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Dear friends in Christ,
Soon after I began serving as Archbishop of Baltimore, I learned of past efforts to realign parishes in response to population shifts and declining Mass attendance. I was told that more was needed. As I began to visit parishes throughout the Archdiocese, I could see that for myself. The configuration of parishes from the 19th and 20th centuries needed to be adjusted in light of 21st century pastoral realities.
Early on, I received more good advice, this time from the Presbyteral Council. “Whatever you do,” I was told, “be sure that your plans for parish reconfiguration are not done simply to improve the ‘bottom line’ but rather to revitalize the Church’s mission of evangelization.” This advice was “music to my ears.”
As I was listening and reflecting, Pope Francis issued his landmark Apostolic Exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel.” I found myself reading and re-reading it. I took it to prayer. Hopefully, I took it to heart. I realized that Pope Francis’ exhortation was foundational for my ministry and for the work I would do with the Archdiocesan family of faith in the realignment and revitalization of parishes for mission.
The point I wish to make is that Seek the City to Come is not a stand-alone process designed solely for the parishes in the City of Baltimore and surrounding suburbs. It is part of a larger context, a decade-long process of striving to revitalize parishes as centers of missionary activity. Such parishes are, among other things, intent on forming missionary disciples who invite non-practicing Catholics and those searching for truth and love to become part of our parish communities. Accordingly, I wrote “A Light Brightly Visible 1.0” to lay foundations and led to the formation of evangelizing pastorates throughout this local church. “A Light Brightly Visible 2.0” was written to re-boot those efforts following COVID and to set in motion the parish renewal teams that continue to engage parishes throughout the Archdiocese. “A Light Brightly Visible 3.0” is a successor to the previous two pastoral letters, an effort on my part to ensure that Seek the City to Come is implemented in a truly evangelizing, mission-minded spirit.
I humbly invite you to read and prayerfully reflect on “A Light Brightly Visible 3.0”, whether you are a leader or member of a Seek the City parish or whether you belong to one of the other parishes in the Archdiocese. As you do so, pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that one in Christ, we may bear united witness to the Good News of redemption, not only in the City but in every corner of this Premier See.
With my prayerful affection, I am
Most Reverend William E. Lori
Archbishop of Baltimore
March 5, 2025
As 2025 began, Pope Francis inaugurated a Jubilee Year of Hope. The Holy Father called the Church throughout the world to be renewed in hope. The hope of which Pope Francis speaks is not empty optimism or wishful thinking. It is rather the trustworthiness of the Lord himself and all he promised. “Christian hope,” the Holy Father writes, “does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love.” He goes on to say, “Here we see the reason why this hope perseveres in the midst of trials: founded on faith and nurtured by charity, it enables us to press forward in life” [Spes Non Confundit 3].
Seek the City to Come brought together the People of God from every parish and ministry in the City of Baltimore and surrounding communities. As I attended many of those gatherings, I listened as many who spoke of how deeply they loved their parishes. I also listened as they spoke of their hopes for the future. Few wanted the status quo. Most spoke with steadfast hope that parishes in the City would be robust in proclaiming the Gospel of Christ, joyful and vibrant in celebrating the mystery of redemption, attractive to new generations, expansive in serving the needs of the poor, and vigorous in bringing the light and love of Jesus to our city neighborhoods and streets.
“By hope we are saved” (Rom 8:24), writes St. Paul. So too, he says, “Hope does not disappoint” (Rom 5:5). But hope also demands that we persevere in faith and enduring love, with our eyes fixed on the call to holiness and eternal life that we share. To be sure, the Seek the City process put our hope to the test. We embarked on a difficult journey. We set out not merely to “right-size” the number of parishes but rather, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, to lay a new foundation for the Catholic Faith in the City of Baltimore and its surrounding communities. Last year, we reached a culminating moment of three years of consultations, big and small – parish town hall meetings, meetings with parish leadership, clergy gatherings, surveys and citywide consultations. All in all, some 6,000 people were consulted. Ultimately, the map of suggested mergers was drawn up by a working group of some 250 people from across the City and its environs. Every attempt was made to conduct this process in a spirit of synodality, marked by intentional listening and transparency. Even so, when preliminary decisions were announced, it hit hard. The public gatherings that followed were heated, but this consultation resulted in further discernment and changes. Subsequently, decisions were made and steps were taken to implement the parish mergers in accord with the laws and processes of the Church.
