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| Thank you for your interest in joining this ministry in our parish. We are a student-based parish and as such, we rely largely on students at Cornell to fufill the various liturgical and pastoral duties in our parish. What requirements are there before I can be an EM at CCC (Cornell Catholic Community)? The basic requirement is that you must be a fully-initiated member of the Catholic Church (i.e. baptized, confirmed, and have receieved the Sacrament of the Eucharist). If you are not fully initiated, you will need to wait until you have been to take on this duty. Our parish runs a program to prepare students receive these Sacraments. Check with Sr Donna. The Church also asks that her liturgical and pastoral ministers be suitably selected and trained to carry out their ministry. We'll provide the training. Suitable candidates for the ministry usually means that he/she would not be a cause of scandal within and outside the Church if entrusted with the ministry (e.g. someone who openly lives his/her life contrary to the teachings of the Gospel), and that person is well-formed in the faith (such as have a basic understanding of the Church's faith about the Eucharist) I'm already a Minister of Communion in another parish. Do I still need to be comissioned? Many parishes do things in slightly different ways. We hence need you to show for the training anyway. The commisioning of ministers of Communion is for within a diocese only, since we as lay ministers work with the ordained ministers, not over and above them. Even if you were commissioned in another diocese, you'll still need to be commissioned in our diocese for your ministry to be in communion with the local bishop visibly. The answer is hence: YES. What is the commitment like? Most EMs commissioned in our parish will serve on alternate weeks during the regular semester time. If you cannot make it to one particular Mass when you are scheduled to serve, you will need to ask someone else to help you out. I think I'm ready. What next? Our parish trains and commissions new ministers twice a year generally: at the begining of the Fall and Spring academic semesters at Cornell. Check out the bulletin. Alternatively, you may drop me an email so that when the time for training comes, I can send you a reminder. We will not normally commission ministers just for a particular occasion, or outside of the regular training times. |
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