Reflections on Family by Mike Nuzzo

Good morning everyone, my name is Mike Nuzzo.  My wife, Anna, and I have been members of St Anne since 2005.   I have been asked to share some of my experiences with you, and reflect on our current efforts towards the Flowers of the Field campaign, which I am blessed to serve as part of the committee.

Over the past several years, I have grown significantly in my faith, in large part due to this parish.   This has helped my life at home and at work, giving me guidance and inspiration to do the right thing, and find peace when times are difficult. At home I have had more patience with my two boys, and at work I am able to trust in God’s will and not constantly worry about the future.  This in turn makes me more pleasant to be around at home.  It is the little moments that have made this change, interactions with different members and ministries.

I think the best summary of this journey is when we went to the movies with several families from our parish.  When one of the younger children was told about it, she asked “will our whole family be there?”  Her mom said yes, mommy, daddy and all of us are going, and she said, “No, I mean our WHOLE family” …meaning all of the families that were coming.  I thought about this a lot afterwards, and it came to me that this is the same thing I have experienced:  St. Anne is my family, and this parish is our home.

So with that thought, I would like to say “Welcome Home”.

I was reflecting on the goals of this campaign, and as a business owner, I tend to start looking at things with a business perspective.  But then it hit me, these aren’t business type goals:  Human Concerns, Outreach, Music Ministry, etc.  These are the goals of a Family!  Yes, we have to view them with a financial perspective, but isn’t that true of any family planning?

Take music for example.  Most of you have probably decorated for the season.  When I was a boy, one of my fondest memories was listening to “The Little Drummer Boy” while decorating the tree.  I still remember walking around the living room banging on my imaginary drum.  I’m sure all of you have a similar memory, or there is a special song that really brings the Holy Spirit into your heart, especially this time of year.

The same is true for Human Concerns and Outreach: reaching out to the needs of our parish and the community, inviting people to our church, and strengthening the relationships within our parish.  Is this really much different than what we do with our own families every day?

Or how about the gathering area remodeling?  At home, I like to think of myself as a fairly handy person, and regularly dive into different home improvement projects.  One year, I installed Pergo flooring in our kitchen.  After a hard weekend of work, the floor was done, but I didn’t have the energy to finish the trim.  I thought the floor looked good, and gave myself a nice pat on the back, saying I would finish the trim…”tomorrow”.  Well, it was quite a while before I finished that trim, and every day I got more used to the floor without it.  Finally I got it done, after some “friendly urging” from Anna. I was shocked at how much better it looked now!

Friends and neighbors probably weren’t as impressed with my flooring project as I was, until the trim was done.  We have a similar “unfinished project” at our home here.  While many of us are used to the concrete block and exposed steel, it is very noticeable to visitors and newcomers.  I think we will all be surprised at how much impact a finished gathering area will have.

Now we get to the part everyone loves to talk about, our mortgage… Every January my family sits down and puts together a budget for the coming year, and reviews what we did the year before.  A key focus of this is looking at additional needs of the family, and sacrifices we need to make.  We recently refinanced our home mortgage to take advantage of a lower rate.  In the near future, our St Anne Family would like to refinance our mortgage to more favorable terms, but to do this we have to reduce our debt ratio for the banks.  This is the primary goal of our campaign, and is a major step towards making room in our monthly budget for the future needs of this family.

St Anne Church is where your family in Christ gathers. As you can see, our family has some things to do, and we need everyone to pitch in.  At the presentation of this campaign to the leadership of the parish, there was a strong positive response that we are running this campaign In House, and I think you will agree that this is due to the sense of Family this parish has.

So again I say to you “Welcome Home.'”  You will soon see a garden growing in our gathering area, with a flower representing each $1,000 pledged.  We ask your help in planting our garden.

Thank you, and have a Merry Christmas!

 

David Bowie’s song “Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes” is an interesting take on life. The stuttering approach to the word changes gives a musical impression of how we avoid change. The word is almost forced out, because we don’t like change. “Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes” is a song that examines how we like to live in a comfort zone and how facing change can be profoundly disturbing and profoundly exhilarating. We are facing some changes in how we celebrate Mass and many people are profoundly disturbed, but it is also a chance to become revitalized.

Our comfort zone has lasted 40 years or so (most or all of lives). Prayers and responses we learned while going through our Catholic formation have become comfortable, easy, safe. “And also with you” has become a formula that is as automatic as saying “how are you?” when beginning a conversation. And now we are expected to jar loose that automatic response and replace it with “and with your spirit.”

Why? There are a couple of reasons. After Vatican II, American Catholics were pressed to translate the Mass into the vernacular. It happened in good will and it happened quickly. This translation served us for forty years. Generations of American Catholics have grown up with this translation, burned into our subconscious by 40 years of repetition. But it could have been done better. Now with scholarship and prayer, we have the new edition of the Roman Missal. It is a more exact translation of the words we use at prayer when we gather for the Mass. (Actually it is comprised of small changes, but sometimes the small changes can get under your skin more than even wholesale changes.)

Thus the change, and thus the challenge. When we face changes in our external lives – family, health, jobs, friendships and so forth – we either go with the flow or face breakdown or collapse. The comfort zone of our internal lives – our spiritual lives – is now under a seeming assault by the changes in how we celebrate Mass.

We need to rise to this challenge, this change. There is a Latin maxim that addresses the centrality of prayer in the life, identity and mission of the Catholic Church –”Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.” The phrase in Latin literally means the law of prayer (“the way we worship”) is the law of belief (“what we believe”). It is sometimes expanded to “lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi” – how we worship reflects what we believe and determines how we will live.

How we pray is how we believe. How we celebrate Mass, our highest form of prayer, expresses how we believe. And how we pray is how we live. In the words we proclaim together, the music, the vestments, the environment, in participating in the Mass, we offer to God the best we can because He gives us His best. We have been given an opportunity to “shake up” our spiritual lives, an opportunity to invigorate our relationship to God and our lives.

It may seem a little awkward at first. But it won’t be long before these changes will be comfortable and familiar for everyone. But for now, facing the “ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes” can be rejected, or we can allow it to work its way in our lives.

(Note: In the following weeks I will outline some of the changes in how we pray at St. Anne’s, and I hope you take the opportunity to respond in questions and comments.)