A Season for Everything
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October 26, 2026As October draws to a close and winter approaches, we have been reflecting on the changing seasons, not only in the weather but also in the life of St. Michael Parish. We began with the familiar words of Ecclesiastes: “There is an appointed time for everything.” A time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to tear down and a time to build.
Nearly thirty years ago, the Diocese of Portland began a pastoral planning process called Telling Anew the Story of Jesus. At the time, the principal concern was the anticipated shortage of priests. Many were approaching retirement, and there were not enough younger priests to replace them. How could the Church ensure that Catholics throughout Maine would continue to have access to the sacraments?
One response was to begin clustering parishes, allowing fewer priests to serve multiple church communities. Over time, this process contributed to the formation of larger parishes, including St. Michael Parish, which brought six church communities together. That was the challenge facing the Church thirty years ago.
Today, we find ourselves in a different season, facing a different set of challenges. Thirty years ago, we worried about having enough priests. Yet, through God’s providence, priests from other countries have generously come to serve the Church in Maine. Just as we could not have anticipated their arrival, I suspect few anticipated how much the Catholic population would change. As I mentioned last week, approximately 1,200 to 1,300 people now attend Mass across our six churches each weekend.
Our churches were built when the mills along the Kennebec employed generations of Catholic immigrants and our towns were filled with Catholic families. They built churches, schools, and institutions to serve their growing communities. Today, the mills are largely gone. Many families have moved away, and patterns of religious practice have changed. But the buildings remain.
The challenge today is not simply financial. With our congregation spread across six churches, it becomes increasingly difficult to find enough volunteers for liturgical ministries, choirs, faith formation, and parish activities. Staffing presents similar challenges. Maintaining so many facilities and programs requires considerable personnel, time, and resources, stretching our parish community increasingly thin.
We have many generous people, but we are asking a relatively small community to sustain a great deal. Perhaps the challenge of this season is not simply to do more with less, but to reconsider how we organize our parish so that we can devote more of our energy and resources to what matters most.
Thirty years ago, clustering was a reasonable response to the circumstances facing the Church. Perhaps we are now entering a season in which some form of consolidation deserves serious consideration. This is not about abandoning our mission, but finding ways to carry it out more effectively. When we try to maintain everything, we risk spreading ourselves so thin that we struggle to accomplish what matters most. We need to consider where our efforts and resources can bear the greatest fruit.
That is why I have asked a group of parishioners to form a task force to assess our properties and help develop a long-term plan. We are still in the early stages of gathering information, and no decisions have been made. My hope is that, in the months ahead, we can share what we have learned and invite the wider parish community to help discern the best path forward. I approach this work with genuine hope. I believe that, by making thoughtful decisions, we can build a stronger, more active parish, where people have greater opportunities to worship together, form friendships, raise their children in the faith, and serve their neighbors.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us of the two greatest commandments: to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. These commandments provide a clear measure for every decision we face. Our buildings, programs, finances, and parish structures are important, but their purpose is to help us live these commandments more faithfully.
Ecclesiastes reminds us that we cannot see God’s work from beginning to end. Sometimes we see only what is passing away, without yet recognizing what God is preparing. The disciples experienced this on Good Friday. They saw the Cross but could not yet imagine the Resurrection. Only afterward did they begin to understand what God had accomplished.
Our circumstances are certainly different, but our hope rests in the same Lord. We cannot recreate the Catholic communities of fifty or a hundred years ago. Nor should we measure our future entirely against our past. We can be grateful for what previous generations built while asking what God is calling us to build today. There is a season for everything. Our task is to recognize the season we have been given, respond to it faithfully, and trust that the God who has accompanied us through every season will continue to provide.