Parish Profile | St. Rita Parish

Lesson one: Be close to Jesus

JANET SHELTON

Issue 02 | March & April 2009

oung Catholic communities could learn a thing or two from St. Rita Parish. The centennial-bound parish is wise with lessons learned over time.

Established by the Benedictines of Saint Leo Abbey in 1912, St. Rita is among the oldest in the diocese. Yet despite its age, the about-250 families of St. Rita seem unwilling to let their parish slip into a comfortable retirement. Through decades of changes in the local and universal Church, they have retained a missionary zeal that larger church communities struggle to build.

“I love this church,” said religious education teacher William Terranova. “It’s a family church. It’s a quaint, quiet community that just does things.”

When St. Rita began its service, the Dade City area was mostly a collection of orange groves. Today its members include longtime residents who have invested generations in the parish, families and retirees from new housing developments and a growing Hispanic population.

It is one of four parishes that supports St. Anthony Interparochial Catholic School in St. Leo, but only a handful of St. Rita children attend the school.

Parish-based faith formation is a priority here. Programs are headed by Sister Marta Flores and Sister Silvia Vivas of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of the Light, based in Merida, Yucatán, Mexico.

“The first thing that we tell the teachers is to bring the children close to God … make and relate them to Jesus as friends. This is the first thing we ask,” said Sister Flores. “(We want the children) to have God like a person – not as someone far away, but someone who walks with them every day of their lives.”

Volunteer catechists in St. Rita’s Sunday-morning religious education programs instruct about 250 youths; a Sunday evening program draws about 400. Programs that prepare adults and students for reconciliation, first Eucharist and confirmation also are well attended.

Melina Eguia said her confirmation class has helped mature her faith. Like many Catholics, she didn’t always understand the reasons for different Church practices and found it difficult to respond to misconceptions about Catholic worship. The ninth-grade student said her confirmation class has made her more knowledgeable and better able to share her faith.

“Basically, it’s explains what everything means in the Church,” Melina said.

Religious education at St. Rita combines the expected learning of prayers and sacraments with opportunities for the children and their families to be involved outside the classroom. At the family Mass each month, children take roles typically given to lay adults: They greet people at the door, take up the collection, bring up the offertory gifts and proclaim the readings to the congregation.

“(Religious education) gives our kids a chance to understand why they go to Mass and the true meaning of their faith,” said Angela Caselnova, who has taught religious education to fourth-grade students for 15 years. “There are certain misconceptions kids have or things they just don’t understand. Faith formation gives them nice understanding of the Church.”

The call to using one’s faith throughout life is a constant in religious education. Sister Flores wants children to understand they are part of the universal Church and she often works in special events to help the young ones make that connection. When the children prayed the rosary for World Mission Sunday, for instance, decades were dedicated to the continents and specific prayers raised for the physical and spiritual needs of the people in each geographical area.

Children also are included in programs that serve the poor. These lessons, based in action, are a far cry from the memorization approach that once formed the core of catechism lessons, Sister Flores said.

“I have a way to call them. I say, ‘You are my missionaries and I need you,’” she said. “Before, we used to give the children material and tell them to memorize those, and this and that,” she said. “Now we try to teach them that these precepts should be part of their lives.

“This way, the children start being active from their childhood and they become active youths and active adults.”

While the bulk of its programs remains in English, St. Rita serves its Spanish-speaking parishioners with a Spanish Mass on Sundays and Wednesdays, a Spanish Mass choir, a high school youth group, and Cursillo and marriage enrichment programs in Spanish.

For more than 30 years, church members also have addressed the temporal and spiritual needs of men, women and children living in impoverished migrant farmworker communities in the outlying areas of Dade City. The ministry started when the parish was under Benedictine leadership and continued after it was made part of the St. Petersburg Diocese in 1981.

Today, St. Rita volunteers travel off-site to address the needs of families in Lachoochee and two other farmworker housing sites. Faith formation classes take place outdoors with the weather and the mosquitoes, but the effort draws adults and children eager for sacramental preparation, as well as those who want to rejuvenate an abandoned or sluggish faith life. One site alone supports one confirmation and two first Communion classes.

A missionary sister of 28 years, Sister Flores said it can be difficult finding ways to bring God’s message when people are so distracted by other aspects of life. Catholics need to nourish their faith, she said, because it is the light that guides them and keeps them from becoming overwhelmed.

Shelton is a St. Petersburg–based freelance writer and editor for Gathered, Nourished, Sent.