MSP Catholic started at my dining room table after what felt like years of conversations with other local Catholic young adults. I am actively involved or have been involved in a number of Catholic young adult groups in the Twin Cities – Cathedral Young Adults, West Metro Young Adults, Vespers at Lourdes, Abria Young Adults, various sports nights, Catholic Beer Club (which I am one of the organizers of), Emmaus, etc. – and had seen first hand how vibrant, active, and alive our local Catholic community is, but also how disconnected it can be. There are so many things going on and I was still learning about new things after being actively involved for years. How was someone who was new to the area or their faith supposed to get connected?

I wasn’t the only one feeling this. The numerous people that I talked to about this challenge expressed their love of our local community while at the same time sharing how it was challenging to share events or news with so many people spread across such a large geographical area. Ask ten different people about the events, groups, or parishes they attend regularly and you could easily have ten different sets of answers. There are an almost unending number of platforms that messages and events are being shared on. Social media platforms, websites, emails, physical notices on parish bulletin boards, radio broadcasts, and live announcements at the end of Mass are all ways that the local community connects, but there is no single place to find all of that information.

This is actually a beautiful problem to have. Our local community has grown organically over the years and I am blessed to benefit from the hard work that others have put in before me. The many groups and events that exist have grown up to meet a need and help bring people closer to Christ. From community building and social events like Catholic Beer Club and Catholic Softball Group to more solemn and focused times for prayer like Vespers at Lourdes, the ingenuity and faithfulness of our community is everywhere. To be able to centralize access to that vibrant community is exactly what I set out to do with MSP Catholic.

I do want to be very clear that the mission of MSP Catholic is not to take over what the many amazing groups and parishes are already doing in the Archdiocese, but to amplify their work. Our goal is to use digital tools to make it easier to get connected in-person and build community by sharing life with people. 

The first iteration of MSP Catholic came in the fall of 2018. It started as a free Wix website and featured groups, events, and parishes. It also attempted to have featured events, weekly news updates, app recommendations, and more. It was a lot and I quickly realized it wasn’t something that was sustainable. Groups and events came from sources I knew and had to be manually updated every time something changed. Parishes were added as I learned more about them or they reached out. There was no way to know if Mass times changed or confession was moved for that week. It began to dawn on me that maybe others had had similar ideas in the past and realized just how difficult centralizing everything manually could be.

This highlighted both another problem and another path forward – I shouldn’t be doing this on my own. As I said before, our local Catholic community has grown organically. It wasn’t a master plan by the Archdiocese or a few individuals but a lot of normal people answering the Lord’s call. This website was meant to serve the community and to do so, it had to be built by the community. After a few discussions with some local group leaders, I rebuilt the site (on Squarespace this time, for those following along) in the spring of 2019. It still focused on groups, events, and parishes, but set criteria around each category. There was a section for “resources” that I personally found helpful (national blogs, podcasts, apps, books, etc). This was also the first iteration of our locally sourced blog, with a goal of amplifying the voices of Catholic writers who had something to share but couldn’t/didn’t want to run their own site. To keep the content up-to-date, I invited the groups featured on the site to have access to post their events and updates. The idea was that if this was to be the digital hub for Twin Cities Catholics, it had to be updated by the community and not just a single admin.

The blog was the epitome of “by the community, for the community.” Local writers (lay people and religious; married and single) shared their thoughts, experiences, and exhortations with Catholics across the Twin Cities. We featured topics based on the liturgical calendar as well as what was going on in the world. Some pieces took 10+ minutes to read while others were quick reflections, but all challenged the reader to stop and think about their faith in regards to their local community. 

With all these great thoughts of community-generated information, high-quality blog posts, and information about active parishes and resources, I thought I had figured out the puzzle to building the digital hub for Twin Cities Catholics. As time went on, I realized I hadn’t. Group leaders and event organizers couldn’t always post on the site because they were busy focusing on their groups and events and still had multiple channels to post in. Parish information was still static and wasn’t researched regularly. The content of the blog posts was awesome (thanks to our highly talented local writers), but the posts themselves were infrequent. I couldn’t just rely on asking people nicely once to post things on the site and just have it be as natural as posting a Facebook event. Writers didn’t just flock to the site without invitation. It started to become unsustainable again. Then COVID hit.

To say that COVID has been a challenge to our local community would be competing for understatement of the year. Our local community was built on people living life together and gathering frequently, all things that were now disrupted due to the pandemic. Where MSP Catholic was concerned, groups weren’t meeting, events weren’t happening, and the site started to look pretty static. This is also when CEND comes into the story. At the time, the non-profit CEND (Center for Evangelization and Discipleship) was just an idea for its founders, yet they had a mission in mind: provide resources to support the faith of Twin Cities Catholic young adults and young families. They were particularly interested in building a centralized digital hub to reach people and share with them all the amazing things going on for Catholics in the Twin Cities. Our partnership can only be described as divine intervention for both sides. CEND got an existing platform and MSP Catholic got the resources to become truly sustainable.

We started working on refocusing the site and solving the problem both organizations had originally set out to solve: connect people, make our vibrant community more accessible, and help provide resources to people throughout their faith journey. Joining CEND was the missing piece to the puzzle and made clear what was going to help the site grow: not just extra resources, but people. People who believe in the mission MSP Catholic set out to accomplish and are willing to share their gifts and talents to make it happen. People who, above all, want to share their faith and bring people closer to Christ. We rebuilt the website (on eCatholic, if you are keeping tabs), revamped our social media presence, refocused the blog, and made it all public earlier this month.

