BELLEVILLE — “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way, the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us and sent his Son as an expiation for our sins.
“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.
“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4: 7-12; 20-21)
These words from St. John challenge us to reconsider how much we think we love God if our faith life is turned too inward. Whether we are praying by ourselves at home or praying by ourselves in a sea of strangers at church, a key element of our faith is missing if we do not reach out in love toward others.
That is why being a good evangelist isn’t so much merely about being an eloquent and convincing speaker, but rather about engaging with people on a personal level. The building of community in a parish is an essential part of communicating the gospel.
Building community in Belleville
Laurie Minneci, who heads the evangelization team at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Belleville, said she learned this after taking a REACH MORE class from The Evangelical Catholic in Madison. She said that a lot of evangelization is “just talking to as many people as [you] can. Get to know what they want, what they are missing in their spiritual life.”
Earlier this year, Fr. Mark Miller, the pastor at St. Francis of Assisi Parish, hosted a small Gospel immersion program for the eight members of the parish’s evangelization team.
“We had three different times that you could choose to participate in every week,” she said. “And it ran for 12 weeks. We discussed a certain topic in the Gospel every week, and [Father Miller] had Gospel readings to go along with it that we went through together and discussed. First, we went over the Old Testament, and then we went into the New Testament.”
The small group setting allowed for greater participation and questions among those on the team and allows the team to be more fruitful as they go out and help with the formation of other groups.
“Right now we’re in the process of forming a women’s group,” said Minneci. “We have a Knights of Columbus for the men, but we’ve never had a women’s group at our parish, so we are in the process of organizing that, and from that, we hope to start some small groups breaking off of that because that’s what’s happened with the men’s group.”
Bringing the parish together
However, merely splitting parishioners up into tiny groups is not the overall goal. While people need that personal interaction, the parish needs unity as well, whether it comes from their pastor’s Sunday homily or from the testimonials the evangelization team shares afterward.
This summer, Father Miller has been focusing his homilies on the four holy habits — daily prayer, reclaiming Sunday, Friday penance, and frequent Confession. Afterward, one of the members of the evangelization shares how they practically live those habits out in their daily lives.
Minneci said that she gave a talk on keeping Sunday holy. She said she “gave a little background about my childhood and how my parents taught me the kinds of things I did with my family growing up — such as having a family meal, going and visiting our grandparents, maybe going on a Sunday drive and getting an ice cream cone — and how I tried to do those things with my children and what I’m doing now that my children are grown up.”
Another way they are working to unite the parish is to “bring all the groups together and to have them work on things together.” This allows people to get to know people of the parish outside of their social circles.
One such recent event at the parish was a pro-life Mass. Minneci said her husband took charge and made sure it wasn’t just the pro-life committee involved in the Mass.
“My husband went around and got people from every other group to add something to the Mass and participate in the Mass,” she said. “It was a really amazing night because everybody came together. It really brought our parish together . . . to get to know each other better.”