Meanwhile, pastors of newly constituted parishes have reached out pastorally to parishioners in nearby merging churches. Those engagements were often challenging as pastors opened themselves to a range of opinions and feelings and strove to offer a vision of something new and vibrant. I am very grateful to them for this special and courageous form of pastoral service.
In the past few months, merging parishes have celebrated well-attended and heartfelt final Masses of Thanksgiving and Remembrance, and “seated” parishes have not only welcomed new parishioners, but also have made clear that this is a moment for the merged parishes to become new parishes. This is not a quick or automatic process. It will take time and patience as parishioners from different parishes come to know one another and build bonds of trust and love. There will be differing practices, customs, and styles to be negotiated. But with the help of God’s grace, we will all develop a deepened understanding of how it is that we are all one body in Christ.
I am profoundly grateful to Bishop Bruce A. Lewandowski, C.Ss.R., who, together with Geri Royale Byrd and Julie St. Croix and their team, led this process with pastoral love and with courage. Untold hours of hard work and not a little anguish went into the leadership which the Bishop and his coworkers exercised on my behalf for the good of the entire Archdiocese.
Let me also offer my heartfelt gratitude to priests, deacons, religious and lay leaders who have labored in our urban parishes without stint, sometimes facing almost impossible challenges. Your wisdom, acquired by lived experience, has been an invaluable part of the Seek the City process.
In the same vein, I am grateful to every person who took part in the Seek the City process, including those of you who disagreed both with the process itself and the decisions that were reached. The passionate letters and emails I received were expressions of love for parishes that served as spiritual homes and were filled with fond memories. To repeat: none of this is easy.
A year later, we might like to think that the Seek the City process is finished, but it is not. For now, there lies before us the adventure of opening ourselves anew in the Holy Spirit to the Person of Christ and to the heart of the Good News, coming together as one to make the “seated” parishes vibrant centers of true missionary activity in our City and its environs.
It is not that missionary activity isn’t already going on in those parishes. Yet, if Seek the City taught us anything, it’s that we can never rest content. We must pay attention to what we have learned, even as we strive to catch hold of Pope Francis’ vision of parish renewal in our City and beyond, including the following:
1) The Need to Peer into Our Own Hearts
The Church’s long experience teaches that mere external changes, difficult as they may be, are never sufficient to bring about authentic renewal. Newly configured parishes must be filled with hearts and minds newly configured to Christ. In his beautiful encyclical on the Sacred Heart, Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis invites us to look into our hearts so as to return to the root and core of our being. He encourages us to enter that inner sanctuary where we are alone with God whose voice echoes in our depths. There, surrounded by the love of the Heart of Jesus, let us weed out every form of prejudice, bitterness, partisanship and self-centeredness that prevents us from seeing fellow Catholics from other parishes as our sisters and brothers in the Lord. There, surrounded by that love which knows no bounds, let us break down the walls that divide us. The one thing necessary is for you and me to open our hearts widely to the redeeming love of Jesus, to allow the Spirit to fan into flame our love for Jesus and for one another in the Church, a love that is to overflow onto the wider communities where we live and work.
As we set aside time to pray each day, read the Scriptures, participate in holy Mass, engage in Eucharistic Adoration and make use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Lord continues his redeeming work in us. He creates in us “a new heart and a new spirit” (Ez 36:26-27). A critical mass of parishioners who have fallen deeply in love with the Lord and who want to journey with others toward the Kingdom of God – this is sine qua non for any parish to be fully alive.