We are relaunching MSP Catholic to expand the digital hub for Twin Cities Catholics. While we are still focused on providing accurate and up-to-date information about groups, events, and parishes in a centralized hub, we are doing that by forming relationships with the organizations featured on the site. The website is just one aspect of MSP Catholic and we want to continue to help grow the local community by learning what is needed. MSP Catholic is a platform that showcases the amazing work of others and to help others discover the vibrant Catholic culture of the Twin Cities. We are focusing on helping groups, events, and parishes reach more people in more meaningful ways, ways that they might not have been able to before. We are formalizing our blog with a team of writers who will be posting weekly long-form articles, a network of contributing authors who will publish their posts throughout the year, and columnists who will be focusing on specific topics monthly. We are evaluating everything from weekly newsletters to video series and more, all to share with the Twin Cities and further the great Catholic culture we have here, get people actively involved in their faith, and provide resources to people as they grow closer to Christ.

Yet, if I’ve learned anything from this saga, it is that this effort needs to be a community effort. CEND brought marketing and digital media pros to MSP Catholic, but we need the gifts and talents of this community to continue to amplify the voices of this community. If you are interested in joining us on this journey, shoot an email to [email protected] and tell us how you’d like to help.
 

Tim Cahill is the founder of MSP Catholic and the managing editor of the site. Moving from Pine City, MN to the Twin Cities for college, Tim found a community, a career, and his future wife while attending the University of Minnesota. He is a product manager at Target, helps run Catholic Beer Club – Twin Cities, and attends the Cathedral of St. Paul with his family.

• This is the third and final part of our series on boredom. You can read part one here and part two here.

  At our young adult night back in May, we had a time of Q&A at the end, and one of the great questions that we got was: “all this theoretical stuff is great and all, and I think I have a good way to think about boredom and love, but what is the practical solution to all this boredom in our lives?”.

  While I was a bit flustered trying to come up with the right thing to say, Fr. LaLiberte had this quote ready to fire from the hip in answer:

   

  “Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.” (from Finding God in All Things: A Marquette Prayer Book, attributed to Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J.)

   

  I couldn’t have said it better myself. This love and communion that we’ve been discussing is the genesis for all the changes that we ought to make in our lives to guard against this lethal boredom. If we start thinking that the love of God does not have practical implications for our lives, then we have far more problems than just boredom. Thus, when asking questions about how boredom impacts your life, ask prayerfully whether the things present in your day are rooted in the love of God? Are there things in your day that you would be embarrassed to talk to God about? Why?

  That being said, I think it would be strange to not at least give a few starting points in the practical sphere. While I certainly can’t cover anything, and my life probably looks a lot different than yours (classic seminarian gig and all), I offer a few suggestions to help you run from boredom and (far more importantly) run to the love of God.
   

  Protect your mornings
  First part of the day first. If you’re not a morning person, become one: one of the priests at the seminary often says “anyone has the capacity to become a morning person.” There’s a glorious time of day available before all the commitment begin, when the world is hushed, and you can snatch some glorious time of silence. This beautiful chunk of time is something I thrive in, and I’m also probably really spoiled by it. Cup of coffee, light breakfast, a time of prayer, reading, holy hour, and just being in the silence. Importantly, I haven’t even picked up my phone. The first words I speak out loud in the day are usually the “God come to my assistance” at the beginning of morning prayer,  almost two hours after I’ve gotten out of bed. What’s the alternative to this? Getting up late, a rushed breakfast, a stressful commute, and feeling like you’re playing catch-up all day. Not exactly ideal. Here’s the thing: this kind of commitment to guarding your mornings starts the night before: actually going to bed when you mean to, and doing it intentionally. One of the things that our parents tried to teach us as kids (putting ourselves to bed) is still somehow so hard to do. Fr. Mike Schmitz had a great video on this a while back, give it a watch. (Disclaimer: you might be one of those people who thrives on irregular sleep patterns or the stress of playing catch-up. If that’s working for you and is fruitful, keep crushing it and disregard this last point. Also, teach me your ways.) (Second disclaimer: if you a parent with young children, their sleep usually dictates yours. God bless you for the sacrifices that you make for your children!).
    Social media
  If you haven’t seen it yet, watch “The Social Dilemma.” It completely blew my mind about the world of social media, and was one of the driving reasons for me deleting it. I leave it up to your discernment, but it has become very apparent in the last few years how dangerous and addictive social media can be. Do you use it as a crutch to get away from real in-person interaction? When was the last time you were standing in line at the coffee shop and didn’t pull out your phone? Instead of scrolling through memes and occasionally letting out a small snort through your nose that counts as half of a chuckle, when was the last time you laughed so heartily in the middle of a conversation that you cried? Do you trade friendships for followers? Is the cost you pay for social media (the time, the investment, the boredom) really worth it? If you’re looking for a sign to more carefully discern how you interact with social media, this is it. If none of that convinced you, here’s a TED talk that really sealed the deal for me.

