Dear Friends,
Two years ago, we launched our Cabrini Communities. While the idea of gathering as Christians in small groups to pray together, reflect on our lives, and share deeper friendship is not new, the creation of our Cabrini Communities was new for us. What was new was the agreement to meet monthly throughout the year; not just for six weeks, but all year long.
We are the first parish in the Archdiocese to embark on such an ongoing project. Other parishes are looking to us for guidance as they explore ways to provide a clear path to form disciples in their parishes. Clearly, the Holy Spirit has been at work among us as we launched the Cabrini Communities and has continued to work in so many peoples’ lives through them.
During our first season in Cabrini Communities we focused on different practices that could be a part of a “rule of life” with the goal being to help our parishioners put the teachings of Jesus into practice with greater regularity. The second season, we joined with the wider church in the United States and have explored the teachings about Eucharist and a Eucharistic spirituality.
We have decided to do a relaunch of the Communities in March of 2024 as season two ends in February. We have a substantial number of new members at Cabrini who have not been able to be in a Community. We have other members who did not join initially but now have been desiring to join or start a community. Some of the Communities have expressed a desire to add new members and some have wanted to spin off into an additional Community with new parishioners. All good reasons to have a restart date when we launch a new season which would put us all on the same path again.
What happens at a Cabrini Community? A group gathers to share a little food and drink, checks in with each other on where they are that day, shares with each other a period of prayer using the lectio divina method, watches a video prepared by the parish and then discusses the content of the video. Groups meet whenever it works for the members – morning, afternoons, evenings. Communities meet in homes, at the Parish Center, in apartment complex community rooms, and/or wherever it works for them. The Community gathering lasts from ninety minutes to two hours once a month. Some Communities are gatherings of friends, some have become friends, some are people who barely know each other personally but share a common faith in Jesus and that is all that matters.
The upcoming season will be looking at different practices of prayer from our Christian tradition, some are ancient and some new. It will also explore ideas to make your relationship with God so much better. In this season we will be, for the first time, using a book to supplement what is offered in the video.
Over the next few months at Mass we will be hearing from parishioners who are in Cabrini Communities. We have invited them to briefly share their own experience of a Community and the benefit to their spiritual journey of being in a Community. I hope you enjoy their witness and that it encourages you to join a Community if you are not currently in one.
What is the goal of a Cabrini Community? To bring you closer to the presence of God. Let me end this letter with a quote about growing closer to God from Fr. Thomas Keating from the book we will be using next season:
This Presence is so immense, yet so humble; awe-inspiring, yet so gentle; limitless, tender and personal. I know that I am known. Everything in my life is transparent in this Presence. It knows everything about me – all my weaknesses, brokenness, sinfulness – and still loves me infinitely. This Presence is healing, strengthening, refreshing – just by its Presence…It is like coming home to a place I should never have left, to an awareness that was somehow always there, but which I did not recognize.
We want that to be not just a one-time experience for you but a way of life that is permeated with the presence of God. Our Cabrini Communities are made up of those who journey with us as we seek to encounter the Divine.
Peace,
Fr. Damian