Diocesan ‘mission fields’ being defined

When Bishop Daniel Felton promulgated the pastoral letter “The Dawn from on High Shall Break Upon Us: Healing, hope, and joy in Jesus” last Christmas, one of its core concepts was what the bishop called “mission fields.” 

Those mission fields are where initiatives of evangelization, beginning with healing, are to be carried out, and identifying exactly what those mission fields would be was step one. 

While the term “mission field” is broad and has many meanings, the pastoral letter explained that for purposes of our work as a diocese, the term refers to “pastoral regions” where mission work is carried out at a local or regional level. 

These mission fields would usually be bigger than a parish’s boundaries but smaller than a deanery, and they don’t represent a reorganization of the structure of parishes or deaneries in the church but rather are more places of collaborative ministry, with parishes working together to reach out to shared communities. 

The work of identifying those is now nearing completion. One is a single parish, and some are a parish cluster, but many involving groupings of parishes. For instance, the parishes in the eastern part of Duluth have been identified by their pastors as a mission field. Sometimes they even cut across the boundaries of a parish cluster. 

Another mission field that has been identified is the parish cluster of St. Anthony in Ely and St. Pius X in Babbitt. Father Charles Friebohle, pastor of the cluster, said that having the cluster be the mission field made sense. “Ely is more out on its own little island, kind of,” he said, too far to be part of another mission field, although some collaboration is still possible with nearby mission fields involving communities like Virginia. 

He said their mission field is still in the early stages of beginning that work of healing. 

“I’ve only been here since July, so it’s hard to get a deep sense of where some of those core things are that people need to be healed,” Father Friebohle said. But he noted that there is an older population with many kids having moved away. 

Father Friebohle said he hopes additional discernment on how to move forward will begin in earnest during the Easter season. 

Another mission field that has been marked as an early leader is in the Hibbing deanery, where Blessed Sacrament in Hibbing, St. Cecilia in Nashwauk, St. Joseph in Chisholm, and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in Buhl have formed a mission field. 

Father Daniel Weiske, pastor of Blessed Sacrament, said that he, along with Father Paul Strommer, pastor of St. Joseph and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, and Father Joe Sobolik, pastor of St. Cecilia, already had a natural place to discuss things.

“Quite often this group will get together for prayer and supper, two, three, four times a month, just to sort of stay connected,” he said. 

It became clear as they discussed things that their communities were already naturally connected with networks of families and civic activities and common life. 

The three pastors told The Northern Cross that they informally discussed the grouping with the leadership groups of their parishes but that the grouping was very natural and clear and really a matter of just something to be confirmed. 

The discernment, Father Weiske said, was where it was wise to work together. 

“It’s clear in our own age that many times we’re stronger together, so we just want to be strategic and discern where the Lord’s asking us to collaborate so we can reach out better to our community,” he said. 

Their mission field has already started working on addressing the healing needed in its communities. Father Weiske had already been planning a retreat on healing and hope in the Holy Spirit last September at Blessed Sacrament, but that became a collaborative event, and has led to other events in February, March, and April. 

Father Strommer said the call from the pastoral letter to find those places in need of healing is not a totally new one. 

“It’s not rocket science, or this isn’t really like an entirely new way to be pastors,” he said. “… We don’t need to go mining for it. We, as pastors, like the Holy Father [says], we are already among the sheep, smelling like the sheep. We know the hurts. And this is just really helping all of us to be strategically working together.” 

Father Sobolik, who has parishes in two separate mission fields, said it’s also not a sort of one-and-done process of discernment but an ongoing one. 

“It’s going to be a prayerful discernment of the needs of our parishioners and how we can work with that and work together or collaborate,” he said. 

Father Weiske added that in addition to what they hear in their own prayer lives and in ordinary conversations, they had also been present for many Let’s Listen sessions and heard the results the bishop has presented and what the bishop has mentioned himself, such as the sense of grief felt across the diocese. 

“Throughout the entire diocese you see grief,” he said. “There’s so much grief to work through.” 

One of those places where healing is needed is the grief of having loved ones, such as children, who have left the Catholic faith, and some events have been directed at that. 

The three pastors said that the Pastoral Letter and the events being held are helping to keep the call for healing, hope, and joy on the minds of parishioners and helping them to find healing. In turn, they hope it will unlock gifts in those parishioners and bring a new zeal for mission to bring those things to their broader communities. 

“Maybe someone who would have never signed up last month will be just eager to sign up next March, because they have this new strength,” Father Weiske said. 

Focusing the idea of evangelization is also a help for people who are intimidated by the idea. 

“People are nervous, or they feel unqualified, or they feel afraid, or they feel bogged down,” Father Weiske said. “So how do we unlock that energy and that mercy that’s kind of bound up within us right now? And it’s those griefs that we have to process together and pray through into peace, and it’s those fears and wounds of rejection or thinking ahead to the feeling of rejection when you try to share the faith, and how do I deal with that? How can I be confident, rooted in God’s love, so I’m ready to face that, as Jesus and the Apostles were?”