Vision is about describing a picture of the future as you would like to see it. For us at St. Patrick, we based the vision on Blessed John Paul II‘s apostolic letter of 2001 called “At the Beginning of the New Millennium.” This was the pope’s vision statement for the parish of the 21st century. We have adapted this here at St. Patrick. Our vision is to build a parish that is a center of evangelization and training ground of holiness, a school of prayer and spirituality of communion to create a culture of Pentecost. A vision is a preferable future picture of the parish. Some key elements I want to explore in future blogs are: what is a center of evangelization; how do we define a training ground of holiness. What are key distinctives of holiness? What makes up a school of prayer? What kind of prayer are we talking about? Communion is a rich word expressing fellowship to spiritual gifts to growing in charity. So how do we define it at St. Patrick? And finally, what is a culture of Pentecost? What is so distinctive of Pentecost? In future blogs I will explore these elements of vision.