Speaker 1: Welcome to Saint Patrick Catholic Community podcast. We're glad you're with us.
Speaker 2: This past Tuesday, the Chicago White Sox baseball team decided to honor their number one fan, Pope Leo. And they had planned in the beginning of the year to do a special section. They said, oh, we'll save about 2,500 seats, and we'll call that section the pews. And we're gonna give all those people a pope hat to wear to the game. Well, here's the thing.
The demand for those seat was so large that they decided to let everyone celebrate that day, and they made 40,000 pope hats. And so on a Tuesday night in August, the White Sox had a big sellout this past week, and everyone got to wear the pope hat. Now, to throw out the first pitch is a sister named sister Mary Jo, and she does that. She's got quite an arm, believe it or not, and does that quite often for first pitches, And she threw that out. Afterwards, she said, the whole atmosphere felt like a church revival.
And people kept saying all the great things. But here's the kicker, in the fifth inning, a priest wearing the pope hat went on the video scoreboard and explained to the people what we do at mass called the sign of peace. He had told what it was about and said, you don't have to be Catholic to participate in this. And so he said, would everyone please get up and offer each other a sign of peace? 40,000 people did that.
And you can see on the video there, people offering peace signs or waving, and even a few rows down, people maybe who might see each other might not know one another, and that was amazing. And do know what I learned, and I think a lot of people have been talking about this week, especially those who were there, what a great way for our Christian faith to encounter the culture. What a great way for our Christian faith to encounter the culture. Positive, inviting, sharing. Take what we do the best and share it with people.
In Romans chapter eight, Saint Paul teaches us to be disciples that are formed, how to deal with people who do not share the same faith we do. And in that, he is a Jew. He grew up there, but he is sorrowful and sadness because he's struggling because many of the Jews are not accepting Jesus as the Messiah. He is one of them. He knows the covenant.
He knows the law. He knows the prophets. He knows the promises made to the Jews, and he knows Jesus came from the Jewish people. And yet he is so sad because people are not accepting that. And so here's what he says about the Jewish people.
Have they failed for not accepting god's promise? Have they failed? And here's Paul's response, no. Just in case some of you were falling asleep. Because I need to repeat that because sometimes we believe that, yes, they have failed.
And Paul says again, no. They haven't because god's promises never fail. And he says, god's promises are more powerful than any human rejection. And so he reminds the Gentiles, you and me, not to boast and say, we have the truth and you don't. Have the Jewish people been replaced as the chosen people?
Again, Saint Paul says, no. Gentiles, that's us, share in the blessing of being called god's people. And so here's what he does at the end, and this is what I love about Saint Paul, is that he can't figure it out of god's mysterious way. So here's what Saint Paul does. He throws his hands up there and he goes, I just don't know how this is all gonna be done.
And he says, because god's ways are mysterious. But here's what I do know. At the end, they will be with us. I don't know how. That's god's way of doing that, but he goes, I leave it up to god.
That's how disciples in formation being formed are asked to encounter a secular world. You and I have been exposed to many Christians who have been formed and shaped not in the proper way in encountering a culture, encountering the secular world, encountering people encountering people who do not think like we do. Many cause division. They say hurtful things, and they even say what Saint Paul says, don't boast. But they say, you know, only Christians will be in heaven.
The rest of you, not. Or you gotta think the way we do, or you know what? You're not gonna be part of that. And the division and the ways of saying that Christianity does not have anything to say to a world other than condemnation is poor formation. That's why formation isn't just religious education.
Unfortunately, Christians treat religious education rather than formation. Religious education means, once I get eighth grade and I get the sacrament of confirmation, I'm done learning. You're not gonna learn anything or the only formation is, I know all the rules of the Catholic church and I don't break any of these rules and I'm sure to tell people if they do, I'm gonna let them know. If the whole relationship is based on the rules, that's poor formation. It's about relationship.
It's about bringing our best into the world, and the White Sox got it. And the people of Chicago who love Pope Leo and got about our faith. And so proper formation means we encounter a world. Now are there times that we have to have difficult conversations? Yes.
Are there times that we have conflict with society? Yes. But never out of boasting, never out of purely condemning, not purely of just telling people they're the enemy. And so today, I've asked Sharon Fabianic from our formation team, who leads that area, to briefly talk about formation from the littlest child to the oldest adult here today. Formation isn't optional to opt out.
