Editor's Report

‘Faith Lives’ Is Coming

Posted

This column isn’t often used to preview projects Catholic New York is undertaking, but we’ll make an exception in this case for Faith Lives, a special section that will be part of the April 17 issue.

Faith Lives represents our attempt to look at some of the ways the Catholic faith is being practiced in the archdiocese, with an emphasis on how that impacts the lives of today’s Catholics.

The package includes planned articles on diverse topics such as a married couple residing at a Dutchess County nursing home whose devotion to each other offers an example to many there; a family in Orange County with five sons who have served at the altar of St. Columba’s parish in Chester; and a feature on a Paulist priest, whose ministry includes his presentation of the Gospel of Luke in dramatic form in and beyond the archdiocese.

In all honesty, we are working on a number of other projects at CNY and anticipating a couple of others in the coming months, so I was not sure whether we could pull off Faith Lives. We put it on hold for a few weeks earlier this year, but ultimately decided together as a staff that we would move forward with it.

Naturally, Holy Week is a perfect time to bring it to our readers, and we hope you enjoy it.

One of the complaints we sometimes receive about Catholic New York is that our coverage is too New York City-focused. Whether that is true, I’ll leave to readers to judge. One thing I can say is that the vast majority of the stories in Faith Lives will be from the upper counties of the archdiocese. In addition, readers directly suggested a number of the topics.

On March 23, after dropping my daughter back at college after her spring break, I did the legwork for just such a story. It so happens this one was based at St. Martin de Porres parish in Poughkeepsie, where the fifth weekly meeting of the Discovering Christ program was taking place that day.

I’m going to write about this program at length in Faith Lives but I want to give a little preview of what to expect.

The story pitch in this case came from Dianne Davis, the regional director of ChristLife, a Catholic ministry for evangelization, of which Discovering Christ is part.

I was a little late in arriving to St. Martin de Porres that afternoon but it all worked out for the best. Once there, the first person I spoke with was Silvana Pace, a parishioner who signed up for the program three years ago and now serves as a facilitator. (I counted at least 40 people on the lay team presenting Discovering Christ.)

Before making her commitment to attend Discovering Christ and the two other components of ChristLife, Ms. Pace, a 40-something, married mother of two daughters, told me that she had bumped along with her practice of the faith, a little hit or miss, sometimes attending Mass and sometimes not.

She was invited to attend by Ms. Davis. She figured she would learn more about her religion, but she found that the sessions uncovered a deeper way of understanding the truths of the Catholic faith while cultivating a personal relationship with Jesus.

The fact that participation involved a seven-week commitment was significant. By the third week, she was hooked. “I knew this was for me,” she said. “I never knew I could have a personal relationship with Jesus.”

Ms. Pace, a hair salon owner, said the difference such a relationship has made in her life has been noticeable to her husband and daughters, especially the older one who is 20. No longer does she fly off the handle when a crumb hits the floor, and she is generally much kinder to everyone she encounters.

“It pretty much changed my life,” she said.

OK, that’s enough for now. See Faith Lives in the next issue for the rest of this story, and many others like it.