  Find a creative hobby

  Even though I usually think of something like collecting stamps when someone says the word “hobby,” I recently realized that if I actually sit down and write out how I spend my time, my personal time and leisure time is actually pretty lame. I’ll watch a show or browse some articles online, but I very rarely do anything that’s life-giving. I tried to remember what I did as a kid before all of the screens, and I was hard-pressed to remember. So I sat down and learned something that I’ve always wanted to try: woodcarving. After several months of practice, I’m still terrible at it, and I have cuts all over my hands to prove it. Aside from playing music, it is probably most truly enjoyable thing I do in my free time; a chance to be creative and try something new. So I ask you the same question: what did you do when you were a kid, before all the screens and schedules? What’s something you’ve always wanted to learn how to do? Have the kind of patience and love for yourself and the world that lets you be creative and try new things that are totally “unproductive,” and see what a seemingly boring hobby can do for you. Keep reading
  Shameless self-promotion, but I think a previous article by yours truly might be helpful here in our discussion of boredom, give it a read. Aaand, we’re back to technology. A professor randomly said this to the class in undergrad, and it still stays with me: “technology is individually optimal and collectively terrible.” I might able to finish “all the things I need to get done,” but it’s usually at the expense of those around me. Discipline the technology in your life: if you don’t rule it well, it will rule you. Put your media consumption on a daily schedule (e.g. no emails after 6pm, no cell phone before 7am and after 9pm, etc.). Keep your phone out of your bedroom (buy a cheap alarm clock if you need to). Have sacred spaces in your house that technology does not enter. It sounds silly, but I believe it to be vitally important. I realize how ironic all of this is as I write an article for a blog 🙂 But I trust that the point stands. 
  Reflect on what causes you to get bored Make a list of things that you get bored doing. Start with the obvious things (e.g. cleaning the bathroom) and move to the more specific ones. Especially take note of ones that you wouldn’t like to mention, such as getting bored chatting with coworkers. Sure, small talk can be a drag sometimes, but the person sitting across from you has an immortal soul that and is deeply loved by God. Can you snap out of your boredom and love them too? How are you called to bring the love of God into something like cleaning the bathroom, instead of looking for any kind of escape from it?
  Set some goals
  As long as we’re making lists, write down your goals. Don’t have goals? That means you haven’t been dreaming enough. Boredom seems to kill any kind of dreaming, but running after your goals tends to suffocate out boredom. Put your goals in writing, somewhere that you’ll regularly see them, and figure out what you need to do to get there. Don’t give up on them just because you’re “busy.” That kind of thinking puts productivity above communion and identity.
    There it is! I hope these starting points are helpful, and I hope that as you continue to reflect on boredom and communion in your life, that it would lead you into greater hope and love with the Lord.

  Nicholas Vance is a seminarian studying for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. A West St. Paul native, he came back to the Faith his freshman year of college, and became involved with Saint Paul’s Outreach and the Catholic Studies community. He graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 2018 with degrees in Communications & Journalism and Catholic Studies. A rueful marathoner, a Röpke-Wojtyła Fellow with the Catholic University of America, and a once-upon-a-time youth minister, he loves hiking, reading, playing music, and the delightful first sip of coffee in the morning. He proudly calls Transfiguration in Oakdale (“the rockin’ East Side”) his home parish, and is in seminary formation at the Saint Paul Seminary. 

• Basilica Young Adults gathers people in their 20s and 30s who grow together in holiness, community and service.
  Join us for our weekly bible studies, mens and womens groups, retreats, sports teams, and service activities at the Basilica and the greater community. If you’re looking for a great group in the heart of downtown Minneapolis, check out BYA. 

  FAITH || COMMUNITY || SERVICE

  Learn more about BYA

• Cathedral Young Adults (CYA) is a group for all adults ages 18-39. 

  We offer various spiritual, social, and service events every week.  CYA events gather people from all across the Archdiocese to its home in St. Paul and the heart of local Catholic community.

  FAITH || MISSION || COMMUNITY

  Learn more about CYA

Our Lady of Grace Young Professionals

• OLG Young Professionals (The Harbor) is a place where people…

  • Connect & Belong
  • Ignite Their Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ
  • Receive Formation in Their Catholic Faith
  • Serve the OLG Parish Family

  Join us for monthly holy hours, social activities, small groups, and a chance to meet awesome people. 

  PRAYER || FORMATION || COMMUNITY

  Learn more about OLG YPs

   

• Our leaders and participants work to foster community for those 18-39 who are facing the same questions of living and thriving as a young Catholic today.

  If you are interested in the following, then this group is for you:

  • Growing in knowledge of the Catholic faith
  • Growing your relationship with God
  • Making friends who want to be serious Catholics too
  • Be a part of a community
  • Doing a variety of clean, fun activities

  ENCOURAGING || THRIVING || TRADITIONAL

  Learn more about HF YAs

SJB Excelsior Young Adults

• St. John the Baptist (Excelsior) is striving for consistent options for young adults to get together and form community. 

  The parish has the perfect setup with a big back lawn with a beautiful view of the lake!

  We meet weekly after the 5:30pm Tuesday mass for a mix of bonfires, sports, games, prayer, and other off-campus food and fun.

  Email Kari to learn more: [email protected]

  CASUAL || OUTDOORS || VARIETY

  Learn more about sjb excelsior yas

• SJB Young Adults (Savage) welcomes men and women at all stages from college-bound to young parents.
  Our group gathers in Savage, MN at least once a month for events and programs.

  Together we form disciples who live out the Gospel throughout their journey and according to their needs.

  COMMUNITY || PRAYER || FORMATION

  learn more about SJB YAs

• St. Mark’s Young Adults is a community dedicated to ongoing conversion.

  Together, we seek to…

  • know God through formation and prayer
  • love God through a shared commitement to intentional community
  • serve God through investment in our parish life.

  We live out our mission through prayer, small groups, and social events. If you’re looking for a growing group of committed adult Catholics, check out SMYA.

  COMMUNITY || COMMITMENT || CONVERSION

  learn more about smya

• Situated in the south-central Twin Cities, St. Peter’s Young Adults (SPYA) hosts a variety of casual and faith-focused gatherings. 

  Our core pillars are faith, fun, and service.  If you’re looking for a group of young adults to learn, love, and live out their faith in Christ, join us!

  SOCIAL || INFORMAL || SPIRITUAL

  Learn more about SPYA

Saint Vincent de Paul Young Adults Urban Catholic (Nativity of Our Lord, St. Paul)

• Urban Catholic is a dynamic young adult movement at Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul.

  We bring together young adults at Nativity to be strengthened by sacramental grace, practical catechesis, and meaningful fellowship.  If you’re looking for parish community in St. Paul, check out Urban Catholic at Nativity. 

