Our lives are filled with sacrament, with occasions when God touches us in a special way. We as a Christian community come together at certain times, usually Sundays, to celebrate God's activity in and around us. But our community Sacramental celebrations are only as deep as our everyday lived faith.

When we gather together for our parish council meetings, we are plunged into the mystery of on-going sacrament. We are the Body of Christ, bread for the world, and in particular for our own parish community. Gathered around the parish council table, we discern how our parish can be a place of nourishment for its members and for its surrounding community. As the gathered Body of Christ, we are a sign of unity and love. But since we all need healing now and then, our parish council meeting becomes an extension of the sacrament of reconciliation. When we assemble as Christ's Body, we bring with us our hurts and fears, our weakness and sin. As the healing presence of Christ for each other, we seek to bring peace and comfort rather than hostility and antagonism. We seek to mend whatever in our parish and community keeps us apart. The reconciliation that happens at our parish council meetings is a sign of Christ's healing presence.

Parish Council members are called to be outstanding in living their Christ life, not just to do more for the parish.

Parish council members share in a special way the ministry of Jesus Christ, especially his kingly ministry. But the kingly ministry of Jesus is far different from any other kingly ministry. It is a ministry of service, even to the point of suffering for those served. It is not a ministry of prestige or power. The only power Jesus knows is the power of suffering love, the power of the cross.

Parish council members are called to exercise this kingly ministry of Jesus first of all by a commitment to their own spiritual growth. To share Jesus' ministry means to "put on the mind that was in Christ Jesus," as St. Paul writes. It means, in other words, to become another Christ, sharing his attitudes and actions. Although all Christians receive this call through their baptism, parish council members are called to exercise it in a more prominent way in their Christian community by the example of their lives and leadership.

Put in this context, the primary call of parish council members is not so much to do more for the parish but rather to become more for the parish, to become the Christ people to which their baptismal vows have committed them. It is so often easier to be busy about doing many things, living the "Martha" in us. Parish council members are called also to nourish their "Mary."

Of primary importance for parish councilors is their prayer life. All people are called to be prayerful, to be in touch with God's loving presence continually touching them. Parish council members are called to an even deeper prayer life, to the life of prayerful discernment.

Prayerful discernment is an attitude of being continually attuned to God's call.

Our God is a God who calls us, makes his loving and challenging presence known to us. The Old Testament is a wonderful record of God's continuing call. The New Testament shows the intensity of God's call. His Word becomes flesh so that we can find our way back to him. Most simply expressed, his call to us is to live the Christ-life, to become transformed into "another Christ."

This is not just a metaphor, like being "another Hank Aaron" means being a good ballplayer. It is literally true. When St. Paul writes, "I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me," he is telling us that our Christian faith is a religion of transformation. God wants to transform us at the center of our being, the core of our own personality, into his Son Jesus. Through this gradual process, we grow to spontaneously respond as Jesus would in any situation. His attitudes become our attitudes; his heart, our heart; his hands, our hands.

Parish council members are invited to discern how God is calling them to become more deeply Jesus. Through prayer and reflection, they listen to the people, events and things that come into their lives, to hear how the Father is calling them in each. Like Jesus, their will is to do God's will even when it may not be their personal preference.

This kind of life is a great challenge, and no one could become another Jesus in a month or a year. Even saints take a lifetime. Parish council members are not called to immediate perfection, just to a commitment to walking the spiritual path and a daily putting of one foot in front of the other.

The purpose of a parish council meeting is to discern how God is calling the parish.

A parish council is made of members who are learning to discern God's call to them in their lives. When they come together as a group for parish council meetings, they bring with them that sensitive discernment. They are gathered to discern God's call to the parish. They are not there to get their own way, have their pet ideas or projects accepted, feel power, or play politics.

These attitudes have no place at a parish council meeting.

A parish council member looks for God's will, not his or her own. This means that prayerfulness is pervasive at a council meeting and doesn't just begin and end the meeting. In fact, important matters to be considered at the meeting should have been prayed over privately long before the meeting convenes. At the meeting itself, members pray for light to discern God's call, openness to accept it, and freedom to live it out.

A parish council is a lived experience of Christian community.

As a Christian community, the parish council is not only composed of members with their own faith life but is, itself, a community of shared faith and shared prayer. To build the trust that is necessary to share their parish leadership together, members can learn to share their faith together.

As each shares the joys and struggles of living his/her commitment to become "another Christ," the other members will be touched and grow in their own faith and sense of community of faith. They will experience what a blessed and gifted group they are!

Many people find sharing faith, let alone sharing prayer, difficult; we are not used to it. It is not in our background. And yet, almost everyone who has experienced a gentle sharing of faith or prayer finds it enjoyable, nourishing, and something to come back to.

This kind of in-depth sharing is the most basic way of proclaiming the Good News. We proclaim that Jesus is active in the world. We know it because we have experienced Christ's presence in our own lives. We proclaim that his touch calls forth a response, and we show it by our shared prayer. But because these experiences are new to many people, it is well to go slowly and gently.

Days of retreat or recollection are ways of building community. Forming a council covenant is another way of beginning this process.

Called to the wisdom of the cross

Parish councilors are not primarily management people. They are faith-filled people. Because this is so, their decisions are not just made on practical wisdom, although this is an important element. Their decisions are primarily faith decisions, responses to the call of God. God's wisdom is sometimes human imprudence, just as His strength is sometimes human weakness.

Parish councils may at times find God calling them to embrace suffering and the imprudence of the Cross. And this is perhaps the most important reason for a prayerful parish council. Only prayer can see wisdom in the Cross. Only prayer can discern God calling us to new life through apparent death.

For additional information on parish council ministry, contact Noreen Welte, director of the Office for Parish Councils and Planning, 414-769-3378.