by Father John Stoltz

Our parish, Saint Aloysius in Pewee Valley, participated in the second wave of the Parish Discernment Process.  Like every other parish, we encouraged our parishioners to read the pastoral letter from Archbishop Kurtz, Your Parish: The Body of Christ Alive in Our Midst.

We asked people to pray about what God was calling our parish to do in the three areas of family life, education and lifelong formation, and service and outreach.  We gathered interested people together and held a listening session.  Finally, our core team participated in a couple of meetings to discern what we saw and heard.

As I prepared for this project, I was aware that this would be the work of the Holy Spirit.  As a pastor, I am tempted to make my vision the parish vision, my mission the parish mission.  Here, I stepped back and told the parish that what we were doing would be the work of the Holy Spirit.  That meant that I had no idea what the final result would look like.  It meant that I could be surprised by the content of our vision.  This is expressed by the question, “What is God’s Hope for our parish?”

Our team had faith that this project would be the work of the Holy Spirit, and two powerful tools of our work were prayer and listening.  We prayed so that we would be faithful to the promptings of the Holy Spirit for the life of the parish.  We listened to the voice of the Holy Spirit mediated through the voices of our parishioners, as they gave thoughtful reflections on family, formation, and service.  Our team heard the Spirit calling us to pay attention to the faith life of our youth, to increase passion for the liturgy, and go out beyond our personal boundaries to serve people in need.

Upon reflection, I found the process inspiring.  We are now implementing the decisions that we have made.  I can see how this particular process of discernment could be a helpful tool in pastoral planning in the future.

Reverend John J. Stoltz is the pastor of Saint Aloysius Parish in Pewee Valley, Kentucky