  SOCIAL || CATECHETICAL || LITURGICAL

  Learn more about Urban Catholic

Church of St. Paul Unified Young Adults

• Our mission: Unified Christian disciples in our 20s or 30s pursuing relationship with Jesus Christ through scripture, prayer, and community in communion with the Catholic Church guided by the Holy Spirit.       Activities include Bible studies, fellowship events, summer events, guest speakers, as well as many other activities.  Open to all adults, married and single.

  Learn more here!

   

Nick Vance: 3, 2, 1, okay here we go. I don’t know if people use Cliff Notes anymore, but can you give us the “Cliff Notes” introduction for who you are? Maybe an interesting/embarrassing fact as well?

Claire Ellendson: Oh boy. Well, my name is Claire, I grew up in Faribault, MN, the third of ten kids. I was a cadle Cratholic –

NV: Hahaha, so close!

CE: Well, I think we just found our embarrassing fact. I served on N.E.T. from 2014-2016 and got to travel all over the US talking to kids about Jesus! I have since moved to Minneapolis, started working with people who have disabilities, and I am making a podcast called “Dead Friend.”

NV: Let’s jump right into it. What was the inspiration for the podcast?

CE: I’ve always really loved the lives of the saints, and I love finding opportunities to talk about them and learn about them. I begged my mom to teach me how to sew so I could make a stuffed lamb to hold when I dressed up as St Agnes for all Saints Day when I was 8 or 9. Classic Catholic homeschool girl. Side note, I think it also gave me a fascination for “true crime” stories, because how can you let a kid hear these stories about gruesome martyrdoms and not give them a strange intrigue in murder?

NV: …

CE: Well anyway… when I was serving on N.E.T., I had a team member who had never really heard about any of the lives of the saints before, and sometimes we’d be rooming together in a host home, trying to decompress after a crazy day, and she’d ask me to tell her about a saint as a kind of bedtime story. I would try to remember whatever I could about a random saint and tell their story, and then the two of us were often led into beautiful conversations about zeal for the Gospel, love of Christ, and holding onto Truth even in the midst of trial. And so that’s actually the original “Dead Friend” podcast, attempting to tell the stories of the saints to a good friend of mine as a kind of bedtime story. As I continued to do this, I grew in my desire to not only know more about the lives of the saints, but also try and come to know them personally, to ask for their inspiration and their accompaniment. What I saw in this was (I hope) a growing maturity in relationship with each one of these holy men and women; that I would be able to move past a sort of “biggest fan” approach towards a saint into one of trust and learning, letting both the earthly life of the saint inspire me, and the now-heavenly life of the saint accompany me.

NV: What does that look like for you?

CE: The biggest thing for me has been learning how to deal with difficulty and trial; in the same way that I would reach out to a parent or good friend in time of difficulty to look for wisdom and encouragement, I’ve come to experience the saints as “older brothers and sisters” in the faith whom I can turn to and experience their accompaniment through their writings and their examples. While the saints may have undergone struggles that look different than mine, the fact that they struggled and yet still remained faithful can meet me right in the moments of struggle and difficulty.

NV: That sounds amazing, and I know that I too have experienced the presence of the saints and have been called on by how human they all are.

CE: Right?!

NV: Mmmm. Okay, why the name “Dead Friend,” and how did the podcast come about?

CE: The name also came from my time on N.E.T. I wore a necklace with a bunch of saint medals on it, and when retreatants would ask about them, I referred to the saints as my “dead friends” who are continually with me and interceding for me. Super stereotypical N.E.T.-er girl, I know, but when it came to the podcast there seemed to be no other name that fit what I was trying to do here. I had spent several years after N.E.T. trying to continue to grow in my faith and learn about the lives of the saints, and it slowly realized itself into a podcast as both a way of discipline to make sure that I was actually doing this, as well as a ministry to tell the stories of the saints in a friendly, relatable way.

NV: Me gusta. How do you go about choosing which saints to do an episode about?

CE: It’s kind of haphazard, actually, which I suppose is betraying a little bit too much of the behind-the-scenes for this podcast, hahaha. More and more people have been sending in requests for certain saints, and so I’ve been working to honor requests, and I often end up learning about saints I am totally unfamiliar with. I try and diversify from episode to episode what “kind” of saint we’re discussing (if you can even talk about “kinds” of saints); I’ll try and mix it up with a martyr, and a doctor, and then maybe a guest podcast. One of the things I’ll come up against is when I have been preparing to present on a certain saint, even with a bunch of notes typed out, and in prayer I’ll just experience a pretty clear “no, it’s not time yet” for this saint. I have all sorts of notes and research and episodes that I’ve put on the backburner until the Lord brings it back up.

NV: What does research for an episode look like?

CE: I need to do a better job of citing my sources, hahaha! It kind of depends: I have a series of books that I’ll reference, but those are more for encyclopedic and fact-checking information. For some of them I have specific books that I’ll use, sometimes I have to resort to Wikipedia and other websites (I try and avoid that as much as possible, but sometimes I hit a wall and not really sure how to navigate all that information).

NV: Maybe it’s my overly academic side coming out, but sometimes when I’m listening to an episode, I start looking for some more citations or footnotes, but then I get irritated with myself for an unhelpful standard.

CE: Certainly, and I’ve been trying to learn how to walk the line between giving good information that I believe to be true, but also to keep the tone of the podcast more friendly and less book-report-ish.

NV: Here’s a question that I’ve wrestled with over the years: when it comes to the lives of the saints, how do you handle separating historical fact from, I don’t know what to call it… pious legend?

