ANOINTING — Saskatoon Bishop Donald Bolen anoints Lay Formation graduate Marion Sigstad of Christ the King Parish in Rose Valley, Sask., who was one of 20 Year II diocesan participants to be sent forth in a missioning celebration June 5. (Yaworski photo)

Lay Formation graduates anointed and sent forth

By Kiply Lukan Yaworski

SASKATOON — Twenty graduates of a diocesan Lay Formation were sent forth by Bishop Donald Bolen June 5 during a missioning celebration held at St. Anne’s Parish in Saskatoon.

The group has journeyed together for two years in monthly weekend gatherings held at Queen’s House in a program designed to help adult Catholics deepen their baptismal commitment to the mission and ministry of Jesus. The program provides faith education and learning, an ongoing focus on prayer, and an experience of Christian community.

Lay Formation team co-ordinators Mona Goodman and Kathy Hitchings introduced this year’s graduates during the celebration, which included a renewal of baptismal promises and Bishop Donald Bolen anointing each graduate.

“You are sent forth with the gifts you have received from God, to be Christ’s presence for others,” Bolen said in his homily for the feast of Corpus Christi (the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Jesus).

Recounting a scene from a movie about martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero, the bishop encouraged graduates to continue to find connections between Christ in the blessed sacrament and the Body of Christ in the world.

“Go out with a mind and heart to find the Lord in the suffering, “ Bolen said, “whether that is in the cancer wards or the prison cells, whether that’s on the streets or in places of despair and abandonment in our own households. Know that the Lord is with you as you go into places of darkness, places of struggle. Know that the Lord is with you in the midst of your own brokenness and the brokenness that you encounter. Know that the Lord accompanies you and invites you to be a bearer of light in all places of darkness and suffering.”

During a Year II wind-up celebration also held on the weekend, graduate Theresa Winterhalt provided the valedictory address.

“How fitting that we graduate on the feast of Corpus Christi. We are the Body of Christ — his hands, his feet,” Winterhalt said, noting the Gospel reading about the loaves and the fishes. “This story sums up Lay Formation for me. I was blessed and broken, as we all were, and became food for each other, with plenty left over for our whole lives that exists outside this lover’s garden. I wonder how many baskets of leftovers will be collected when we are done.”

Winterhalt also shared reflections about Lay Formation that she gathered from other graduates.

“Lay Formation gave me a taste of the richness of my faith, the tools to decide what I am interested in most, the time to search my heart, and the nudge to go forward, to accept my responsibilities as priest, prophet and king, to do my part in building the kingdom here and now,” said one participant.

“What I appreciated the most about this whole experience was the great privilege of journeying for two years with a group of people who encouraged and inspired me through the ups and downs of my life,” said another.

This year’s graduating class is a diocesan-only stream from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon. In alternate years the Lay Formation program offered in Saskatoon also includes participants in an eparchial Ukrainian Catholic stream and an Aboriginal stream supported by three dioceses, Saskatoon, Prince Albert and Keewatin Le-Pas.

Participants in the three streams of Lay Formation are together for shared Catholic faith formation. At other times, the three groups separate in order to delve more deeply into their particular traditions and spirituality.