Living the faith with sunday work

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alice24

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Note: Before the discussion turns this way, I have no sunday obligation (eastern orthodox).
My husband works every sunday from 12 am to 5 pm. Taking a day off is not really an option, as he can´t take holidays on sundays, If he still finds someone to switch, the sunday isn´t payed. We don´t have the money to chose this option. I´m working full time monday to friday, so if there´s the rare option to visit a weekday liturgy, he could go, but I couldn´t. The thing is my DH is not yet a belever, but showed interest and wants to look into christianity again, but I simply dont know how. Of course we discuss, but I can´t recommand him books all the time when he´s home after a long working day.
How to keep the faith alive or how to make a start? Any ideas from sunday workers? 😉
 
Yes, but sadly it is at 3 or 5 pm…he works wednesday-sunday from 12am to 5 pm, and the saturday off would also mean taking a unpaid day :confused:
 
What about getting dispensation from your pastor for your husband to substitute an alternate weekday Mass for Sunday? The important part is to honour the commandment by making all efforts possible, not to adhere to it literally where it is not possible to do so. ☺️
 
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I don´t need a dispens, see the OP above. My husband is not a church member, but interestet, and I try to get hi in touch with the faith. Unfortunately, there are only the sunday liturgies and rarely a weekday alternative. Tne parish is small and our priest is respinsible for a whole county. I already drive 1,5 hours per train regulary to attend every second sunday…And I doubt he would like to go without me for the first time :confused:
 
Then how about watching televised Mass, following a priest’s homily podcast, reading informative Catholic books, praying together (if he’s receptive), or developing a spiritual director relationship with the priest? Really, what it sounds like you’re asking is how your DH could build his faith if he can’t attend Sunday Mass.

And, should he later choose to attend Mass and need a Sunday dispensation, arrangements can be made that commute his obligation to watching a recorded televised Mass on a lag and having communion brought to him (or setting up an arrangement to receive it at an alternate time directly). Thankfully, with technology, lots of options exist to support a blossoming faith, even when schedules make it tricky. 🙂
 
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alice24 said:
He works wednesday-sunday from 12am to 5 pm,
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Just to clarify - he is working from midnight until 5 the next evening (17 hours?) For a work week of 85 hours?

(I ask because if that’s how much he is working, I think it’s going to be very difficult to add anything to the schedule, unless some of these hours are just “on call” and he would be able to sit and read a book.)
 
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Oh no, sorry, 12 o´clock in the noon - I´m a bit our of my english practice, I thought you say am for noon and pm for 12 as midnight. He diesn´t works full at this job as he still writes his final university thesis until winter/next spring.
 
alice24 said:
Oh no, sorry, 12 o´clock in the noon - I´m a bit our of my english practice, I thought you say am for noon and pm for 12 as midnight. He diesn´t works full at this job as he still writes his final university thesis until winter/next spring.
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Yes, that can be confusing, that’s why I wanted to check! 12am is midnight and 12pm is noon. 🙂

So you are already travelling 90 minutes to get to Liturgy and then 90 minutes back, and I’m assuming this means you get back after your husband needs to be at work. If this is your closest parish, that’s going to be difficult to work, but if he is working on his thesis then this may only be a temporary issue!
 
Is there a possibility for both of you to start to go on holy day?
Or during his holidays?

Maybe ask advices to your parish priest?
 
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My husband has already organised some free (unpaid) sundays to go with me for the bigger feasts (and I really love him for that), we both are sure that we will do this in the future if we have children so that I´m not allone all the time with them in the church and that they see their parents united there. This is of course just future stuff, but I say that to make clear we are seeing this as a short-middle term situation until he has his degree.
TV Mass is something I´ll check out. Unfortunately, there´s not much in german (once a month they send from the orthodox church in berlin I think) but maybe in english. Of course I could simply wait and pray that he will get closer to faith in the future when he visists the liturgy, but he´s in a tough situation right now (his mother died recently and he is isolated in a rather hostile living environment) so I think he could benefit from some support now.
 
Yes, it might be the right time to encourage him in this direction -without pushing him, because he can be emotional and choose the opposite direction.

In fact, as it was the case in my family too, a close death can be a life-turning event can can bring closer to the faith, or the complete rejection of the faith.