CE: Oooh. I remember a little while ago I did an episode on St. Brendan of Clonfert, and his life was a huge mixture of what we generally believe historically, and some stuff that generated a “what the heck?” kind of reaction… kind of similar to the episode on St. George. I’ll usually compare resources and see what the general consensus on the facts is, but especially with some of the older saints there seem to be all sorts of stories associated with them that are pretty out there. It’s a difficult question to wrestle with: usually I’ll start by praying that the Lord would show me what would be helpful for the listeners to hear. I don’t want to pretend for a second that I have a perfect gauge for knowing the difference between the two, but I do know that for many of these stories, the important question isn’t necessarily whether we can establish it as historical fact, but whether the stories that we have received are helpful for the people of God. 

NV: Sometimes when you hear about the saints, you learn that a certain saint is a patron saint of _____. Sometimes when I hear these things, it can be pretty funny: what’s the funniest patron saint you’ve come across?

CE: Usually the St. Lawrence one gets me: while being roasted alive on a grill, St. Lawrence supposedly joked “turn me over, I’m done on this side.” Because of comments like that, St. Lawrence is the patron saint of comedians. Also, St. Brigid of Kildare is the patron saint of chicken farmers, because of course she is. She’s helped me get over my irrational fear of chickens.

NV: What’s one of the saints you’ve come across that’s really impacted you?

CE: Comparing the experiences might be a strange question, but the first one that came to mind was the episode on Ven. Emile Engel. For years I have loved visiting the Schoenstatt sisters in Sleepy Eye, MN, and I had a chance to speak with a sister who was mentored by Ven. Emile. The way that this sister would speak about Ven. Emile was such a beautiful account of not only personal holiness, but such a human dimension as well. Ven. Emile also struggled with disabilities, and in my own work with people with disabilities, it brought her story so much closer to home.

NV: Probably an unfair question: who is the patron saint of the podcast?

CE: Not unfair at all, I’ve gotten this question before, hardly any discernment required: Mama Mary. She’s the Queen of the Saints and has been watching over this since day one.

NV: How has doing this podcast changed the way you pray and interact with the saints?

CE: Accountability has been a big thing with this; attempting to get an episode out every week forces me to be disciplined with my spiritual reading, research, and prayer. Another big thing has been continuing to ask for the grace of the Holy Spirit to continue to lead this podcast where He wants it to go, so that it could be the Lord’s work and under the Lord’s direction. It’s also been a great opportunity to do ministry while having a full-time job, and with the pandemic limiting in-person opportunities to meet with people, this has been a way that I hope has been blessing others with the lives of the saints. Over and over, I feel like I’ve received so much more than I’ve given in all this, experiencing the Lord’s presence and His leadership in the midst of all this. As I took each episode to prayer, especially in Eucharistic Adoration, I felt the Lord humbling me and bringing me into relationship with so many of these saints as not only examples but friends.

NV: I was about to ask you about your favorite episode, but obviously it’s the one you did with me on St. Damien of Molokai. What’s something you would say to someone interested in either the podcast or just learning more about the lives of the saints? 

CE: There are saints in every generation, men and women totally given over to the Lord. Learning about them is not only inspiring, but it really shows the Lord’s providence through all of human history, continuing to lead people into His love.

Many thanks to Claire for doing this interview (which has been edited for length and clarity). Check out her podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have a request for a specific saint or want to reach out to Claire, send her an email or connect with the show on social media.

Catholic Beer Club – Twin Cities is dedicated to helping strengthen and grow the Twin Cities Catholic Community through fellowship and engaging people across the metro area. Our events are simple: Show up, meet new people, talk with people you know, and try good beer (not necissarily in that order!).

Our events are every three weeks at a different brewery around the metro area. They typically run from 5:30pm to 9:00pm (or later) to accomodate people of all states in life.

• Last week, Governor Walz announced a new round of rollbacks in the almost year-long “Stay Safe MN” campaign to slow the spread of COVID-19, loosening regulations for gyms and indoor events. The official Stay Safe MN website announces at the top of the page, “We have reason for optimism!” It’s a notable shift in tone after widespread concern over outbreaks, case counts, and hospital capacity reached a fever pitch over the holiday season. 

  Given the fact that parishes are now allowed to operate at a higher capacity and are able to host non-liturgical events again, now might be the perfect time to examine how we can start building up our communities and relationships that have been in Zoom-induced “maintenance mode” for almost a year now. I think, based on current numbers, that we can start to treat remote or distance options as an exception rather than the rule. 

Particularly, we should resist the temptation to treat the “Zoom-in” option as a convenient backup plan for evenings when we don’t feel like leaving the house (am I right?). We need to start gathering in person and living real, incarnated life together as much as we can, given current restrictions, lest we start to think that being there is now something fundamentally optional. We may still be dispensed from our Sunday obligations, but the fact remains that you can’t receive the sacraments, build deep relationships, or live in Christian community through a screen.

I do not mean to suggest we should act recklessly or rush back into situations where we put ourselves and others at serious risk. We all have to pray and discern what our own choices will be and what risks we are willing to accept. But now is the time to consider the total human cost of the pandemic, not just the immediate risk the virus poses.

Presence is an act of mercy

Consider the fact that while so many lives have been lost to this virus, many others have suffered in silent isolation because of lockdowns, unemployment, and the overall stress of living through a pandemic. The CDC conducted a study in June 2020 called “Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation During the COVID-19 Pandemic” and found (among other things) that 11% of Americans had seriously considered suicide since the start of the pandemic.

This bears repeating: more than 1 in 10 of the people in our country have thought about killing themselves in the past year. Make no mistake, this is not just a global pandemic; what we are living through is also a crisis of loneliness and meaninglessness. We ramped up our efforts to social distance in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus, but we had no idea the impact that imposed isolation would have on many, particularly those living alone, by severing the vital bonds of community.

