Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish families enjoy a Mardi Gras celebration.
Ministry helps families get involved with each other, parish
Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish families enjoy a Mardi Gras celebration.
LINDENHURST — Story time with St. Nicholas, a living rosary, celebrating parents-to-be and grandparents, creating an Advent wreath together — these are just a few of the year-round activities and events the family life ministry at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church here hopes will bring families closer to each other as well as to the parish.
Family life ministry is “about connecting the individual family — the ‘domestic Church’ — and helping them find a home with their parish family,” explained Kathleen Logan, associate director of family ministry for the diocesan Office of Faith Formation.
“We’re trying to strengthen families’ relationships with Jesus through spiritual and fun-filled activities,” explained Debbie McDonough, the parish’s family life ministry coordinator. “Every program we have starts with a prayer and ends with a prayer and we encourage families to participate and we hope it makes them feel welcome. Our focus is to try to get people back to church, especially the younger families. They have the kids in religious education or in the parish school and they’re not practicing their faith, so we’re trying to encourage them with these activities,” where hopefully “they’ll develop friendships and then they come to church.”
McDonough reaches out to families from the beginning, inviting parents-to-be for a special blessing at Mass in the fall and parents of newly baptized infants in the winter. Afterward, she sends them a thank-you letter and includes a list of other parish groups and activities they might be interested in, such as the mom and tots group or the Christian mothers group.
And while many of the activities are geared toward younger families, the family life ministry tries to include everyone. “We acknowledge all the generations,” she said. They have a special blessing for grandparents during the year and on Mother’s Day “we either give the moms a prayer card, or respect life has a carnation sale, so I’ll buy carnations from them and then I give them out at the Mass.” For Father’s Day, “we give the fathers a tomato plant, which they all love.”
McDonough and her committee meet once a month, she said. “Every program we run, we critique afterward to see where we can improve or leave it as is if it worked.” She noted that she works closely with other parish ministries for her events, such as the music ministry for the Christmas Eve pageant and the baptismal preparation program. Religious education allows her to promote family life programs with flyers and by talking to parents, and when she needs volunteers, she can ask the Knights of Columbus, the Squires and Squirettes, the Boy Scouts, and the junior high students who need service hours for confirmation.
“Everyone working together makes a big difference,” she noted. “They’re all very generous of their time, money, and talent.” In addition, “the pastor, Father Trapani, has been great. He supports all my functions. You need the priests involved. It makes it easier.”
And every couple of months, she meets with the diocesan family ministry and family life ministry coordinators from other parishes around Long Island. “We share ideas. That definitely helps. There are great tools that we’re learning from each other. And if you have issues, we share it and figure out how to resolve it. It’s great. It’s a support group, which sometimes you do need.”
McDonough hopes that all the family life programs the parish offers are “a way of getting families involved with each other” and make individual families feel welcomed into the parish family. “I got invited in. That’s how you get involved. You have to invite.”
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