Ministries
Helping Hearts
Our Helping Hearts ministry seeks to reach out prayerfully and privately in friendship to Our Lady Help of Christians parishioners, welcoming new members of the parish, reaching out to new parents, offering support to families experiencing loss and illness and praying for their needs. If you or anyone you know could benefit from this ministry, please contact us through the Rectory or email us at helpinghearts19001@gmail.com.
LECTORS
Lectors have a critical role in the celebration of the Mass. Since the Lector proclaims not just any word, but the Word of God, it is essential that they develop the skills required to communicate God’s message competently.
In the fullness of time, the Word of God took flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. That Word continues to take flesh again and again whenever a man or woman stands up to proclaim it to the community of believers. God chose to work through human instruments, to play his song of love to the world.
The ministry of the lector calls for a person to grow in a warm and loving knowledge of Scripture, the living Word of God. He or she is invited to enter into a relationship with a Word that is creative, powerful and effective.
The call to be a Lector is something that demands preparation. No one should get up to read to the community gathered for worship without this preparation. In becoming a Lector, you are accepting the responsibility to do your best, to practice, to make frequent self-evaluations and to continually look for ways to improve your ability to communicate the Word of God clearly to the congregation.
As a Lector you are entrusted with some of the most wonderful stories to come down through the ages, and it is through these stories that God continues to speak. These are stories about the rainbow that sealed God’s covenant with Noah; about the bush whose flames revealed a God on fire with love for his people; about the rib that became a woman.
As a Lector you must understand each story simply as a story. The ministry of a lector is a wonderful work, and an extremely rewarding ministry. Through your own sacrifice of time, effort, and preparation, God’s living Word continues to be proclaimed to all of his people; the young, the old, the troubled, the hopeless, the happy and to those in need of comfort. To be a lector is to be given an opportunity for your own personal growth in Jesus Christ. For more information, email Julie Coll thecollclan@verizon.net or call the Rectory.
Extraordinary Ministers of Communion
As early as the third and fourth centuries, historical documentation proves that among the practices of the Church the faithful received the Eucharist in their hands. To carry a provision of the consecrated bread home to consume between celebrations of the liturgy was also a common practice. Keeping the Eucharist at home was well founded during the times of the persecution. During the sixth and seventh centuries, a special box in the home was designed for this purpose. As the ecclesiastical church progressed, the distribution of the Eucharist was entrusted more and more to priests. In the ninth century, the practice of confiding the Eucharist to the laity was abolished.
In 1970, the Holy See granted bishops the opportunity to designate members of the laity as Eucharistic Ministers upon the request of the local pastor. This was not simply a move back to the practices of the early church, but an attempt to combine past disciplines with the pastoral needs of the present.
Presently, the Ministers assist at the liturgy. They also bring peace and Communion to parishioners who cannot come to Mass by visiting them in their homes, in nursing homes, and in Abington Memorial Hospital. For more information, email Joseph Phillips at josephephi@comcast.net or contact the Rectory.