2) The Need to Peer into the Heart of Our Parishes
In his landmark exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis, quoting Pope St. Paul VI, wrote:
“The Church must look with penetrating eyes within herself, ponder the mystery of her own being. … This vivid and lively self-awareness inevitably leads to a comparison between the ideal image of the Church as Christ envisaged her and loved her as his holy and spotless bride (cf. Eph 5:27), and the actual image which the Church presents to the world today.… This is the source of the Church’s heroic and impatient struggle for renewal; the struggle to correct those flaws introduced by her members which her own self-examination, mirroring her exemplar, Christ, points out to her and condemns.”
Pope Francis continues in his own words:
“The Second Vatican Council presented ecclesial conversion as openness to a constant self-renewal born of fidelity to Jesus Christ: ‘Every renewal of the Church essentially consists in an increase of fidelity to her own calling.’ … Christ summons the Church as she goes her pilgrim way … to that continual reformation of which she always has need, insofar as she is a human institution here on earth.” [EG 26]
As we prayerfully reflect on Pope Francis’ teaching, let us heed a fundamental lesson flowing from Seek the City. The decisions to merge and close parishes were a painful but necessary step. However, the most important step we must continually take is to renew the missionary thrust of our parishes. Pope Francis urgently and continually calls every parish and ministry to undergo what he calls “missionary conversion” [EG 27]. We cannot return to business as usual. Instead, we must be willing to look deep within the heart of each of our parishes, honestly asking if we have kept before our eyes its transcendent mission, rooted in the Gospel and the teaching of the Church, and attentive to human need. The mission of our parishes is not simply “to make the world a better place,” important as that is. Rather, the mission of each parish is to bear witness to Jesus Christ and his saving love in fidelity to all that the Church believes and teaches. To be clear, our first and fundamental mission is saving souls. All else flows from that fundamental mission. If our hope is set only on this world, then our sense of mission falters. This is a moment when, filled with hope, we prayerfully consider what needs to be done to fan into flame the fullness of our mission.
While the renewal of the Church is by no means confined to individuals, nonetheless the heart of the Gospel, the kerygma, must shine forth in the minds and hearts of those in leadership, whether clergy, religious, or lay. Preaching and formation must be done in an attractive, missionary spirit. The door must be open to a new generation of church leadership, formed in missionary discipleship. The courage of the early Christians, born of the Holy Spirit, must live in the hearts of our missionary disciples who are unafraid to bear witness to Jesus Christ, even in the face of rejection. We must be zealous but not zealots. For zealotry is born of ideology that distorts the Gospel and cancels out its first fruit, which is mercy and compassion. Zeal is different. It is born of that love the Spirit pours into our hearts. More than enthusiasm, it is a wholehearted commitment to spread the Gospel because we have experienced the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit – both as individuals and as a community of faith. It is this that we wish to share with those yet to hear the Good News or with those who have turned away from it for whatever reason.
3) The Importance of Missionary Creativity
Let me call attention to another facet of Pope Francis’ teaching on parish renewal that came into focus during the Seek the City process: missionary creativity. In the same exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis speaks directly about the ongoing relevance of the parish. He writes:
“The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community. While certainly not the only institution which evangelizes, if the parish proves capable of self-renewal and constant adaptivity, it continues to be ‘the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters.’ This presumes that it really is in contact with the homes and lives of its people, and does not become a useless structure out of touch with its people or a self-absorbed group made up of a chosen few. The parish is the presence of the Church in a given territory, an environment for hearing God’s word, for growth in the Christian life, for dialogue, for proclamation, charitable outreach, worship and celebration…It is a community of constant missionary outreach. …” [EG 28]
In the passage just quoted, the Holy Father speaks of pastoral creativity and adaptability. Elsewhere, he spells this out when he speaks of the need for parishes (and other structures in the Church) to examine their customary way of doing things, things as basic as Mass and Confession schedules, the vibrancy of parish liturgy or lack thereof, the quality of preaching and liturgical music, the effectiveness of catechetical programs, sacramental preparation, youth ministry and adult faith formation; the way parish councils are organized and function, the reception accorded to visitors or to those seeking Baptism for their children or the Sacrament of Matrimony, outreach to the sick, including the elderly and housebound. In other words, a parish that wishes to become a center of missionary activity must be willing to look at every facet of its life to determine if it provides an interior space for growth in holiness while adapting and shaping its ministries to pastoral need and actively reaching out beyond itself.
