Pope Paul VI wrote that evangelization is the task of the church, her deepest identity. The church's mission to evangelize fulfills Jesus’ Great Commission in the Gospel of Matthew to “go and make disciples of all nations”.

Evangelization is not just for the protestants, or the mormons, or the televangelists, or the missionaries in foreign lands, or just for priests and religious. It is the call and vocation of every baptized Christian. Pope Francis wrote, “The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization.”

In the Gospels, while looking into the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned. He turned to his disciples and said “the harvest is plenty, but laborers are few.” How true is this today. Think of all the suffering and pain that people are experiencing. Think of the masses of people who are trying to live a life without God. Our culture has forgotten about God, but yet they cry out for meaning, purpose, identity, peace, joy, belonging, and love. Only God can fulfill their deepest desires. Only in God can they find true and lasting joy and peace. But they cannot know God’s joy and peace if there is no one to share it with them. That is why forming and shepherding a community of missionary disciples is a must. Missionary discipleship is not a parish program. It is the call of every Christian.

For the past two years, we have been working closely with a ministry organization called the Evangelical Catholic to develop a process to form and train people, specially lay people, to live out their call to be missionary disciples and to witness to the Gospel in the middle of the world. This process is called “Reach More.”

The goal and challenge for this parish is to have 150 people formed and trained by 2026. The long-term goal is to have 1,000 people trained within the next 10 years (by 2033).

So far we have had 32 individuals who have completed the training. About 18 people are currently in training.

These goals might sound ambitious, and to some- impossible, but if we work together as a parish and we are open to the Holy Spirit, we can easily hit these goals.

The Catechism states that the laity are the frontlines of the church. There are people in this world that may never step into a church, that will never come across a priest, or a deacon, or the bishop. But they will come across you. For some people, YOU may be the only means by which someone can come to know Jesus and experience His joy and peace.

During this Fall Stewardship Appeal, all of us are challenged to discern our part - whether in time, talent, or treasure - in helping to form this parish into a community of missionary disciples. The future of our parish, our church, and our world depends on this.

If you want to learn more about how you can Reach More people with the love and truth of Christ, feel free to email me at [email protected].

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) is an approach to the religious formation of children using the educational principles of Maria Montessori. During sessions, children gather in an “atrium,” which contains simple yet beautiful materials that they work with in order to encounter God through exploration of the Bible and the liturgy.

CGS has been a part of the faith formation of St. Pius X and borne much fruit since it was started here in 2016. Every year it continues to grow and provide a space for the children of the parish to encounter our Lord and hear His voice as the Good Shepherd.

One of the reasons the CGS program is so successful is due to the work and care that goes into it - from the intense training and formation of the catechists, to the preparation of the atrium spaces and materials, to the running of the atrium sessions themselves. For the CGS program to reach its full potential in the parish, it will take investment from the whole parish community.

At the moment, the program can only be offered to a limited number of children due to the limited number of trained catechists that we have.

Therefore, it is a pastoral priority of this parish to call forth 20 individuals to begin receiving the CGS training before the end of 2025.

During these next few months, we ask that all in the parish discern how God is calling them to contribute - whether in time, talent, or treasure - to this beautiful and very urgent ministry of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. If you would like to learn more about the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, you can reach out to me by emailing [email protected].

As human persons we all have an innate desire for beauty. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that beauty is that which pleases when we behold it. In Heaven we will see God face-to-face, and it is ultimately impossible to imagine anything more beautiful than that! The Catholic Mass is Heaven on Earth, and so the Mass should be a truly beautiful experience that pleases us and draws us ever more fully into the transcendent mystery of God. The Mass is a five-sense immersion into beauty that raises our minds and our hearts to the Lord and facilitates a deep encounter and abiding relationship with Him. A beautiful Mass, a Mass that pleases us in all the senses, powerfully works to enrich our souls with divine grace and fills them with the peace and joy that can only come from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

If we think about a typical week, we probably spend most of our time in the secular world which is often lacking in real beauty. Much is held up to us (even forced upon us) as ‘pleasing’, but it is actually superficial, noisy, and tiring. Our souls need and desire a special place and time for encountering the Beautiful One and rest in the true beauty of the Lord. It has been said that beauty is the radiance of goodness and truth, and so when it comes to Christian worship how can we live without a radiant experience of Truth and Goodness Himself?

