Christocentric Parish Life
By Fr. Jonathan Wilson
Fr. Jonathan Wilson, a priest of the Diocese of Columbus, Ohio, is the pastor of Saint Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Westerville, Ohio. This Easter his parish brought 67 individuals into full communion with the Catholic Church, including 37 baptisms. He was interviewed by Jayd Henricks via email.
WWNN: 67 people entering into full communion with the Church at Easter this year for your parish. That is extraordinary. What do you attribute this to?
Fr. Wilson: When I heard from our RCIA director that we were going to have a very large class, I was very surprised. This past fall the program quickly outgrew the room that we normally host RCIA in and we had to relocate it to our gym. The rise in numbers comes as a surprise to me. It is the surprise of grace. "The wind blows where it wills..." (John 3:8). With that said, there are some factors that certainly contributed. We have a wonderful Director of Parish Ministry, Mr. Andrew Burson, who assembled a very dedicated RCIA team and group of sponsors. A few years ago we moved RCIA from a Tuesday evening to a Sunday morning. We have started using "Credo," a program created by the Eastern Province Dominicans that offers clear content on our Catholic faith. I speculate that we are seeing some good coming out of COVID as some people began to ask fundamental questions and were shaken up by the pandemic. I am encouraged by the fairly large number of young adults who are entering the Church. They are seeking Truth and they know they have been lied to by the culture. I am also very inspired by those who had a strong faith background in a Protestant church and were open to the Lord leading them into the full communion of the Catholic Church. Some of our converts have entered the Church at a great personal cost. The RCIA program is starting to gain some momentum and so we see in some cases that recent converts have shared the gift of the Catholic Church with others and they have brought new converts to the Church. In the parish, we have been trying to spiritually feed the people. I am curious if some of our efforts and prayers for spiritual renewal have resulted in this. During the pandemic, in an empty Church, and feeling overwhelmed that we had closed our church for Easter Sunday, I enthroned the parish to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2020. On August 22 of that year, the feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I consecrated the parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The parish belongs to Our Lord and Our Lady, the queen mother. From my perspective, all the graces we see are flowing from Him as the King of our parish and Mary as our Queen.
WWNN: Why do you think your parish is growing when so many others are struggling?
Fr. Wilson: Our parish, and I imagine many are like this, is a very dynamic environment. We see people coming into the Church, thank God, and we know people are leaving, or drifting away. We have a great sense of urgency as we know that this may be the last generation of cultural Catholicism and we have an opportunity to evangelize and bring more people to intentional Catholicism. We are also a large parish, with 4,200 registered families. We have definitely seen an increase in the size of our RCIA program over the past few years. Our parish patron is St. Paul the Apostle. Our parish motto is: "Inspired by St. Paul, Centered on Christ, Called to Holiness." We strive to be inspired by St. Paul who was the greatest evangelizer who ever lived. We have a long road to go, but I am encouraged by the response we are seeing by some of our evangelizing efforts in the parish.
WWNN: Many of us look at the Church within the context of what is happening in Rome, and yet I suspect many of the people entering the Church now are not aware of what the Vatican is or is not doing. Is that your sense? What might this tell us about the faith?
Fr. Wilson: I can honestly say that from a pastoral perspective what is, or is not, happening in Rome has little immediate impact on the parish level. This has been my experience throughout the pontificates of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now Francis. I know there are some people who follow the events in Rome closely. With that said, however, those events have little immediate influence. We joyfully proclaim the Catholic faith, including the hard truths of the faith. We are grateful for the gift of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and we have a sense that the Catholic faith has a foundation that transcends this or any particular moment. I get the sense that our people, and our new converts, have a sense of that. We are growing in our liturgical expression with a more traditional expression of the Novus Ordo. With that incremental growth I believe we are also able to communicate something of the solidity, permanence, beauty, and transcendence of the Catholic faith.
WWNN: You once said that your own faith growing up was very Rome-centric, but now it is Jerusalem-centric. What do you mean by that?
Fr. Wilson: I have been, and continue to be, on a faith journey within the great gift of our Catholic faith. The early years of my faith development led me to a strong emphasis on the Church, Rome, and the person of the Holy Father. I am a “JPII” priest. He was one of the greatest influences in my vocation to the priesthood and my overall sense of the Catholic faith. I was deeply blessed to study one year in Rome, my first year of theology, in 1997-1998, when he was the Holy Father. As a priest, I have had the opportunity to make two pilgrimages to Israel. My experience both times at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem left me thinking “this is the real center of Christianity.” I love the line from Pope Benedict XVI in his letter Deus Caritas Est when he writes, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or lofty idea but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (1). And while I, of course, retain a great love of the Catholic Church, of the papacy, and of Rome, I have developed in a greater appreciation for how the person of Jesus Christ is at the center of our faith. For that reason, Jerusalem, in my mind, uniquely expresses the truth that Christianity is based on the event and encounter with Jesus Christ. At the center of our parish motto is the phrase "centered on Christ." I believe we as a Church are most authentic when we speak about Christ and when Christ is truly at the center of our life. Jerusalem as the place of the death and resurrection of Christ is, and will always be, the spiritual center of Christianity. I believe this Christocentrism is most authentically Catholic and has strongly contributed to our increase in converts. I believe potential converts are looking for the authentic proclamation and witness of our faith in Jesus Christ as the Eternal Son of God, true God and true Man.
WWNN: Are you hopeful about the future of parish life?
Fr. Wilson: I am incredibly hopeful about the future of parish life. The parish is an amazing space in which to conduct the mission of Christ that He has entrusted to the Church. The parish is dynamic and dramatic. It is the sacred space where grace encounters our free will and where culture is converted one person at a time. There are huge challenges in parish life today, and those challenges are great opportunities. In the United States, historically speaking, we have made the shift from an immigrant Church in a fairly hostile Protestant environment to a Church that has nearly completely assimilated into American culture. (With that said, we are also blessed with new and recent generations of immigrants who bring with them a strong immigrant faith. My parish is increasingly blessed with growing numbers of African, Indian, and Hispanic immigrants.) And now, we have to shift from an assimilated Church to a missionary Church marked by intentional discipleship of Christ. I believe our future, and the future of our country, will rest on whether or not we are successful. I am a big believer in the New Evangelization and I believe it needs to be carried out at the parish level.
WWNN: Any recommendations for your brother priests or engaged faithful about how to build up parish community life?
Fr. Wilson: I am in awe of my brother priests around the country who minister under difficult circumstances. I would love to encourage my brother priests to have great confidence in the evangelizing power of our Catholic faith, to give solid food to the faithful through a clear and unambiguous proclamation of the Gospel, to strive to have liturgies that reflect that wonder and awe of the Holy Eucharist, to prioritize outreach to young adults (many are hurting and hungry for more), and to not get discouraged. And, at the end of the day, to remember all that matters is that we strive to be faithful. It is God who gives the growth (cf. 1 Cor 3:6)
Jayd Henricks is the president of Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal. He served at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for eleven years and holds a STL in systematic theology from the Dominican House of Studies.