As many of you know, I live in the absolute middle of nowhere. What you might not know is how much I love it. I love my home, but the thing I love the most (and Nathaniel agrees), is the community we’ve made among our parish family.
Living in such a rural location, I wasn’t sure what to expect when we joined our parish. Within the diocese, I’ve really only ever been a parishioner at much larger parishes (300+ families).
But at my new parish, I know just about every person there. I can tell you which pews everyone sits in. I can tell you whose singing voices will be the loudest and which people enthusiastically share the sign of peace. And I can most definitely guarantee that on Donut Sunday, Nathaniel and I will be up at our parish for at least two hours after Mass visiting with so many different faces as our kids run wild among the parish hall playing with one another and the babies are passed around from family to family.
There was a large part of me that was a little nervous about moving. From what I knew of rural parishes, the average age was typically a few decades above my own. But I’m lucky. Because while yes, the average age is a few decades above my own, for whatever reason, our parish is home to many young families starting out - more than you might expect. And our kids are all the same age! Ignatius and Miriam will have built in best friends. (Aside from each other that is!)
And obviously with having children, we definitely bring a whole bunch of noise to Mass. All the young families try to keep a few pews in between the kids to eliminate the conversations that happen from baby to baby across the pews, but we’re not always successful. And while we do try to minimize the noisiness of our kids, this parish of mine welcomes the sounds our children make. We’ve been told by many that for so long there was a fear that the parish would eventually die out. But now, the sounds of the children, the crying, the laughing, the singing, the yelling “dadada” at the most inopportune times, is proof that the parish is alive.
I have been blessed to befriend the young families at my parish. But I have also been blessed by the friendship and wisdom of the grandmas and grandpas that surround me in the pews. I have never before encountered such genuine care and love from people who have only just met me.
A woman in my parish recently told a few of us just-starting-out-moms that, “You are raising the next generation of Catholic martyrs.” That single sentence has been one I’ve prayed with for months. I’ve never heard it put like that before. I’ve heard people say, “You are raising the next generation of Catholic leaders… of Catholic saints.”
But I’ve never had anyone tell me that my child could be a Catholic martyr.
The lesson I’ve gleaned from that sentence is this… if I want my children to love their God, their faith, with an ardent passion such that they would die for it, I have to do the same. I have to lead a life of martyrdom too.
It’s not an easy thing to do, and I’m not even quite sure of how to do it. But I can tell you this… that with the Catholic community I am surrounded by, I know that I am most definitely not doing it alone.