By Rita McInerney

“Beside, you know ‘the time’ has come: you must wake up now: our salvation is even nearer than it was when we were converted. The night is almost over, it will be daylight soon – let us give up all the things we prefer to do under cover of the dark; let us arm ourselves and appear in the light.” (Romans 13:11-13, First Sunday of Advent)

A parish with the population of a small city, 10,000 people, is a good place to invite inactive and questioning Catholics to a “homecoming.” That’s what Corpus Christi parish in Stone Mountain, with 3,1000 families registered, is offering on Advent Sundays, Dec. 14 and 21. The first gathering was held Dec. 7.

For the fourth year the evangelization committee invites those who are not attending Mass or participating in the richly varied community of Corpus Christi to attend the informal sessions. “The ones we’re reaching out to are those who were raised Catholic but who have stopped coming to church,” said John Dearie, a member of the committee.

“We strongly encourage our own people to reach out to their relatives, neighbors, co-workers, friends they know are inactive, to invite them, and if necessary, to accompany them. The personal touch is most important. We try and involve the entire parish.”

Dearie has found a high percentage of young people who drifted away are now, as parents of young children, returning to the practice of their faith.

One young mother was invited and accompanied to Homecoming by the mother of a child her little boy rode with in a carpool. She and her husband had married in college and had moved about the South a good deal after graduation in establishing their careers. They didn’t put down roots or go to church, possibly turned off by the upscale, affluent atmosphere at their hometown parish. They were away from the church for about nine years. “We were younger and it didn’t seem important,” she said.

After living in Stone Mountain for about two years, she realized her son had reached First Communion age and the baby should be baptized. She was eager to get back into the faith environment both she and her husband had been raised in.

Three years ago she welcomed the invitation from the other mother and went to an Advent Homecoming session. “It was nice to go back,” a very positive experience, she said. Last year she was asked to teach the four-year-olds in the school of religion, an involvement she enjoys both because of her good relationship with the other teacher and her delight in the children.

“We still have a long way to go in terms of our spiritual development and with our family (of three boys),” and they are trying to make their home environment reflect their renewed faith, she said, because it’s important her sons have this foundation.

Her experience bears out the observation of the pastor, Father Thomas A. Kenny, that Homecoming brings “in-depth results, with those who stay generally becoming deeply involved” in parish life. They become witnesses, he said, able to tell those who come after them, “We came back and found a home.”

“Somewhere along the line they have dropped out of practicing their faith,” Father Kenny said. “It could be a bad marriage but very often it is simply that they have gotten away. They come back and find the church is more interested, warmer, more of a community. They have the opportunity to learn their faith as an adult.”

It’s a very good program. It’s paid off each year,” he declared.

One woman who attended Homecoming last year said she experienced an “overwhelming feeling of love,” the feeling that not only the Church, but the church community was welcoming her. The “warm outpouring I had never before experienced in the Church.” Married outside the Church, it had been 37 years since she had received the sacraments, although she had attended Mass “off and on” with her children whom she had raised in the faith.

The attendance at Homecoming has made a tremendous difference in her life. She and her husband were married in the church last February, she has become active in the parish, and is a very happy woman.

Dearie is available by telephone to people who learn of the Homecoming Sundays. He recalled one elderly Polish woman who called to tell him about her divorce and remarriage long ago. She had outlived both husbands and longed to come back to the Church. He assured her that the Lord was waiting for her to come back, there was now to obstacle in her way. When she grasped the significance of his response she told him, “You have made my Christmas.”

“The people who do come have something to talk about,” Dearie said. “There’s a lot of confusion out there, especially among those with marriage problems.”

He said an article in the December issue of U.S. Catholic includes a list of causes for defection given by Dr. Dean Hoge, a sociology professor at Catholic University. His books, “Converts, Dropouts and Returnees,” includes such reasons as: converting to the faith of a non-Catholic spouse; boredom or disinterest with the church and liturgy; rebellion against family pressures; Catholics whose lifestyles are not according to church norms, usually on moral grounds; people with unmet spiritual needs who look elsewhere, and those who object to changes or think changes are not coming fast enough.

The Homecoming get-togethers are kept low-key, in an informal setting, Dearie said. First names are used, there are no name tags, “We introduce ourselves and sit around in a circle.” Coffee and donuts are served.

The session opens with a traditional prayer, then a welcome from a member of the evangelization committee who speaks of the warmth and loving concern of the church for its members today, both the faithful and those who stray.

One of the parish priests talks about the changes in the church rules on divorce and remarriage, which appears to be the subject of most inquiries, Dearie said. After the talk concludes, the questions begin. Afterward, Father Kenny said, a priest is available for those who need to talk privately.

Those to whom Homecoming is the beginning of a new conversion, Dearie said, are encouraged to attend adult education classes which begin in January.

Dearie, a member of Corpus Christi since 1972, is a cradle Catholic, Jesuit-educated, who said he often wondered, as a youngster in Rockville Center, Long Island, why the Gospel meant good news. The joy, he found, was missing from the Baltimore Catechism. He would have liked some answers to the question of why we couldn’t be happy now, knowing, loving and serving God in this world as well as in the next.

He began to find the answers in the early 1970s, as a member with wife Maddie of an interdenominational couples’ book discussion group. He grew enormously during those years, he found, but he dates his own conversion, or homecoming, to 1975. He, without expecting or wanting to be, was “slain in the spirit” at an ecumenical service. Immediately afterward he was filled with such peace, love and joy, that “sharing the good news has been my life ever since.”

The Advent sessions are one of his ways of sharing. As a senior Delta pilot with 19 years experience, he can arrange his December work schedule around the Homecoming Sundays.

Corpus Christi is a very vital parish, he said, with the parking lot filled all week long with parishioners who come for Mass, meetings, classes and numerous other activities. But, with an average Sunday attendance of about 50 percent of the 10,000 people in the parish, there is still much work to be done.