Fortunately, I moved to another Diocese where my Pastor is incomparable. He is charasmatic (in the best sense of the word) and he regularly packs the church. Many who come to Mass come solely to hear him preach. I have never heard anybody even come close to displaying such a facile and incredibly deep knowledge of Scripture.
He never prepares a sermon. "I just listen to the readings and then the Holy Spirit speaks through me." He will preach for 15-20 minutes and there will not be a single ah or um. There will be incredible spiritual insights given and he regularly moves us to tears and laughter and, often, spontaneous applause erupts when he finishes.
While I am not a fan of the music there (I am slowly working on that) I do desire that as a congregation we sing more than we now do.
Our Parish is HUGE. We prolly have 2000 (More? I 'm bad at estimating) at Mass with many blacks, hispanics, vietnamese etc and Fr, has converted literally hundreds including a Muslim family of nine and four Jewish families.
Boy do I ever identify with your beautiful description of the DL of the Maronites. I have been to several and I fell in love with their Liturgy and the Lebanese community. They truly knew the Liturgy and I had no sense the Liturgy was for them a routinized process. Far from it...
Anyways, thanks for the beautiful post and defense.
I came from a medium sized town that had a large number of Catholics. Our church was regularly packed. However, once the kids left high school, they left the town and the Faith. Virtually none of my old friends go to Mass. The same goes for other members of my family. Out of six kids, me and my sister are the only ones still active Catholics.
The Faith for many of us, as you so well noted, was legalistic and formulaic. There was no personal relationship with Jesus. We were never taught it. It was never spoken about. We were taught to be good Catholics, not Disciples of Jesus. We did memorize large parts of the Bible. We memorized our Catchisms etc. But, becoming a Disciple of Jesus? Didn't happen.
All I know is that in my current Parish the Faith is alive and the nature of the congregations' personal relationship with Jesus is expressed in innumerable ministries. These folks, a multi-racial, multi-ethnic group, really do love each other and work together to assist the poor in our area and all, in one way or the other, support our Pstor's Mission to Honduras. It is interesting to note that the many protestant converts bring with them a deep personal relationship with Jesus. They make a great contribution to the Body of Christ.