{"id":14616,"date":"2022-10-24T12:15:24","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T16:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/?p=14616"},"modified":"2022-10-24T12:18:43","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T16:18:43","slug":"journeying-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/journeying-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Journeying Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

Journeying Together<\/h4>\n

by friar Mario Serrano, OFM Conv.<\/p>\n

A path forward\u202fdoes not happen by\u202ffurther marginalizing our sisters and\u202fbrothers.<\/p>\n

A path forward comes\u202fwith\u202fconsolation and reconciliation.<\/p>\n

\"\"Religious practice is dwindling radically; this is no secret.\u202f\u202fOur sisters and brothers who opt out\u202fdo not look the same, nor\u202fdo they\u202fgo by the same name. Some are\u202fatheists, explicitly denying the existence of God. Others are\u202fagnostics, open to accepting the existence of God but remain undecided. And most recently many have become known\u202fas the \u201cNones.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked what faith they belong to, they say\u202f\u201cnone.\u201d<\/p>\n

I often find myself in conversation with the \u201cNones\u201d;\u202fhowever, most recently, while at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation during the days when\u202fthousands of pilgrims make their way to Carey, Ohio, for the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. There, I had a conversation with a young man.\u202fThis is when I discovered the \u201cDones.\u201d<\/p>\n

He,\u202flike many,\u202fhad come to define himself as\u202f\u201cDone,\u201d done with religion and done with church. Yet, we both found ourselves at Our Lady of Consolation for a special feast day.
\nWhile in conversation,\u202fhe spoke of the\u202floss\u202fof his mother due to COVID-19 and how he felt the Church was not\u202fpresent\u202fwith\u202fhis family\u202fduring\u202ftheir\u202fcritical moments. Although\u202ffeeling neglected,\u202fhe was fulfilling one of his\u202fmother\u2019s\u202flast requests.\u202fShe had asked him to make his way to the Shrine to pray for her.<\/p>\n

I asked when was the last time he had been to the Shrine for the feast day.\u202f\u202fHe mentioned it was almost\u202f20 years ago.\u202fI confessed that\u202fI,\u202ftoo,\u202fhad not been back to the Shrine for about the same number of years.\u202f\u202fMy last time being when I was in Initial Formation.<\/p>\n

I could not help but make the connection\u202fthat\u202fboth of us\u202fcould have possibly been in the same place 20 years ago.\u202f\u202fTime had passed and\u202four\u202fjourneys,\u202fthough different,\u202fwere now converging,\u202fbecause we were\u202forphaned\u202fby our mothers, and present at a place where the patroness was a Mother of Consolation.<\/p>\n

Our conversation eventually moved into the sacrament of reconciliation.\u202f\u202fPrior to his departure I said:<\/p>\n

\u201cMary accompanies you in your grief and seeks to console you.\u202f\u202fShe knows well the pain of loss.\u202f\u202fPray to Mary and pray to your mother\u2014 and know that this conversation is a form of prayer. Feel Mary\u2019s and your mother\u2019s closeness to you. They are both longing to hear from you;\u201d He was overwhelmed by tears as he had not thought of speaking to his mother during this time of feeling great absence.\u202fI concluded that the Church would also feel a great sense of loss if he would decide to\u202fbe\u202f\u201cdone\u201d\u202fwith her.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, all of us, believers and non-believers, doubters and questioners, share one common humanity and\u202fwe\u202fwill have to learn to listen to one another, learn to grieve in a prayerful and healthy way in order to\u202fmake a path forward\u2014 hopefully by learning to console one another.\u202f\u202fThis could have many beautiful implications.<\/p>\n

Our Lady of Consolation, pray for us.<\/p>\n

Pray for all the \u201cNones,\u201d and the \u201cDones,\u201d and all who make room for the Spirit of Hope.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Journeying Together by friar Mario Serrano, OFM Conv. A path forward\u202fdoes not happen by\u202ffurther marginalizing our sisters and\u202fbrothers. A path forward comes\u202fwith\u202fconsolation and reconciliation. Religious practice is dwindling radically; this is no secret.\u202f\u202fOur sisters and brothers who opt out\u202fdo not look the same, nor\u202fdo they\u202fgo by the same name. Some are\u202fatheists, explicitly denying the existence...","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14617,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2022-winter-newsletter-listening-an-act-of-love"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-29 03:36:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14616"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14621,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14616\/revisions\/14621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscansusa.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}