Dear Friends,
Spiritual formation occurs primarily in the context of community. Research has shown that people who remain connected with other Christian disciples in their local church almost always grow in their self-understanding, depth of prayer, positive relationships with other people and healthy relationship with God. The research also seems to show that people who stop participating in their local church also stop growing spiritually, they become attached to societal values and experience much higher levels of loneliness.
Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. I count myself blessed to be pastor of a parish that knows this and to work with a ministerial team that strives to make this happen. From our Alpha experience and through our Cabrini Communities we get to see lots of living examples of what the research shows.
Of the many shortcomings that I have personally, one is my inability to read minds. I try to be very observant of people and that helps me to more or less accurately guess what is going on with people. But it is still a guess until people tell me what they are thinking or feeling.
In the class on small faith-sharing groups that Doug and Ann Lenz, Annie Wise and I took last fall, they reviewed results of a Barna Survey that was given to more than four thousand people and 140 pastors who participate in a faith-sharing group. The instructors encouraged us to offer the same survey to our local community to see if what is happening in faith-sharing at Cabrini is the same as in the rest of the country. We have prepared the survey for you to take. I look forward to hearing from you about your experience with faith-sharing at Cabrini.
At the same time, the survey will help us as we prepare to launch another year of Cabrini Communities. We relaunch in March. Which means we need to hear from you through the survey very soon. We will be distributing the surveys at Masses this weekend and they will be available at the parish website as well stcabriniomaha.org . You can either do the paper version or there is a QR Code which will take you to the survey online. The survey is four pages and should not require a lot of thought. We anticipate that it will take less than ten minutes to complete. The survey will only be available for one week – do not delay in completing yours.
Again, I do not read minds. I need your response to the survey to see if we are heading in the right direction. Thanks for taking the time to answer the survey questions. I will share the results of the survey with you in the near future.
One other piece of news. Our sister parish, St. Mary Magdalene, will be joining us in preparing and executing the monthly community materials. In the monthly video, we will now be labeling it as Cabrini Communities and Magdalene Communities. Fr. Rodney Adams, the pastor at St. Mary Magdalene, will be joining me as one of the presenters for the monthly video.
Thanks for your participation!
Fr. Damian