Christmas is coming! And that means all the songs are sad.
It’s not just those 1940s classics about having yourself a merry little Christmas (…next year), or the inescapable pop songs about what you did with your heart last Christmas (and what happened to it on St. Stephen’s Day). It’s our hymns, too. We sing of yearning: “Wait for the Lord.” “My soul in stillness waits.” We sing of sorrows finally coming to an end: “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People.”
Longing, lack, comfort, relief… WAIT A MINUTE. Is Advent like a support group?!
Building Catholic Futures often talks about the need for Catholic ministry to go beyond the support-group model with gay people. People need formation, not just support! What happens after we welcome people—are we also forming them? Overturn the iceberg and reach the 99% of encounters taking place below the waterline!
That’s what we’re always saying. And yet we know how many people are yearning for a place to belong. How many people are hoping and hanging on. How many people need comfort: to be told that their sins are covered, and their warfare now is over.
So in this Advent season, we want to express our gratitude for the support/affinity groups that have provided so much healing and fellowship for many people who work with BCF. Their work is essential to competent pastoral care for gay and same-sex attracted people.
And we have found that support groups work better when they are embedded in a Catholic context that calls gay people to, and forms gay people for, missionary discipleship.
That’s partly because receiving the gifts of gay disciples can be healing in itself. People need to serve, not only to be served.
It’s partly because, well, Advent leads to Christmas. Even those whose souls resound to “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People” (it’s one of Eve’s favorites) also need “Joy to the World.” Many people in BCF’s community have a deep spirituality of longing, of “Wait for the Lord”—and they, too, will soon get to belt out “We Three Kings”!
But support groups also work better when we’re not asking them to do everything. Imagine if the only Spanish-speaking ministry was a grief support group, and so everybody who called the parish office and asked, “¿Hablas español?” was sent to grief support—even if they just wanted to sign up for OCIA! The grief-support group would get so bogged down in sorting through a hundred different situations that it would struggle to actually serve people in mourning.
We need support groups. And support groups need the whole structure of the Church to include and imagine gay people as missionary disciples.
So now you see why we don’t run support groups ourselves. BCF doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. We’re inventing the car.
Prayer Requests
In this Advent season, please pray for the many people in BCF’s community who help run or have participated in support groups: for those in 12-step recovery, in LGBTQ+ ministry, in new mom support, prison ministry, and more. And pray that all those who need support and welcome will find an open door.