You never arrive and say, I have nothing else to learn. It is ongoing until our last natural breath.
Speaker 3: I'm so honored to get to tell you about something that I love, which is our formation here at Saint Patrick. What's so amazing to me is not the time to focus on the catechism of the Catholic church or our sacred scriptures or all of church doctrine. What's so amazing is the community that forms in formation. The community that starts with our youngest children. I have the privilege of my office is right near our atrium, is classrooms for our catechesis of the good shepherd ages four through grade three.
And I get to hear them at the end of their sessions each each class that they meet. And they sing and they pray, it's a beautiful moment, but what I love is that they share their prayer intentions. And their prayer intentions, well, let's just say there's a lot of dead dogs here in Scottsdale. So they're often praying for those sweet animals but they also are very vulnerable and they pray for things that matter as well. They pray for grandma who has cancer and has been undergoing treatments.
They pray for their moms and dads that have been fighting a lot. And you hear in their youth and their vulnerability, and you see this community and this faith and it's a beautiful witness. On Monday nights, our parking lot is crazy at about 06:20. We have our EDGE and our ROCK 45. So ROCK 45 for our fourth and fifth graders and our EDGE program for our middle schoolers.
And they come and there's an excitement and a joy in the gathering. These are big groups of kids and they come from all different schools and all different places and they come and they gather for formation. We have beautiful core teams of caring adults that come and work with them and it is so exciting to come in this church on a Monday night and to see small groups sitting in circles on the floor and opening the word and doing faith sharing. It's so beautiful to walk down the hall and see them doing service projects and finding out about different people that have maybe come from a very different life experience than they have and learning how that their care can make a difference, how their prayer can make a difference in information. Go over to Finland Hospitality Center on a Monday night and see our middle schoolers.
In middle school, I was very concerned with wearing the right jeans and some shoes that my mom did not like. And these middle schoolers are in this moment of things are just different in their lives, they're trying to figure it out. But they come together and through that small group experience, through that community, they encounter their formation and they build that just experience of community together, being there for one another. We love sharing the gospel and that's joyful, but living the gospel is very hard even for our young ones. It's hard for them to go into the world and live the gospel in their everyday lives, in their classrooms, on the field, in their dance class, it's hard.
But through community, we have that opportunity. As formation opportunities don't end in high school as father Eric said, we have many adult opportunities as well. One this fall is our Alpha, which is a small group experience of faith sharing and asking life's big questions in a non judgmental way where we can talk and openly discuss those things. We have so many different opportunities and if you're like me, when you hear an invitation to something, it doesn't always feel like an invitation. It feels like one more thing, my plate is full.
I am a working mom, I have four children and they're busy. We know busy in a big way in our home. But wow, I know when I step outside of myself and say yes to those opportunities, to those formation opportunities, to the invitation of community, I am always touched. I'm always a better person for it and it forms me. So our team is out today after mass.
We would love to meet you, to talk to you. We just invite you to a conversation, but would love all of you to open your hearts to formation this year. We also anticipate that we will open our doors to about 700 young ones. So if that is something, there's a room for everybody here to participate. Youth formation is not just for the youth, it takes the generations that came before them to pass on that faith to them and to share with them and learn how faith will apply and how we will live the continue to live the gospel in the years ahead.
So that invitation is for all of you. So I just ask you to think about how will this year be different for you as we're always being formed by our life around us. How will we be perform how will we be formed in living the gospel in our greater world this year?
Speaker 2: Many years ago, Pope Benedict visited England, and there was a big discussion that England is a very secular society and all. But he Pope Benedict gave a powerful talk, and here's what he said about the secular world. We have much to learn from the secular world, but also we have much to offer as well. The culture is not our enemy. It is created by God.
And when we look closely, we will see that every person is created in the image of God. It takes a lot of work and a lot of things and humility to enter into the world. But proper formation of disciple is this, we are like Saint Paul. We don't know how it's gonna work out, but we do know that God's mysterious ways work, and God's promises never fail. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: This has been a Saint Patrick Catholic Community podcast. For more of our shows, go to our website and click Saint Patrick's Studio.