I can see another possiblity, but perhaps you will not like that idea: Catholics and Orthodox can be allowed to attend services of the other Church if there is no other possibility, if their respective authorities allowed it.
Having a mass only 1 time a mounth, or not being able to atted at all, may enter in this category.
What your priest will think of this idea?

I know some Orthodoxs who attend Catholic mass because there is no other alternative in their territory (one Russian Orthodox, and some Oriental Orthodox Christians).

But Perhaps you will not want to choose this solution, as you might be afraid that your husband might be interested to the Catholic Church instead of your. And perhaps your priest will not liked this idea at all.
 
Anicette said:
I can see another possiblity, but perhaps you will not like that idea: Catholics and Orthodox can be allowed to attend services of the other Church if there is no other possibility, if their respective authorities allowed it.
Having a mass only 1 time a mounth, or not being able to atted at all, may enter in this category.
What your priest will think of this idea?
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I would not have a problem with my husband attending a catholic mass.I would be happy - I don´t like to spread schism, and I honestly think finding and accepting jesus is more importand for him now than discussing denominations.
The problem is more that we have this one single catholic church here that is almost dead. I don´t say this out of anti-catholic bias, but the german catholic churches in the regions I have experience with (I can´t speak for them all, just my home county and our environment here) have more or less abandoned their spirit - people attend because their parents did, the focus is more on social things than on faith formation and the recent crisis didn´t made it better. I hate to say it, but this is sadly my view and I´m not of the “super trad novo ordo is bad” camp tat usually complains here. I think I would deal with it to have a place to pray, but for a non believer, it´s more difficult. My husband is far more open because of these things for my parish than for the catholic parish here in our place…
 
Yes…I understand…

It is more or less the case in France too…

Often, uninteresting liturgy that make me sleep…

Aging parish, and the older who tend to do social charity, which is good, but we do not speak a lot of faith, or morality, even between Christians. It is something very taboo.

On the parish meetings, or on youths groups, it’s barely if we pray before the meal… And we don’t do, if we gather between Christians outside of an official event…
We gather more, to have a community.

It’s perhaps worst in Germany, as the Church is established , receive is living from official taxs of their faithfull, is wealthy… but is not missionnary, as Benedict XVI said, don’t have vocations, and aging members too.
The internal contestation to Rome’s directives, which certainly confused a lot of people.

And being in ex-RDA don’t help too!
 
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I´m sad to hear we are not alone with this problem. I visited the catholic parish´s website yesterday after your post again and they seem to be without a real parish organisation right now - mass of course is celebrated (but even this not every sunday at our place, and we live in a middle - bigger german city) but they placed a paper online of their last get-together where they informed that the parish is atm “in the need to be formed new” and on the infotabs for baptism, communion, etc they wrote something like “it´s not only faith that leads people to want to be baptised, maybe it´s just a marriage or friends”…this is, to be honest, totally a no-no for me. It really doesn´t help that this whole region here is the former german democratic republic, so you can literally drive hours here without finding any bigger religious institution. After the borders were open, the bigger churches grew slower here than radical groups like jehova´s witness, sadly.
And yes, you are right, the taxation system has it´s place in the problem. I´m not generally against this as I see it is often used for church renovations or youth groups (my husband decided to pay as he was baptised as a baby even as he desn´t believe) but in the past 10 years, politics and theology mixed more and more and formed a church that is rather a sócial or cultural institution. Maybe it´s an older problem and I only realized is that late because of my own younger age.
What is “ex-RDA”?
How do you deal with this in your daily life in french? do you simply have family activities instead of a vivid parish?
 
alphawoman said:
And, should he later choose to attend Mass and need a Sunday dispensation, arrangements can be made that commute his obligation to watching a recorded televised Mass
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The OP is Orthodox, so they won’t need a dispensation, since missing Divine Liturgy is not a mortal sin.
 
Alice,

Thanks to your very interesting answers!

Sorry by using French term, I want to said former East Germany! RDA= Republique Démocratique Allemande.
But perhaps it is offensive?

The situation in France is better than your in East of Germany!