These are the kinds of questions that are being considered by the transition teams of the newly merged parishes, not only the many administrative and personnel challenges posed by parish mergers, but indeed also the ongoing transformation of parish ministries and activities, continually reorienting them in service of the Church’s mission of evangelization.
Today, more than in the distant past, parishioners enjoy greater freedom to choose which parish they attend. That fact, however, does not erase the primary responsibility of a parish for the people living in its own boundaries – not only for practicing Catholics but nonpracticing Catholics, for the unchurched, for the barely churched and for those who are or claim to be nonbelievers. Just as Jesus went about preaching and doing good works, so too, a church patterned after him will do the same. And just as Jesus met with faith and amazement on the one hand and rejection on the other, so too, we can expect no less. Thus, ways must be found to engage the neighborhoods and the neighbors who live within our parish boundaries, whether through charitable outreach, knocking on doors or electronic means. Whatever it takes, we need explicitly to bring the Gospel to people and invite them to share our faith rather than to wait for people to find us.
4) The Need to Focus on a Changing Mission Field
The mandate to bring the Gospel to people and not to wait for them to find us applies most especially to those who are underserved: those who live in neighborhoods with vacant and crumbling rowhouses, those who are exposed to gun violence, gangs, and drugs, and to those who face deep poverty and instability. We need to reach out to them, offering pastoral care and material support. But we also need to actively invite them to be a part of our faith communities. Like the great missionaries who waded into the most hopeless situations, we must be willing to go into those neighborhoods and engage those who live there. Nor should anyone fall into the trap of underestimating those living in such conditions. There are many good-hearted and heroic people living in those neighborhoods. No place on earth, not even the most desperate, is godforsaken. Ministries of charity and justice are a good start but not an ending point. A parish exists primarily to proclaim the Good News of redemption and to invite everyone to journey toward eternal life through our sharing in Word and Sacrament.
Often, the poor turn first to our parishes for help. To be sure, Catholic Charities and the St. Vincent de Paul Society offer an array of services for those in need, yet the parish remains a place where the homeless and the hungry, the troubled and the addicted often turn for help and comfort. Together with Catholic Charities and the St. Vincent de Paul Society, every effort is being made to ensure that none of the vital services, such as food pantries, is lost as Seek the City is implemented. But more than that, we must work to ensure that the poor are received as if they are Christ himself and cared for and known as unique persons with an identity, a family, a history, and above all, a transcendent destiny. Nothing renders a person poorer than being nameless and faceless. A parish on mission does not forget the poor.
Also within our mission field are those parishioners with whom we have lost touch. Some are elderly and housebound. Some parishioners drifted away, seemingly with no one to notice. Others are angry or alienated, sometimes for just cause. More than a few departed with COVID. Just as Jesus reached out first to “the lost children of Israel” (cf. Mt 15:24), so too we might consider reaching out first to the lost members of our parishes. Will this outreach be met with anger or rejection? At times. But might it also be met with the joy and gratitude of reconciled hearts? No doubt. Isn’t that at the heart of the mission the Lord entrusts to us?