Sunday worship is the source and summit of our Christian life, and so Sunday Mass should be a most beautiful and solemn family gathering to worship together and to be blessed by our God. All senses have a role to play: we see the beauty of the priestly vestments, we smell the sweetness of the incense, we hear the soulful Gregorian chant, we feel the warmth from the candles, we taste the Flesh of God. In this fullest experience of worship, our entire human person is engaged, and the Lord is satiating the desire of our hearts for truth, goodness, beauty, and communion. No matter the struggles, the sufferings, the difficulties we may be going through, Christ meets us in His sacraments and therein shows us His merciful and beautiful face.

There is a classic maxim from the early days of the Church that says, “lex orandi, lex credendi”, or, “the law of prayer is the law of faith.” In other words, how we pray informs what we believe (and eventually becomes how we live). Reverent, vibrant, loving, and beautiful worship in Holy Mass is indeed the starting place of a faithful, holy, loving, and beautiful Christian life. We earnestly pray that all of us who spend time worshipping in God’s house at St. Pius will encounter Him face-to-face in the beautiful liturgy and will feel His love pierce and transform our souls into something beautiful: the soul of a saint!

During this Fall Stewardship Appeal, all in the parish are challenged to discern their part - whether in time, talent, or treasure - in ensuring that the Mass continues to be a place of a beautiful encounter with the God who loves us -who is not a distant God, but who is right in the midst of us in the Eucharist.

Evangelization is the task of the Church, her deepest identity. All of the people of God - priests, deacons, bishops, the laity, the religious - have the grace and mission to evangelize.

Christian parents have a unique and indispensable role in evangelization, particularly in their role to evangelize and catechize within their families. Pope John Paul II wrote, “the future of evangelization depends in great part on the Church of the home,” adding that the ministry of evangelization carried out by Christian parents is original and irreplaceable.

Catholic sociologist Christian Smith affirms that recent sociological studies have shown that the single most important measurable factor for determining the religious and spiritual lives of teenagers and young adults is the religious faith, commitments, and practices of their parents. She argues that close relationships to religious adults serve as valuable reference points of belief and participation, and make attending Mass rewarding and meaningful.

In recent decades, the role of parents as the primary evangelizers and educators of their children has been diminished. Too often the role of primary evangelizer and educator is delegated to specialists in Catholic School or the parish. This mentality has been the norm because of an inherited system of child-centered catechesis that was developed from a time in which the culture was predominantly Christian. During that time, it was more likely that families prayed together, went to Mass every week, and Christian values were promoted in the greater culture. That is not the case today. Many parents seeking religious education or sacraments for their children struggle to make it to Mass; they struggle to find meaning in religious practice; and Catholic beliefs and practices are not supported by the greater culture.

In 2018, Bishop Ricken wrote in a column, “For years, religious education has focused on children and offered little to parents. We know that the most effective place to form missionary disciples is in the home, yet too often we have not provided parents with the resources and guidance they need to grow in relationship with Christ and help their children do the same…So we have begun to ask ourselves a critical question: How do we help parents discover, follow and worship Jesus themselves, so that they can then share Jesus with their children?”

In the upcoming years, the staff of St. Pius X will be pondering these questions, and we would like to invite the whole parish to ponder them as well. To support Christian parents and to build up the domestic church will require investment from the whole parish. It takes a village to raise a family in the Christian faith and parents need the support of the whole Christian community.

During this Fall Stewardship Appeal, all in the parish are challenged to discern their part, whether in time, talent, or treasure - in building up the domestic churches of the parish. The future of our parish, our church, and our world is depending on this.