We live in a 1400 inhabitants town and we have a mass every sunday next door. But of course, it gather approximatley 10 others cities, in a surburban/rural area.
We are in rural hedgerow territory in the West of the France.
But we have no residental pastor. It is an African Priest who resides in the rectory of the parish inside the bigger city of the area (15000 inhabitants approximately) who “deserve” the parish. He tried to do some charismatic homilies.
We have a parish reception run by volunteers women 6 hours a weeks.
We have not a lot of families who came to mass! It happened often that our two years old is the only child present. No altar boys. The children and their parents came almost only when it is the “children mass” organized by children who do catechism, one time a mounth.
There is a choir of retired people with, in my opinion, horrible songs, at the limit of the secularism.

We have at least one public school in our territory, so no, the area is not a dying one, even if we loose inhabitants in the area, and even in the region. it is that catholicism is crashing.
We have some marriage, a more, baptisms, because the area is an area of old Catholic implantation versus others, so the baptism rate is still “high”. But mostly, this ramaining Christianity that kept more mass alive than in the rest of our small diocese, is because of older generations. I have seen some cross in some houses that I visited recently.

But the parish alone is nothing, we fonctionnated, like in all the diocese and often like in most French territories in “poles missionnaires” that gather the means of several parishes, that permits catechism and youth religious education, marriage and baptism preparations to be continued to dispense.

In the “pole”, there is no activities organized for families, except a support discussion group for married people that gather one time a mounth. (I have seen the people who attend one: only retired people)…

We are newer in the area, and the former parish, was more dynamic, with more youth, more dynamic liturgy, but it was in the principal city of the diocese, so the population was not the same (and less practicing if we compared to the total of population).

If I have only known that, It will be depressing… But I attend mass, more as an obligation that because of the beauty of it, or even community support. And I look the catholic Church as a all, not just one parish.

I will continued later, must go out!
 
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There are people who have to work Sundays, Saturdays. This excuses them from Mass. Maybe you could set aside Sunday evening and go over the readings of the day, pray some of the LOTH.
 
@Alice,

To continue,
I agree that many problems appears when the Christians forbid their faith, and their Church became only a caritative organisation, or a place to gather, at best.

But sometimes,we have to enter the poitical place to fight. It is unplesant, difficult to assumate publically, a sacrifice, but when some civilizational matters, some anthropological, or life issues are raised in politic, who, apart Catholics will defend the thruth?
So, no, the Church do not do politics, but must have sometimes a voice in public place, to enlight the consciences. Like the great awakening to defend “traditionnal” marriage and family some years ago.
I said that, but it seems natural for Frenchs, because we have a culture of social and political contestation.

I think the Church must encourage personal holiness, prayer, worship, community, and coherent public choices and life decision.
It is done very unperfectely, at least in our country. We avoid a lot of life topics, even between faithfull, prayer is solitatry and liturgy don’t invite to meditation…

The fact that tax serves to Church renovations are very important. It’s different in France, because almost all Churches are maintained by the State, since 1905. So all citizens paid.
And Church renovations is very costy!

For the sacraments ask for cultural reasons vs faith, it is also the case in France…What changes is that this catholic parish of your area seems to be uninhibited on that fact!
On the ten marriage celebrated each year in my former parish, we are very lucky if one is of practicing catholics. On average, it is couples who live together for years, and we never seems them again, just for the baptism of their children.

It raised a question on the validity of the sacraments… Sure…
The positive aspect is that at least, the children will have a small chance to learn the faith and become active believers…

And the numbers of children instructed in the faith, has crashed so much since my childhood that I have a lot of difficulty to understand… Worst, instead of cathechism at decent time, we now have to find some strange hours to conform to school obligations and disponibility of people.
In some parishes, it is so bad, that there is only one hour per month! Yeh… even in Paris.

I have to precise: religious education, preparation to sacraments etc, all is done by volunteers people. It is certainely a difference versus Germany, no? And with more mothers at work, it became incresively difficult too.

Another problem is the lack of vocations.
For eg, in our small diocese, only two seminarians! (For 90 priests in the diocese). One is a convert, the other choose this diocese because of a holiday house of family. We do not renew ourselves.

Presently the situation is managed thanks to foreign priests, but it is a temporary thing.
A lot of changes will take place in the next few years.
 
But we have the clergy that we deserve.
Due to demography or sociology of our diocese, we don’t have the faithfull, intellectual, large family where the priests usually come from.

And, myself, I do not cultivatetd personal holiness, prayer, self sacrifice, tranmission, exemple, so I am a part of the problem…
 
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