanswered like a small accusation. Your body is tired with a fatigue no pillow can absolve. The phone keeps shining in the dark, that little chapel of demands where no mercy is ever offered. Someone you love needs more from you than you think remains. And under it all, deeper than irritation, quieter than despair, there’s the ache. Not catastrophe. Not the grand collapse one could almost respect. Something poorer, more humiliating. A low humming in the soul, like pain behind a closed door. Saint Paul gives it a name: “We ourselves… groan inwardly” (Romans 8:23). Not creation only. Not the world out there, bleeding through its wars, its sickness, its rot, its injustices, its children frightened by adult madness. We ourselves. We who have tasted the Spirit. We who pray, or try to pray. We who be...

The words are small enough to pass unnoticed, like a match dropped in the dust: “ unclean spirits came out ” (Acts 8:7). There was no committee formed to study them, no delicate arrangement made to preserve their dignity, no little room left for them at the back of the house under the name of temperament, fatigue, realism, family history, or “the way I’ve always been.” They came out. That’s the intolerable simplicity of the Gospel. Christ doesn’t enter a soul as a guest invited to admire the curtains. He comes as fire comes into straw, as daylight enters a sickroom, as truth enters a mouth that’s grown tired of lying. And we, being reasonable people, have made our peace with so many little demons. Not the theatrical sort, no. We’re too respectable for that, too educated, too careful with our faces in public. Ours wear clean shirts. They pay the bills on time. They know when to smile at Mass, when to lower the eyes, when to say, “I’ll pray for you,” with just enough warmth to pass for ...