Some New Year’s Resolutions

Would you like it if your children, grandchildren – even you – found our parish a place you wanted to be? Do you think you can contribute to making that possible?

This is a time for making New Year’s resolutions, so let me suggest a few that would make Our Lady of Grace more attractive. How about a resolution to –

• Hold doors for other people, say hello, maybe even introduce yourself to someone you see all the time but whose name you don’t know?
• Encourage volunteer ministers and be grateful for their service, rather than criticizing them? Keep the place looking good by picking up around yourself in your pew or in the classroom as you leave?
• Be courteous in the parking lot?
• Dress well when coming to church, to show it’s important in your life?
• Smiling more than you frown while you’re here?
• Avoid driving people away through a consistently sour attitude while you’re at church?
• Not thinking you’re more “entitled” than others – parking only where it’s allowed, for example, rather than presuming it’s ok to park wherever you want?
• Join in the singing at Mass, so it sounds full-bodied instead of half-hearted? (Who wants to be part of a listless group?)
• Show appreciation for anyone who makes your time here easier in any way – employee, volunteer, or fellow-parishioner?
• Show the specialness of the church interior space by talking quietly, bowing or genuflecting when you pass the tabernacle, and in general remembering you’re in the amazing presence of God?
• Slide in to the center of the pew if someone else wants to sit, rather than making the person climb over you?
• Move reverently and carefully as you approach the Holy Communion, with just a simple head-bow and no genuflection and/or sign of the cross? (That is what the church requires, and makes for easier movement for those around you.)
• Be really quiet – completely quiet – when the time comes for that five minutes before the start of Mass?
• Be on the lookout for all the good things happening here, and talking about them with family and friends?

If every parishioner chose to do just one of these things as a New Year’s resolution, and kept at it for the coming year, people would find our parish more attractive. They’re simple things – why not?

Have a blessed new year and, until next week, peace.