Some parishes that are predominately Black were among those that were merged, the majority of which had fewer than 100 worshippers on Sunday. These decisions were difficult and painful. At the same time, Seek the City presents an opportunity for a renewal of Black Catholic ministries in Baltimore and throughout the Archdiocese. The oldest Black Catholic parish, St. Francis Xavier, is set on a course of growth and renewal. The same is true of other Black Catholic parishes, including St. Bernardine (with a worship site at St. Peter Claver), St. Ambrose, New All Saints and St. Veronica. With renewed pastoral leadership and fewer buildings to support, these parishes will have increased ministerial and material support to expand mission outreach and parish services while actively engaging the surrounding neighborhoods. A continual focus on the eternal destiny of those we serve helps us make our parishes beacons of peace and hope in our neighborhoods and spurs us on to be builders of a society marked by racial equality and justice.
Growing Hispanic, Filippino and African immigrant communities continue to expand our mission field. How important that we come to know them, not merely in categories such as “newly arrived” or “culturally diverse” – but as living, breathing people, created in God’s image and called to friendship with God. These communities are young and hardworking. Like many other Catholics, they are looking for parishes where they find acceptance and welcome. How important for parishes to develop pastoral and cultural competencies so as to invite and welcome those who bless us with their presence, their culture and the gifts the Spirit bestows upon them.
Of great importance are ministries that build up and evangelize families. Families are the heart of society and the heart of the Church. The exclusive and lifelong love of husband and wife for one another forms the stable and loving environment for children to grow in faith and maturity. If we are to repair the social fabric and to revitalize our parishes, then we must concentrate on helping and supporting young people to embrace the vocation of marriage and family life. So too we need to help couples to overcome the obstacles they encounter and to grow in love for one another and for their children.
What of youths and young adults?
Catholic schools in the City and the near-in suburbs are an excellent resource for forming children and adolescents in the faith. I would ask the parishes involved in the Seek the City process to encourage parishioners to entrust their children to our schools. While expense is surely a problem, tuition assistance is available through Partners in Excellence and BOOST.
Parish initiatives aimed at evangelizing and catechizing children and adolescents remain vitally important. Experience teaches that these efforts are most successful when parents are involved. Thus, throughout the Archdiocese, our focus is on family faith formation. Not only urban parishes but all our parishes need to discern and embrace creative ways to engage families and young people and form them in the faith.
Many young adults have made Baltimore their home. Walking down some streets, you can see the pennants of universities they attended, many of them well-known Catholic universities. A number of our urban parishes are hubs for young adults, but there are many more yet to be reached. Perhaps forms of “peer ministry” can be developed to reach out to these young adults, many of whom are searching and some of whom experience that unique form of loneliness that contemporary culture imposes. Let us vigorously invite them to experience the love God has for them, a love that can be experienced in the life of a parish community.
More than a few who live in the City and its environs may seem to be impervious to the Gospel. Some have fallen prey to the militant secularism and atheism that are afoot in our culture. They seek fulfillment in secular creeds; yet experience teaches that these do not satisfy the deepest cravings of the human heart for a love that is pure and infinite. Let us bear witness to that Love for which they long.
5) Seek the City Pertains to Every Parish in the Archdiocese
Let me cite a final lesson taught by the Seek the City process. While it focused on parishes in Baltimore and its environs, in reality, it pertains to the whole Archdiocese. It is a clarion call for every parish in the Archdiocese to embrace its evangelizing mission with renewed vigor. It would be a mistake for any parish to assume that it is immune from the decline seen elsewhere. This is also a moment for parishes around the Archdiocese to renew and strengthen their ties with parishes in the City. Some have “sister-parish” relationships which entail more than financial support but also a true “exchange of gifts” – pastoral, spiritual, and cultural.
All of the foregoing can be overwhelming. It may seem as if the bar is being set too high. Or that Seek the City is aiming at an impossible ideal. Or that only a fraction of what is being proposed can be attained. Or that there isn’t enough money or personnel, not to mention time and energy. Let us remind ourselves where we must turn for what we need to accomplish the mission entrusted to the whole Church by the Lord Jesus.
