Change is one of the rubrics of life.  You and I have been working with change longer than we can remember.

Certainly, outside the personal dimension, this side of the city of Chicago and south suburbs has been changing since the 1940s, right after the War, with military personnel coming home and needing housing and adjustment to living again at home.  Hospitals, housing construction, and new neighborhoods were needed for the baby-boomers.  Added to this dynamic, folks were coming north from the south looking for jobs in the urban industrial centers.  Peacetime proffered a new prosperity.  New churches were built to accommodate the rush on the suburbs by people taking in the promise of a post-war economy and the confidence that registered with citizens.  With African Americans sharing these same ideals, we have witnessed demographic shifting away from the cities launching at the same time the eventual demise of the inner city.

When we were in college, our sociology teachers kept hammering the message that, not too long in the future, suburban dwellers would be returning to the city once they got tired of cul-de-sacs and shopping malls looking all alike, interminable time factors and grid-locked traffic making the drive into town for work a test of nerves.  We thought the teachers were idealistic. But, what they predicted has come true in many cities. We are seeing certain cities redevelop their downtown areas, where young adults and retirees have been returning such that we now need an infusion of grocery stores downtown.  Private investment has locked out others on the lower strata of society, leaving other parts of the city uninteresting and undeveloped. Unfortunately, economic ability in our country carries with it racial disparity.  People make decisions about their lives based on these trends.  The Church which has been in the city for generations witnesses people shifting, based on the desire to improve their lives, based on their decision to live next to or not live next to certain people.

These trends affect the Church and its ministries.  We are often told that as institutions, financial and otherwise, leave the city, the Church is conspicuous for remaining amongst the working class, the poor and disenfranchised.  That is a nice compliment.  Nonetheless, amidst all these trends the Church is compelled to apply its structures and resources the best way possible to serve the people of our city, the suburbs, and outer areas and try to keep up with needs as they surface.  This is an exhaustive effort of a sort because the trends are not always predictable or easily analyzed.  Recessions and inflations descend upon the scene to upset the apple-cart as-it-were, causing anxiety for the middle-class and thrusting the poor and underclass deeper in patterns of misery.   The Church, a not-for-profit like other not-for-profits, here and there, is left holding the empty bag and ends up scrambling to keep afloat spreading the gospel, in ways imperfectly no doubt, while we implement that gospel in our lives, often so imperfectly.  We so want to do it better.

The Church wants to keep afloat knowing its resources stem largely from people in the pews and not any outside entity.  The people in the pews are hard- working middle class, working class and poor.  It redounds to a lot of sharing of what we have and struggle to have. 

Given all the change that’s going on around us, in our city, our neighborhoods, our parishes, how do we sense a summons to be Church in this mixed situation?  How do we broaden our vision to discern how what we do can be done better?  We must be Church at all times, amidst poverty or prosperity, in times of peace or persecution, with large numbers or small numbers.  We are asked to readjust the parish structures of the Church for these times and moving forward realizing that the present does not echo a lot of the past in terms of wealth, population numbers, the popular culture’s own appreciation for the Church and its role in society.

Change is always a challenge, no doubt, but we have been doing change unwittingly for as long as we can remember.  We have the opportunity, if not the grace, to rally as a Catholic family and come closer together, leaving behind the parochial arrangements we have been used to in order to create other arrangements that enlarge the Catholic family a wee-bit in areas while increasing new and exciting possibilities to carry on the ministries we dream about to be so important for the life and vitality of our communities and having thereby the mutual support and resources with which to do so.  It is hard predicting what will happen to the city and outlying areas where we live, what will be the makeup of these communities, what will be the economics, who will be the next President of the country, how we will survive not only with secured employment and despite taxes, aging structures, death and dying of family members and friends.  Somehow, we must continue wandering the desert of life trusting the Lord is with us speaking to us His Word, for we want to hear Him as Abraham and Sarah were asked to hear His summons, and pick up and move to another place for His purpose and His purpose alone.