My experience at my own parish has been that young people are among the most vulnerable to this sort of desolation. Ironically, young adults who grew up surrounded by technology – most of whom had smartphones by their teenage years – are burned out from the endless barrage of Zoom meetings and virtual “events.” They miss sharing life with other people and crave human interaction. We’ve seen that when the doors open again, they show up.

Covid-tide has made two things painfully obvious: that drawing near to another person is always risky business (germs, disease, and contagious suffering of all sorts being a permanent feature of earthly life), and that we desperately need to do it all the same. Allow me to suggest, therefore, that a very important aspect of evangelical witness during this crisis is presence. I mean, physical presence. Being there. Drawing near and accepting some risk for love of others. As crazy as it sounds, in 2021 it truly is an act of mercy to get dressed, defrost your windshield, and just be there – for real. 

Moving past fear

Recently in a TV show I was watching, a group of characters came in for a big, germy group hug. I was shocked at how I instinctively recoiled at the sight, almost as if something in me had been re-wired to freak out at the sight of human bodies touching one another. It was a realization that there are well-worn pathways of fear and uncertainty in my mind that were not there a year ago.

I know I am not alone in this. We have learned and adapted to an entirely new way of living in society because of the extreme demands that COVID has placed on us, and we should not minimize the difficulty that it will take for us to move from relating primarily over Zoom to meeting in person again. It may be scary for some of us. We may have to get over some newfound social anxiety.

Still, we cannot accept doing everything online as the new status quo. We human beings cannot flourish while we self-isolate, hide our faces from one another, and choose with whom we will and will not interact. These are temporary measures, and we must treat them as temporary and conditional. 

St. Damian of Molokai

A closing vignette 

When one of her sisters commented that she wouldn’t touch a leper for a million dollars, Mother Teresa famously responded with a smile, “I wouldn’t either. But I would touch him for the love of Christ.” It’s a word for our times.

The Teresas and the Damians and the Pier Giorgios of the world show us by drawing near to the untouchable that the love of Jesus, His Church, and His people is the only thing potent enough to free us from fear and embolden us to love even at great cost.  Let us beg for new grace in this season of Lent to move beyond fear and live like saints in these challenging times.

Sarah Carter lives in St. Paul with her husband, Will, and her son, Elijah. She and her family attend the Church of St. Mark and are members of the St. Mark Young Adult community. Sarah graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 2014, spent two years serving as a campus missionary for Saint Paul’s Outreach in Columbus, Ohio, and returned to St. Paul in 2016 to begin study for her master’s in theology at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, which she completed in 2019. Now she teaches moral theology and Scripture at Hill-Murray School.

This article was written by Fr. Dan Griffith, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in NE Minneapolis and the Wenger Family Faculty Fellow at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. This post was originally published on February 3rd, 2019. MSPCatholic is republishing with permission.

Five years ago I began my work as Delegate for Safe Environment in an Archdiocese rocked by scandal and crisis. Soon after I began, it became apparent that a qualified layperson was better suited to the work of restoring trust. Today, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is one of the safest dioceses in the United States. This journey to greater light and health has not been easy. Along the way, our Archdiocese was criminally charged for the failure to protect children, filed for bankruptcy, and witnessed the investigation and resignation of an archbishop and an auxiliary bishop.

In a 2014 memo to an auxiliary bishop, I wrote that “our bishops must be held accountable for their decisions, their behavior, and their performance. Our Catholic faithful deserve better and will demand better in the coming years.” This time is now at hand. For many, including me, the last five years have felt like a prolonged Good Friday. No doubt, this pain and anguish have been more acutely felt by victim-survivors of clergy abuse. The Church in the United States is suffering and looking for rays of light and hope.
 Recently, the prospect of hope and indeed a glimpse of Easter has been on the horizon in the form of restorative justice and healing.

Earlier this week I was provided an important lesson regarding the breadth and potential of restorative justice and restorative practices to bring about good. I concluded a law school course on Catholic social teaching by presenting restorative justice as a means to confront racism and racial injustice. Used here, restorative justice invites people into dialogue with victims of racial injustice as a way of better understanding the harm caused. After my class, the parish I pastor in Minneapolis hosted Mass for the victims of clergy abuse followed by a forum for restorative justice and healing. It was a powerful evening where people told their stories about how the clergy abuse crisis has impacted them and how we might move forward along a path of restoration and healing.

As the Catholic bishops conclude their meeting in Baltimore and as the Catholic Church in the United States continues to reel in the wake of a debilitating crisis, restorative justice, rooted in the restorative work of God and the risen Christ, offers a constructive path forward for the good of the Church. The opportunity for bishops to listen to the powerful testimony of victim-survivors earlier this week is essentially a restorative practice. I first learned of restorative justice two years ago when I met Janine Geske — a former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice. Justice Geske has traveled the globe, including Ireland and the Gregorian University in Rome, conducting restorative justice training sessions and bringing healing and restoration to a wounded Church. Janine has generously offered her gifts and experience to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis by leading restorative justice forums and healing circles. Her work has borne much fruit.

Admittedly, when I first heard of healing circles I was skeptical. As a trained lawyer, healing circles struck me as fuzzy, ethereal, and a bit new age. Lawyers are concrete thinkers and problem solvers. However, I quickly learned that restorative justice and healing circles do indeed work. Having experienced my third healing circle in the past six months, I can attest to their powerful truth. Restorative justice and healing circles are rooted in the practice of indigenous peoples who sought to solve problems by bringing people together in constructive dialogue. Today, restorative justice and restorative practices are successfully promoted and taught throughout the world. Restorative justice seeks to address harm and promote accountability by bringing folks together in dialogue who have been affected by crime or misconduct.

