Eucharist

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.

Eucharist Overview: Phase 2

August 16, 2023 by Pathway Admin

The focus during Phase 2 of Beacons of Light is establishing a compelling vision for the future, one that will be the reference point that everyone in your Family of Parishes will strive for in the coming years. The Eucharist principle states clearly that not only is Mass the source and summit for the whole Christian life, but also Sunday Mass is the essential moment for building up your Family.

During Phase 2, leaders will discern, articulate and share your vision for your Family of Parishes. Then, as a Family, you will have a chance to consider what impact that vision will have on the liturgical and sacramental life of the parishes.

Phase 2 will also be a chance to continue forming a worship staff for your Family (to support your director of worship, already promoted from within or hired in Phase 1), as well as a Family Worship Commission to help your individual parish commissions begin to relate to one another.

Finally, you will be invited to consider some specific initiatives to help increase vitality in your liturgical life, including formation for liturgical ministers and parishioners, analysis of your Family Sunday Mass schedule and shared liturgical experiences for your Family.

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

0.1 Eucharist – Confirm Vision Assessment Complete

August 16, 2023 by Pathway Admin

To prepare for Visio Day, it is beneficial to have an understanding of where your Family of Parishes stands in relation to each of the vision points in the Eucharist principle. Use the Family Vision Assessment Tool to isolate which vision points are strengths and which need attention as part of establishing a comprehensive Vision for your Family of Parishes. See the Vision Assessment Tool.

3.1 Assessing the Liturgical Schedule

July 5, 2022 by Pathway Admin

Some of the most complicated decisions parish leaders have to make are about scheduling — and in particular, the Sunday Mass schedule. Nothing disturbs a long-time parishioner more than changing “his Mass” or asking her to come at 10:30 a.m. instead of 10 a.m. Plus, imagine the hassle of changing bulletins, websites and weekly alarms on smartphones.

Yet, forming a sustainable schedule for Mass and other liturgical and sacramental celebrations within your Family of Parishes is an important thing. Thank you to the many parish leaders who took the opportunity, even during Phase 0, to adjust their Mass schedules — in some cases, a change long overdue, but still not easy.

Ideally, changes to the Mass schedule for a Family of Parishes would not take place immediately on July 1, 2022. Hopefully, this would involve deliberation, analysis of status quo, consultation with the faithful and good discussion among the pastoral council, worship commission, staff and others. This work might best happen after your pastor has been in a place for a few years and other aspects of your Family unification have successfully taken place.

However, delaying this work may not be possible for a variety of reasons, in which case it will become a Phase 1 activity for your Family of Parishes.

Three of the parameters for pastoral planning within the Eucharist pathway relate to liturgical scheduling:

The regular Mass schedule for a Family of Parishes may not assume more than two Masses per day per priest.
A regularly scheduled Mass for the Sunday precept must have annual average attendance of at least 50 percent of the church capacity.
The regular Mass schedule must provide the opportunity for priests to spiritually prepare for and be present to the community after Mass.

Click the button below to read more about what these parameters mean and why they matter here.

In creating a liturgical schedule for your Family of Parishes, you may need to make changes to existing schedules. Please refer to the archdiocesan Sunday Mass Schedule Policy for the parameters around this work.

One of the great advantages of reducing the number of Sunday Masses when Masses are only filling a fraction of the church is that you will have a fuller worship space. This article by local theologian and pastoral minister Emily Strand might be useful to convince a skeptic about the value of reducing the Mass schedule, or it might be good reading for a worship commission and/or pastoral council as they contemplate undertaking this difficult work. Consider inserting it in your bulletin during the process of Mass schedule changes, and/or share it with the faithful on social media for them to reflect upon it.

If you would like assistance in analyzing your present liturgical schedule for your Family or thinking through options for a future Family liturgical schedule, please contact the Office for Divine Worship & Sacraments. We are glad to consult and partner with you in creating a sustainable schedule.

Parish Vitality Report | Fall 2023 Available Now!

Eucharist