Eucharist

1.3 Eucharist – Vision Impact for Principle

August 16, 2023 by Pathway Admin

A vision statement is a short aspirational statement of direction for your Family of Parishes — the where we are going, and why we do what we do to get there.

Once a vision statement has been drafted, it is important to validate that the vision statement provides aspirational direction and inspiration to all components of a vital parish. The Beacons of Light principles and vision points concisely define parish vitality. Thus, comparing your draft vision statement with the principles provides a sounding board to confirm the appropriateness of the proposed vision statement. The Principle Vision Impact Form is used during the Family Visioning Process and allows teams of Family staff and lay leadership to confirm your draft vision statement and understand what changes will need to come about as your Family begins to live out the vision.

You can find the Family Visioning Process and Principle Vision Impact form in the Leadership 1.2 Materials.

2.1 Organize Worship Team

August 16, 2023 by Pathway Admin

Phase 1 of the Pastoral Planning Pathway for Eucharist called for hiring a director of worship. Now that this leader is in place, it is time to assemble and organize the team that supports worship in your Family of Parishes, as called for in Parameter 13:

“Competent and qualified staff are necessary to serve the Family of Parishes, especially in the areas of worship, Evangelization (including Love in Action) and administration. As is possible, staff will be unified to serve the entire Family.”

Assembling a worship team is a Phase 2 milestone:

“Create a vision for a Eucharist-centered parish, form a Family Worship Commission and Family Worship department of staff.”

Your Worship Team will serve your Family of Parishes by supporting all the liturgical and sacramental aspects of Family life. Depending on the scope of the worship functions, this team may include staff responsible for sacramental preparation (distinct from religious education), unless this falls within the purview of evangelization.

To-do: Use the sample organization charts in the Materials tab to create a Worship Team organization chart that will best fit your Family of Parishes.

To-do: Use the sample job descriptions in the Materials tab to create job descriptions for your Worship Team staff that will best fit your Family of Parishes.

2.2 Form Family Worship Commission

August 16, 2023 by Pathway Admin

“Every Family of Parishes will have a unified pastoral council, with other relevant and necessary consultative groups for specific areas of parish life.” (Parameter 11)

In Phase 1, each parish was encouraged to strengthen its own worship commission or, if one did not exist, to create one. While it’s tempting to think of everything at the Family level right away, it’s important for each parish in your Family of Parishes to have its own worship commission, at least while Sunday Mass is taking place at the parochial church.

There are many reasons for this:

Each parish’s worship commission can help to maintain procedures for worship in a particular church building.
The parish worship commission should be the keeper of traditions in its particular parish.
The parish worship commission should be among the first to identify common ground between parishes in your Family in order to move forward.

If there are parishes in your Family of Parishes where Sunday Mass takes place yet there is not currently a parish worship commission, these resources will help you start a worship commission.

In winter 2024, the Office for Divine Worship and Sacraments (ODWS) will be offering the annual workshop With Zeal and Patience: The Role of the Worship Commission, with specific information on how and when to begin bringing parish commissions together at the Family level. Make sure you are subscribed to Praenotanda (the news email of the ODWS) to receive information about dates, times and locations.

While it doesn’t hurt to begin – even now – to bring members of your individual parish commissions together at the Family level to pray, do formation and socialize (perhaps once a quarter or every six months), each parish worship commission has its own role for the coming years in advising the pastor, director of worship and other worship staff about the celebrations in their own parochial church.

2.3 Eucharist – Formation of Parish Leaders

August 16, 2023 by Pathway Admin

It is important that those entrusted with liturgical leadership in your Family of Parishes – your pastor, parochial vicars, deacons, director of worship, directors of music, initiation, sacristans, lectors, extraordinary ministers of holy Communion, servers, musicians, worship commission members and all those who lead the Church at prayer — have the proper formation in the Church’s liturgical life.

The Church’s foundational documents, such as the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, are important source texts to be sure, along with universal and national documents on such liturgical disciplines as preaching, sacred music, art and architecture, etc.

However, a good starting place would be Pope Francis’ recent letter on the liturgical formation of the people of God, Desiderio Desideravi.