At the heart of Seek the City is something much greater than demographics, finances, and deferred maintenance – important as these are. At its core is a Eucharistic Vision. The Second Vatican Council famously taught that the Eucharist is the “the source and summit” of the Church’s life [Lumen Gentium 11]. The vision and strength needed for mission are derived from entering into the Paschal Sacrifice – the saving Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through the Eucharist we are spiritually nourished with Christ’s Body and Blood. Through the Eucharist, Christ lives in us. His invincible and sacrificial love becomes a part of us. The words of dismissal at the end of Mass – “Go in peace” – are more than a formula. They are a summons to mission. So too, like the first disciples whom Jesus sent on mission, we too go out on mission, accompanied by Christ in the Spirit. So too, we return to him, week after week and day after day, to tell him what we have seen and heard and done. When we do so, he invites us to come away with him and pray, to be refreshed, instructed, repaired, and strengthened. Not only that, we strive in God’s grace week by week and day by day to bring back to the Eucharist those who have absented themselves while opening wide the doors to those who are seeking truth, meaning, and a spiritual home.
No one accomplishes the mission of evangelization alone, not even the Lord. He appointed 12 apostles and 72 disciples. He instructed them, formed them, and sent them out. This set the pattern for the Church. Indeed, all the baptized are called in some way to contribute to the mission of the Church. Baptism is the font of new life, immersion into the new life Christ won for us by his Death and Resurrection. Every baptized person is called by the Holy Spirit to some vocation, to some form of life by which he or she is to follow the Lord and contribute to building up of the Body of Christ. The Spirit pours forth upon the baptized a variety of spiritual gifts, or charisms, that are given, not simply for the personal sanctification of the recipient, but for the sake of the Church’s mission of evangelization.
If a parish is to be a center of missionary activity, it must be comprised of missionary disciples – those who have been called, gifted, formed, and sent. This means that the pastor and his coworkers must constantly be on the lookout for the gifts, charisms, and ministries the Spirit is bestowing on members of the parish family. It is their responsibility to discern these, and then to harness, harvest and harmonize them for the sake of the Church’s mission. It is these well-formed, Spirit-driven, Eucharistic missionaries who assist in evangelizing those whose faith is dormant as well as those whose faith has been damaged by scandal or by inattention or by a life contrary to the Gospel. Indeed, a missionary disciple must know how to share his or her faith story in a compelling way, to share the Good News with and for others.
The Archdiocese is blessed with many resources to help form missionary disciples and help parishes embrace their mission more vibrantly. The Institute for Evangelization looks forward to its continued work with parishes throughout the Archdiocese. Additional resources such as ChristLife, Amazing Parish, and Rebuilt, to name but a few are available as well.
Among the tasks now underway is the formation of new parish or pastoral councils and finance councils. To do so successfully requires listening to the Word of God and listening to one another. It requires moving through the process of grieving for parishes that have been merged. It also requires moving beyond lingering grievances toward a new day of cooperation and harmony, so essential for the mission of evangelizing. The mandate of these councils is not about power or control but mission – how to marshal every available resource for the mission. Indeed, this should be the primary and overriding focus of every council, ministry and organization in the parish life.
Finally, there is no mission without daily prayer and a sacrificial style of life. We are, after all, inviting those who live in the neighborhoods of our parishes to share in the One Sacrifice that brings salvation to the whole world. We do so not only as teachers but also as witnesses. This means that our own lives must be imbued by the life-giving Sacrifice that is at the heart of the Church’s life. This means living lives that are not focused on ourselves, but rather on the Lord and on those the Lord calls us to reach and serve.
Let us end where we began: Pope Francis has called us to journey together in hope, with our eyes fixed on Christ. Hope is neither false optimism nor wishful thinking. Hope means a radical trust in God whose promise never fails. Hope means relying on the power of the Holy Spirit to animate the mission we have embraced. Hope means that even now the joy and peace of God’s Kingdom is breaking in upon us and upon our City – setting our sights on the City to Come, the new and heavenly Jerusalem where the Crucified and Risen Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Come! Let us journey together!
Mary Our Queen, Star of Evangelization, pray for us!
