Priests and pastoral leaders from Newark Archdiocese experience mission immersion program
What are the greatest threats to our faith today?
Persecution? Catholics in Nigeria, Yemen, Latin America, and Iran would certainly agree.
Misinformation? False ideas about Christ, salvation, and the Church, and misguided ideologies, have caused untold harm to Catholics throughout the ages.
Secularism? Consumerism and modern culture have offered people trivial and superficial things that release endorphins, while blinding them to what is essential, fulfilling, and lasting.
But how about monotony?
G.K. Chesterton, the great English writer, once observed that some Christians are “bored to death with the constant repetition of a story they’ve never heard.”
What does that mean?
When our Christian symbols, stories, and rituals get disconnected from our human experience, we stop “hearing them.” Repetition turns into tedium and we get “bored” with a story without it ever permeating our hearts, and so we never actually hear it.
Our faith is meant to illuminate our lived experience, and our human experience is meant to give richness and depth to our faith. But when faith and life get disconnected, both suffer. We lose our center.
How best can we remedy the monotony that sometimes afflicts our faith?
The antidote to monotony
In 2018, Catholic Extension Society created a mission immersion program for pastors and pastoral leaders focused on this very issue. Nearly 500 priests and pastoral leaders have participated to date. In our research and planning for this program, we discovered how deeply formative it is for priests and pastoral leaders to experience firsthand the Church’s inspiring and diverse missionary work in the poorest regions of this continent.
The trips allow pastors to form bonds with their traveling peers, as well as with the inspiring communities they meet.
Furthermore, these experiences serve to broaden theological and pastoral horizons, facilitate spiritual rejuvenation and lead to deeper kinship among faith communities. More than just hosting trips, Catholic Extension Society is creating new experiences and relationships that allow pastors to see their faith and vocations anew.
In short, they are an antidote to boredom.
Take the Archdiocese of Newark, for instance.
Catholic Extension Society recently invited pastors and pastoral leaders from the archdiocese to a dinner for our program alumni and prospective participants. The invitation was given to anyone open to encountering new inspiration, to be liberated from the same old, same old, and to see the Church at her best.
We know it’s easy to get lost in administrative triviality – buried in a blizzard of budgets, meetings, and problems. Priests are especially vulnerable to forgetting what originally called them to their vocation.
Twenty-five priests were invited to the dinner. Twenty-six priests attended, an astounding turnout. Many came early and all stayed late.
Some of the priests who had previously participated in the Mission Immersion Program invited their brother priests to “come and see” what an immersion program was all about.
A powerful witness
One of that evening’s participants was Father Anthony Randazzo, pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Westfield, New Jersey. He ministers to 1,100 families and exudes a quiet joy and infectious, serene spirit.
Father Randazzo describes Holy Trinity as a “stem cell” church: a church that is constantly growing and developing new ways for people to belong. Like Pope Francis, he believes that the Church needs both the energy of the youth and the wisdom of the elders.
Even with all of his duties as a busy suburban pastor, Father Randazzo’s open and energetic heart led him to join an immersion trip to Brownsville, Texas in April of 2024. He visited a Catholic shelter that was housing over a hundred migrants – the vast majority young parents with kids.
Father Randazzo could not comprehend how these families, many of whom traveled on foot, crossed the thousands of miles from South America to South Texas, doing what any parent would do if their children’s lives were threatened.
This experience will forever inform Father Randazzo’s faith. He will never think of the Eucharist again without seeing these families. He and his people at Holy Trinity are now discerning how they will help a Catholic Extension Society project.
Another dinner guest and immersion trip alum, Sister Pat Wormann, OP, the delegate for religious for the Archdiocese of Newark, said that when we walk with those who have no voice, we are blessed by being with them. They help us remember that mission is at the heart of our faith.
Sometimes, gatherings of priests and pastoral leaders can be a chorus of “Woe is Me.” They are susceptible to becoming disillusioned by monotony. But thankfully, this is not the case for our Mission Immersion Program attendees. They are hearing the Gospel anew. The dinner in New Jersey, therefore, was not an opportunity to complain. It was an invitation to contemplate new ways of seeing the Church come alive. It was a confirmation that mission is the antidote to monotony.
For more information about Catholic Extension Society’s Parish Partnership program, contact Natalie Donatello at ndonatello@catholicextension.org .
This article originally appeared in Extension Magazine.
Featured image: Father Anthony Randazzo learns from volunteers at a Catholic shelter during his visit to southern Texas during a Mission Immersion Program organized by Catholic Extension Society. (Photos courtesy of Catholic Extension Society)