This pastoral guide to Desiderio Desideravi from Liturgical Press might be helpful to guide your reading, discussion as a group and sharing.

3.1 Sunday Mass Schedules

August 16, 2023 by Pathway Admin

To help stay in conformity with Parameters 4, 5, and 6, it is important for the liturgical leaders in your Family of Parishes to regularly analyze the Sunday Mass schedule(s) and consider changes.

Parameter 4: The regular Mass schedule for a Family of Parishes may not assume more than two Masses per day per priest.

What This Means: The number of Masses scheduled in a Family must take into account the availability of the pastor and parochial vicars to celebrate them.

Why This Matters: It is important to be realistic about the availability of priests (both now and in the future), to observe canon law and to not rely on the availability of retired priests to sustain a regular Mass schedule for the Family.

Parameter 5: A regularly scheduled Mass for the Sunday precept must have annual average attendance of at least 50 percent of the church capacity. 

What This Means: If any one of the Masses celebrated in the Family on Saturday evening or Sunday morning is regularly less than half full, the Mass schedule should be reduced until all Masses regularly fill half the church building.

Why This Matters: This is another way of not only ensuring a sustainable Mass schedule but also a better quality of celebration and sense of community.

Parameter 6: The regular Mass schedule must provide the opportunity for priests to spiritually prepare for and be present to the community after Mass.

What This Means: In creating a schedule of Masses for the Family of Parishes, consideration must be given to the driving distance and time between church buildings and other schedule demands on the priests’ time.

Why This Matters: Before Mass, priests need time to prepare not only materially (put on vestments, look over texts, etc.) but also spiritually, rather than rushing in at the last minute. In the same way, priests should have time after Mass concludes to greet worshipers and to be present to the faithful without having to immediately rush to the next place.

There are resources and strategic suggestions, originally provided in early 2022, available for you to use even now.

In winter 2024, the Office for Divine Worship and Sacraments (ODWS) will provide more guidance to invite and encourage each Family to consider its Sunday Mass schedule in light of the October 2023 counts and priest staffing, among other factors.

While we want to be prepared for growth (rather than just managing decline) and thus do not want our facility usage to be too high, many churches are still only filling 30 percent or lower of the seating capacity at a regular Sunday Mass.

3.2 Family Liturgical Celebrations

August 16, 2023 by Pathway Admin

Perhaps even in Phase 1, your Family of Parishes had some shared liturgical celebrations. Many Families combined for part of or all of the paschal Triduum, especially for Holy Thursday and the Easter Vigil. Perhaps your adult initiation ministries have begun to collaborate and saw only one celebration of each scrutiny (for example), rotating among churches in your Family. Maybe your Advent or Lent communal penance services were combined. Some Families even had combined Confirmation liturgies where space permitted and formation programs had begun to be combined. Family worship leaders should begin to think strategically about more combined liturgical celebrations for your Family of Parishes. It might be helpful to think first about opportunities outside of Sunday Mass. In addition to those mentioned above, consider:

Celebrating together the patron of your Family on the patronal feast day.
Combining the weekday Mass schedule, including the possibility of evenings at least once per week in your Family.
Consolidating and combining infant baptisms outside of Mass.
Considering what the Christmas Eve/Day schedule will look like and adjusting times slightly to eliminate redundancies or streamlining to ensure adequate capacity while enhancing the quality and quantity of musicians, servers, lectors, etc.

Liturgical & Sacramental Inventory

It might be helpful to refer back to the Liturgical & Sacramental Inventory your Family of Parishes took in Phase 0 (or even early in Phase 1). This should help you identify opportunities for collaboration.

Triduum in a Family of Parishes

If you did not combine for some or all of the paschal Triduum in 2023, consider doing so for 2024. You will find helpful guidance, tips and norms from the Vatican, USCCB and Archbishop Schnurr in Triduum in a Family of Parishes.

Evaluating liturgical celebrations is important all the time, but especially true for the paschal Triduum. Worship commissions and worship staff should review these important liturgies, and the aforementioned resource may help identify areas for collaboration or combination.

You can also check out the evaluation tools on the Office of Divine Worship and Sacraments website.