Over the last month and a half, I have been speaking on the theme of our Youth being connected to their parishes. I began with what the parish needs to do, and then I turned to what parents can do to assist their children to form healthy connections to their parish. I spoke on freedom, obedience, and love as important ingredients that need to be sown in the soil of a child’s life to foster this healthy connection. If there is one word that ties all of this together and links a child connecting with the parish and parish connecting with the child, I think it would be the word “synergy.” Synergy is a Greek word that literally means, “to work together.”

When we apply this word to church life, we don’t mean that we cooperate with God as if we are equals. Synergy happens when the Lord, out of love, freely reveals Himself to us, and we agree to embrace that revelation and follow it. As many of us know, God the Father reveals Himself to us through His Word Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. This Trinitarian life is fully revealed in Christ’s Body the Church “the fullness of Him who fills all in all”(1 Ephesians 1:23). Our Lord’s healing power is given to us in the sacramental life of the Church. The experience of our Lord in our lives is realized in our prayer and in the ascetical life we live out in the Church. The experience of our Lord in our lives is realized when we strive by Grace to love Him with our entire mind, heart, soul, and body, with everything that we have. The experience of our Lord in our lives is realized when we love our fellow human beings as Christ has loved us. This can only happen when we understand and live out this idea of synergy. Let us strive then to participate more in our parish life and experience a closer connection. Let us learn to do so by embracing this synergy.

The blessing of the Lord be upon you,

The unworthy +Paul