As the bishops of the United States depart from Baltimore and prepare for the important upcoming meeting in Rome, I would note three prophetic voices from this week: Archbishops Pierre and Etienne, and Christina Lamas. Their voices were in furtherance of reform and mission. I teach my law students that

Catholic teaching is teleological — it is goal oriented. The primary mission of the Church is to continue the saving work of Jesus Christ and to help build a more just and humane social order. Sadly, the mission of the Church to credibly proclaim the Gospel of Christ remains inhibited by the self-inflicted wounds caused by Church leaders.

The path back to credibility and fruitful mission is in embracing spiritual fatherhood on the part of bishops and priests. Both Archbishop Pierre, the Apostolic Nuncio, and Christina Lamas noted the importance of spiritual fatherhood as a means to serve the People of God and the mission of the Church. Their counsel and exhortation were mission-centered and goal oriented. Lamas boldly articulated seven ways that bishops could more faithfully serve the laity, including committing to transparency, accountability and no more secrets. Archbishop Pierre noted the importance of encounter and listening as a manifestation of humble service. Archbishop Etienne of Anchorage called for a study of the root causes of the present crisis and criticized a clear corruption and blind spot that puts the reputation of the Church and the opinion of lawyers above the welfare of victim-survivors. These prophetic voices should be heeded for the good of the Church.

In a November 4th letter to Catholics of Newark, Cardinal Tobin said the following: “only intentional acts of restorative justice can help us reform and renew our deeply wounded Church.” What do intentional acts of restorative justice look like? I have been heartened by the commitment to restorative justice and spiritual fatherhood by Archbishop Hebda and Bishop Cozzens in our Archdiocese. These bishops have not succumbed to the insularity borne of a clericalist culture which afflicts some bishops and those who work with them. Rather, they have chosen to walk humbly with those whom they serve. This is what restorative justice looks like: humility, encounter, and listening.

In furtherance of intentional acts of restorative justice and the healing of a Church in crisis, I would suggest the following for the bishops of the United States as they await the February meeting in Rome: commission now, a thorough and robust study of the root causes of the present crisis; hold multiple listening sessions in their respective dioceses with laity and clergy; make public the names of all credibly accused clergy; meet with victim-survivors of clergy abuse; and make time for restorative justice and healing circles at their January retreat in Chicago. Restorative justice provides a path forward for the reform, healing, and good of the Catholic Church.

Rev. Daniel Griffith

 was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 2002. He serves as Pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in Minneapolis and as the Wenger Family Faculty Fellow at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

• If the end of the weekend has you wishing for just one more day, read on to hear how you can reclaim Sunday and be refreshed for the rest of the week. Dr. Michael Naughton, Professor and Director of the Center for Catholic Studies, and his wife, Teresa, joined me to talk about the importance of leisure and resting on the Sabbath. 

  Susanna Parent: What is the thesis of your book Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World?

  Dr. Michael Naughton : If we’re going to get work right, then we have to get leisure right. The nature of labor and leisure relates to an age-old distinction in the Church related to contemplative and active life. If we go back to the book of Genesis we see that God commands us to both work and rest. It’s in our DNA. The challenge is that we live in a culture that elevates work, achievements, and accomplishments and it dismisses the importance of rest, understood in its authentic manner. The thesis is that these two go together in an ordered relationship.

    SP: You write about how “leisure or rest does not merely mean amusement or time off” but as Josef Pieper explained it (author of Leisure: The Basis of Culture ) , “leisure is rather to be found in the soul that receives the reality of the world.” What does it mean to receive this reality? 

  MN: Pieper speaks about leisure as an attitude of the mind and condition of the soul to receive the reality of the world. It’s not about what I accomplish, what I do, or my agenda. Rather it is a certain kind of abandonment. It is laying myself present to what the Lord wants of me. In doing so, my mind and heart are opened up to receive the word. This is why Lectio Divina is so important. You open yourself to the silence, you receive it, and then you move to God’s word and let His word speak to you. When we go to Mass we receive the word, we receive the sacraments, and we receive God’s grace.   SP: It can be easy to confuse amusement for leisure. Why is it important to make a distinction between the two?  
  MN: The word amuse comes from the Greek word Muses. Muses were the goddesses of the liberal arts, they were meant to refresh you and help you see a larger horizon of the world. When you put the word “a” in front of something, you negate it. If I am a theist, I believe in God. If I am an atheist, I don’t believe in God. One of the definitions for amusement is “to stare stupidly at something.” The problem with amusement is that there is a passivity to it. We are distracting ourselves  from ourselves. Billy Joel has a great line in The Piano Man , “He knows that it’s me they’ve been comin’ to see to forget about life for a while.” Our amusements often distract from deeper questions of our reality. They are not inherently evil or bad, but the problem is that most of us spend way too much time on them and then we claim that we “don’t have time” for authentic leisure.

  Screens are probably the most notorious reality of that. With COVID, we have seen a jump in time spent on video games, screen time in general, pornography sites, etc. – all things that are actually soul-destroying forms of leisure and we call them “amusements.”

  SP: In your book, you talk about how balance is determining how to tip the scale while integration allows for complementary. People often talk about the struggle to ”find balance” in their lives. What advice do you have to help people become more integrated?

MN: We often try to use balance to solve all our problems, and it can’t solve everything. One of the problems is that there’s a dividedness in us in terms of our deepest convictions and what our actions are. The Latin word for integration comes from integritas and it means to make one whole. What integration is attempting to do is to integrate this contemplative active life in a way that contemplative life  informs , animates , and purifies our active life. Balance won’t achieve that, it perpetuates the divided life. The modern world thinks that everything is in my control and we can control things with balance. But that is not the solution. The solution is found in a deep sense of receptivity that gives us the resources of God’s grace to inform the kinds of actions or work that I am doing. 
  SP: Mark 2:27 reads “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.” How is the commandment to both rest and celebrate essential to our lives?
Teresa Naughton: It is written into creation itself, this idea of rhythm, patterns of creation, and the need to re-calibrate. We have to lay things down, we have to let go, and we have to trust that God’s providence will take care. Sunday is another way of doing that. We anchor our week, we let go, give things back to God, anchor again, and trust in God’s providence that He will take care of things.

