IN THIS ISSUE ...
Visitor Stories:
• First annual Diocesan Ministry Day • One in the Spirit - Voice of Hope
Nearly 1,000 glean insight, ideas and inspiration during ‘Great Diocesan Get-together’
• CHS students learn more about Spanish, Latin culture, selves
• EDITORIAL: How to foster a preferential option for the missions
FAITH ALIVE
Ministry Day Photos
(see photos below)
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First annual Diocesan Ministry Day • One in the Spirit - Voice of Hope: Nearly 1,000 glean insight, ideas and inspiration during ‘Great Diocesan Get-together’
Article and photos
by Sue Schulzetenberg
Visitor Staff Writer
ST. CLOUD — On Aug. 24, that “Great Minnesota Get-together,” the Minnesota State Fair, opened its gates in St. Paul. And that’s fine, if you like eating greasy fried chocolate-coated pickles or candy bars on a stick.
On the same day, Aug. 24 — about 60 miles or so upstream, Mississippi-wise — another great get-together was taking place — “the great diocesan get-together.” The St. Cloud Diocese was conducting its first annual Diocesan Ministry Day at the St. Cloud Civic Center.
Not a pickle on a stick was in sight. But there was a pack of people — more than 950 of them — absorbing stacks of information and inspiration, and taking stock of just how to best serve the people of God in their parishes and schools.
Indeed, people involved in all facets of Catholic education, pastoral ministry and religious life were present at the event, attending breakout workshop sessions, gleaning wisdom from keynote presenter Msgr. Ray East (see story right), and worshipping and visiting together.
People who organized the event said the day was very well received.
“We heard nothing but positive comments,” said Linda Kaiser, director of the diocese’s Catholic Education Ministries. She added that participants seemed to enjoy the notion of so many people coming together in unity.
In addition to the keynote presentation workshops and Mass with Bishop John Kinney presiding, the day consisted of lunch, exhibits, closing ritual and a social.
Jolaine Jennissen, a youth minister at St. Mary Parish in Alexandria, said she was impressed by the many people of the diocese who attended.
“It’s great to have our diocese together,” she said.
Robert Doyle of St. Mary School in Melrose said the Diocesan Ministry Day was “awesome,” with its gathering together of all the various elements of the diocese-wide faith community.
“We are one,” he said.
Among those who said they would take home inspirational insight was Father Gerald Mischke, pastor of the Five Parish Faith Community of parishes in St. Wendel, St. Anna, Opole and Holdingford. The day provided a great variety of workshops, he said, and was “wonderful for all.”
Breakout sessions covered a variety of topics, including stem cell research, the Second Vatican Council, sacramental record keeping and helping students become better learners.
Joanne Hillesheim, who teaches first grade at SS. Peter, Paul and Michael Elementary School in St. Cloud, said she found the “praying with children” workshop very helpful and “very practical,” in that participants learned the many ways children pray and advice on how to invite children to enrich their relationship with God.
More stories continued . . .
CHS students learn more about Spanish, Latin culture, selves
by Joseph Young
Visitor Interim Editor
ST. CLOUD — God is about to put this hot summer of 2006 on the back burner where it will simmer until 2007. But before putting the northern hemisphere in winter’s deep freeze, God first sprinkles some autumn seasoning earthward in the form of fluttering leaves...
And fluttering butterflies of anticipation. Butterflies that fill the stomachs of
students about to embark
on another new school year of learning.
But for 15 girls and 12 boys from Cathedral High School (CHS) in St. Cloud, those butterflies have already fluttered by. They have just returned from a learning experience.
The 27 students — all juniors and seniors taking Spanish classes — along with another student from Big Lake High School and six chaperones, spent from July 25 to Aug. 9 on a service mission trip to a small village in Honduras called Arada. While there, they learned a bit of Spanish and they learned a bit about Hondu-ran culture.
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From left, April Malikowski,
Chelsea Craven, and Beth Helwig hand out bags full of toys and
candy to people in a small
village outside of Arada.
(Photos courtesy of
Korene Schmitz, CHS student. ) |
“But most of all, they learned about themselves,” said Myriam Mansell, CHS Spanish teacher who organizes the pilgrimage every other summer for the past 18 years.
The earlier trips were made to Mansell’s homeland of Colombia, but in recent years Honduras has been the destination.
“In all the trips, we have gone to help the Colombian people and the Honduran people,” Mansell said, “but we also allow them to help us. They teach us much — about Spanish, about their culture, and about ourselves. In the process, they help each of us to discover what is in our own soul.”
EDITORIAL: How to foster a preferential option for the missions
Msgr. Ray East was flying to Haiti on a mission trip. More than 200 were in the plane, all missionaries.
“Two hundred were Protestants,” said Msgr. East during his keynote presentation at the St. Cloud Diocese’s first annual Diocesan Ministry Day Aug. 24 at the St. Cloud Civic Center. “Eight of us were Catholics,” he added. “What’s wrong with this picture?”
Then, paraphrasing the Great Commission from Matthew’s Gospel, Msgr. East said, “Jesus told the disciples, ‘No, you can’t keep just within your diocesan boundaries... You’ve got to get out of here.’ ”
Msgr. East was preaching to a choir already aware of the Christian requirement to “get out” and spread the Gospel. The St. Cloud Diocese puts the “mission” in the Great Commission. There is nothing wrong with the missionary picture in central Minnesota.
The diocese, for example, enjoys a 46-year-old partnership with the Diocese of Maracay, Venezuela, and a 7-year-old budding partnership with the Diocese of Homa Bay, Kenya.
The World Mission Sunday supplement, produced collaboratively last October by the Diocesan Mission Office and St. Cloud Visitor, shows that about 50 missioners with connections to the diocese have gone to serve “to the ends of the earth,” all nations, including those in Eurasia, Latin America and Africa — and that doesn’t even include the many diocese-connected missioners serving the nation of the United States.
A cursory riffling through the 28 St. Cloud Visitor editions published to date in 2006, reveals eight stories about international mission trips and partnerships in which the diocese or its schools and parishes are involved — with Peru, Brazil, Guatemala, Tanzania, Zambia, Mexico, Kenya and Sudan, and Honduras. And we’ve had opportunities to publish even more such stories.
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