Tag: faith community

Lent in 40 Days: Day Two

February 15, 2024
Rosary and two wooden crosses

Religious seasons follow an established liturgical calendar (calendars with quite a surprising intricate level of planning).

Having a regularly-scheduled liturgical calendar provides a rhythm to our communal faith experience and the opportunity to connect with the myriad of faith concepts during the times set aside to celebrate – and engage with – these concepts.

Our faith experience is at the same time personal. I have struggled at times with engaging with liturgical seasons on a fixed calendar, preferring to engage with faith concepts when such concepts become personally meaningful – and therefore easy to connect with – in the seasons of my own life.

Yet, the photo above speaks to the communal nature of faith. The rosary shown above is the rosary I was given for my First Communion at age seven. My classmates and I received our First Communion together – in community. The occasion was special enough that I’ve kept my first communion rosary all these years (I keep it in a special place at home where it won’t get lost). The wooden cross outside of the rosary was handmade for me by an acquaintance when I was in high school. I don’t remember the name of the fellow who made the cross for me, but the communal nature of the gift was meaningful – I’ve likewise kept the cross all these years. The cross laid inside the rosary likewise has a story; when churches were again able to have limited church services as we began emerging from COVID lockdowns, we couldn’t each “kiss a cross” at my parish at the Easter Vigil – so we were each given one of these small crosses at the Easter Vigil. Again, a communal experience. Again, I kept the cross….. Rosaries can be prayed alone, anywhere; rosaries are also often prayed communally. Placing one wooden cross in the rosary speaks to Jesus within prayers to his mother, while another cross placed outside the rosary (on purple fabric for the color of Lent) speaks to Jesus’ sacrificial death being for all of us – those of us who are both within community and for all those who are not in community.

We grow in faith in community. We are meant serve our communities. We have the opportunity to grow religiously in community with one another during liturgical seasons such as Lent – as well as within the flow of our own life’s seasons. 

Welcome to 2024’s communal season of Lent – a time of reflection, fasting, being of service. We spend 40 days anticipating Christianity’s holiest religious day of the year – the anniversary of God’s ultimate display of love for all of us.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).

Growing in faith is an act of community

June 30, 2023

“There’s a longing in our hearts…..” So goes the song. A longing to connect with the divine.

On the matter of how we develop a relationship with the divine… In recent decades, there has been a growing number of people who identify as “spiritual but not religious.” The Barna Group, in their studies on “spiritual but not religious (SBNR)” individuals, describe this SBNR demographic as having a “spirituality that looks within;” that “to be religious is to be institutional—it is to practice one’s spirituality in accordance with an external authority. But to be spiritual but not religious is to possess a deeply personal and private spirituality. Religions point outside oneself to a higher power for wisdom and guidance, while a spirituality divorced from religion looks within. Only a fraction of the two spiritual but not religious groups (9% and 7%) talk often with their friends about spiritual matters. Almost half (48% each) say they rarely do it, and they are 12 (24%) to eight (17%) times more likely to never talk with their friends about spiritual matters than both practicing Christians and evangelicals (2% each).”

In western society, we also have an “epidemic of loneliness” in which too many lonely individuals are longing for community. The U.S. Surgeon General, in his 2023 report on the “Epidemic of Loneliness,” speaks – on page 23 – about a return to more involvement in faith-based communities as part of the solution to this epidemic.

A “spirituality that looks within” and is divorced from formal religion can certainly be tempting (I’ve “been there, done that.” I am actively learning to grow out of that perspective! Even many mystics and hermits live in some degree of community.). While we absolutely and essentially need time for personal reflection and quiet prayer (daily, for me), to look within can too easily become a lonely, isolated endeavor – rather than a community-centered faith in which a significant aspect of our faith is an outward-driven focus on being of service to other people.

The two greatest commandments are “Love God and love your neighbor” (Matthew 22:36-40). Love – like faith – is a verb! As a verb, love is more than having positive feelings about or toward someone; it’s about an outwardly-focus doing of loving actions. Love your neighbor requires faith-driven community (rather than loneliness!), despite any protestations to the contrary. …..”Yes,” some will say, “But I can be good to people as a result of my inward spiritual-but-not-religious faith pursuit.” To some degree, perhaps. A faith community, however, pulls us actively out of ourselves more than we typically achieve solo. In a faith community, a group’s social dynamics pull us out if ourselves (serve the good of the group and individuals within the group). Further, there are group “love your neighbor” volunteer activities (soup kitchens, etc.).

Cultivating one’s faith within a faith community – rather than doing faith solo – is an active antidote to our “epidemic of loneliness.” “There’s a longing in our hearts…..” (so goes the song). The results are in; we have to give up some of our treasured inward-looking autonomy to gain some freedom from our epidemic of loneliness. Joining a faith community and becoming active in that faith community is good for our health.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages.