Religious Education Supplement

Little Flower parishioners learn about the faith together at Mass

Students at Little Flower School in Indianapolis kneel in prayer during a Feb. 5, 2010, Mass at St. Therese of the Infant Jesus (Little Flower) Church while Father Robert Gilday, pastor of the parish, prays the eucharistic prayer. During the Mass, students gave cards of appreciation to Father Gilday. Making the cards was part of a parish-wide program to help all parishioners learn about the sacraments. (File photo by Sean Gallagher)

By Sean Gallagher

Parish staff members often find it difficult to help parents continue to learn about their faith.

Many times, both parents hold down full-time jobs. And when the work day is done, they frequently face a busy schedule helping their children get to various extracurricular activities.

This was the dilemma that faced the faith formation commission at St. Therese of the Infant Jesus (Little Flower) Parish in Indianapolis last year as they sought ways to help these busy parents enrich their faith.

“Nobody really needs to go anywhere else or do anything else if they can avoid it,” said Sheila Gilbert, the commission’s chairperson. “What we wanted to find was a way to reach the whole parish with an adult faith formation initiative of some kind. How do you reach the parish best? We thought that you should focus on the times that people are already there—the liturgy.”

The program that resulted benefited not only Little Flower’s busy parents, but also parishioners of all ages.

Starting last fall and continuing through this spring, the parish focused on learning about the seven sacraments.

One Sunday a month, a Catholic Update insert was included in the weekly bulletin to help parishioners learn about a sacrament. On another weekend, a bulletin insert included statements from parishioners about what a particular sacrament has meant to them in their lives of faith.

Little Flower’s pastor, Father Robert Gilday, often included a reflection on the sacrament of the month in one of his weekend homilies.

The parish’s art and environment committee placed a symbol of the sacrament of the month in the church to remind worshippers about it.

And, whenever possible, Little Flower’s liturgical musicians arranged for songs during Mass that were connected to the sacrament for that month.

Casady Williamson, 37, is a lifelong member of Little Flower Parish and the mother of three young daughters.

“Reading those [Catholic Update] inserts was a nice way to get some more

in-depth information about these sacraments, and help me introduce them to my kids and talk about them,” said Williamson.

She contributed to the parishioner witness reflections about the sacrament of baptism. She wrote about the meaning of seeing her husband and daughters baptized.

Williamson also appreciated learning how her fellow parishioners valued the sacraments in their own lives.

“It was really neat,” Williamson said. “It gives you another insight into someone’s personality. They’d point things out and you’d read that and say, ‘Oh, yeah, I never thought about it that way.’ ”

Two parishioners that Williamson learned more about while studying the sacraments were James and Patricia Dunn.

Married for 47 years, the Dunns wrote for a bulletin insert about the meaning of the sacrament of matrimony in their lives.

“Today, marriage is kind of shaky in so many [people’s] lives,” said Patricia Dunn. “I thought that we might be an example for somebody.”

In addition to trying to help parishioners in their marriages, Dunn said she also benefited from the program.

“I thought that it was an excellent program,” she said. “It put the sacraments in front of everybody. A lot of times, the average person doesn’t go to catechism classes. This was kind of a refresher. It made it more personal.”

Father Gilday appreciated the approach that the faith formation commission took to teach the faith to parishioners.

“Anytime that you can involve the entire parish, even if people are only minimally involved, in some sense they’re all hearing the same message,” he said. “It can be very helpful for people to do it as a group.”

Tom Costello, Little Flower’s director of stewardship and parish administration, especially valued the opportunity that the program gave to parishioners to speak about what the sacraments mean to them.

“That’s the part of the program that really impressed me the most,” Costello said. “It’s not something that we readily talk about. It showed how the sacraments were really important to them.”

This fall, Little Flower’s faith formation commission will use the same approach to help parishioners learn about Catholic social teaching.

This subject was chosen in concert with the theme for the parish school’s 2010-11 academic year: “From just us to justice.”

Gilbert said added features to the program will include placing addresses of Catholic websites to visit in the parish’s bulletin, a potential online Catholic book club run through the parish’s website, and suggested movies for families to watch together along with questions that they can discuss afterward.

“They can do that at home,” Gilbert said. “They don’t have to go anywhere. But it’s something that they can do together as a family.”

(To learn more about St. Therese of the Infant Jesus (Little Flower) Parish in Indianapolis, log on to www.littleflowerparish.org.) †