We have bodily rhythms. We need rest. Brenda Jank wrote a wonderful program called ‘ Run Hard. Rest Well.’ She talks about how sleep and rest are not design flaws in creation. Sometimes we think “I’ll sleep when I get to Heaven.” But if you look biblically, dreams speak to us. We hear God when we give God the time when we lay down and examine our conscience. This whole idea of rest is written right into creation and the weekly sabbath is another part of that. There is also the incredible need for worship. To go do something outside of yourself. During the week we disintegrate a little bit because we are running frazzled and it’s time to reorient again and remember who we are in God’s creation. That it’s not our created world but His.

SP: You say that silence, celebration, and charity are the essential habits of the Lord’s Day. How does your family live these habits out?

TN: We start the day with prayer and quiet.

MN: For us, the question is how do you enter into Sunday? We don’t always do it right, but it’s entering into silence. Taking that time of deep receptivity and just sitting with the Lord. Just saying His name and saying the Jesus prayer. We also tend to listen to Bishop Barron’s homily because it is often very good and leads to great conversation.

TN: We have a family breakfast or pastries and try to go to Mass together. There is usually a time for a walk or a bike ride during the day and now that our kids are no longer living with us we have an Adoration time on Sundays. If we are going to entertain, Sunday is often the first day we ask about. Sunday is the day that we give over to relationships. 

MN: What Sunday does is it gives us space and time for relationships because for us, the week is filled with so many tasks. When we had just graduated school and bought our fixer-upper house, we were working seven days a week and renovating our house, but what happened was that our relationships started to suffer. I love how Teresa describes reclaiming Sunday and recalibrating. We’ve had some of our best conversations on Sunday walks, and sometimes it’s just silence and being together.

SP: How did this reclaiming of Sunday incorporate your whole family and what was your children’s response?

TN: When the kids were in high school and we were trying to take this more seriously, we couldn’t demand it of the rest of the family. What we did do was ask them to clear their schedules. We weren’t going to prescribe what to do with their time other than our family meal and Mass, but we asked them not to do their homework till 3 o’clock. We knew they had things to do, but this time set aside was really helpful for them. They began to dread 3 o’clock because then they knew they had to go back to work. They realized how precious this time was and would sit with us on the front porch and chat, not running off to go do anything. It relieved them of guilt that they should be doing something else. I think that’s something we don’t do enough of for ourselves. 

MN: Sunday was a day for Church and family. We were not going off to the mall or to our friends, and sometimes at three, they were off, and that’s where you have to make those adjustments. You want to create limits and expectations, yet you don’t want to make it so overburdened that resentment builds.

SP: I’ve got to ask about sports, did Sunday include any practice or games on television?

MN: At one point our daughter was on a traveling softball team. I like softball and I enjoyed watching my daughter play, but all day Saturday tournaments can get exhausting.

TN: When it came to Sunday practices, it just took a little bit of pushback to one of the coaches and we said, ‘our daughter can’t make that practice, is there another time that she can come? We reserve Sunday for Mass and Church.’ Without us even asking, the coach wholeheartedly agreed and he changed the entire practice time. 

MN: One of the things we used to do with the kids was play sports together. We all got together with a couple of other families and played football. Watching football is not wrong, and sometimes we did that as well, but the question is how much time do you spend watching it and how habitual is it. 

SP: Where can people find out more about how to transform their Sundays and honor the Sabbath?

MN: Teresa, along with many others, helped develop a website called sundayreclaimed.org

TN: It is really nice to give some inspiration to new families who are wondering “how do you do this? What does it look like?” It is meant to be a tool for faith formators to have the discussion about taking Sunday more seriously. This site provides information for people to help get them started. 

I know that my family will be visiting sundayreclaimed.org to learn how we can better reclaim and recalibrate our own Sundays. If you enjoyed this interview, go check out Naughton’s book, Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World!
 

Susanna Parent is a freelance writer who begins her mornings brewing French press coffee in the home she shares with her husband and daughter in the Twin Cities. When the sun sets, you’ll find her with friends enjoying a glass of red wine, preferably outside underneath twinkly lights or brainstorming their family’s next new adventure. Her published work can be found at fiatandalily.blogpost.com

• On Cohabitation Before Marriage: an Open Letter to a Catholic Couple Read More
• Read More
• Three Types of Catholics Who Should Come to the Synod Read More
• 4+ Christian Albums to Change Up Your Playlists Read More
• Read More
• Read More
• Read More
• Boredom: The Poisoning of Man (Part 2) Read More
• Deep Down Things: A New Locally-Produced Podcast Read More
• Read More
• Local Daily Masses & Confessions: June 21-25 Read More
• Boredom: The Poisoning of Man (Part 1) Read More
• From Advent to Pentecost: the Meaning of World History Read More
• Read More
• A Day (or Week) in the Life of a Seminarian Read More
• Protect Your Headspace: A Theology Cocktail Recipe Read More
• Read More
• Don’t Give Up on Politics Read More
• Read More
• Read More

See More

• Location: Our Lady of Grace Come and adore the Lord with us in the adoration chapel at Our Lady of Grace in Edina. We will be there starting at 6:30 pm but still come even if for 5 minutes. At 7:30 pm we will meet outside of the chapel and we will go to a restaurant.