Formed as a parish priest in the Diocese of Pueblo, Bishop Ricken’s practice of praying over empty church pews continues to inspire today
By William Van de Planque | On Mission
GREEN BAY, WI — Bishop David Ricken was ordained to the priesthood in 1980 by Bishop Aurthur Tafoya in the Diocese of Pueblo, Colorado, and since then, he has desired that more Catholics would fill the churches on Sunday, reclaiming the Lord’s day and keeping it holy.
Bishop Ricken developed a specific and intentional practice to live out that desire during his first few years as a priest.
After serving as the parochial vicar of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Pueblo as his first assignment, he was assigned as the administrator of Holy Rosary Parish on the west side of the city, which was a community that was 99.9 percent Hispanic, he said.
“I noticed that the people were kind of dispirited and they didn’t feel like they belonged too much to the parish,” Bishop Ricken said.
At the time, he belonged to an ecumenical group of five downtown Christian churches that collaborated on initiatives to serve the poor., and One day, he asked one of the pastors for advice on getting people to come to church on Sunday.
“I got to know those pastors pretty well,” Bishop Ricken said. “I said to them, after I got to Holy Rosary (Parish), ‘We’re kind of having trouble with people coming to church for Sunday; what do you all do about that?’”
One of the church leaders told Bishop Ricken, “‘What I do is I go into my church on Saturday mornings, and I lay my hand on every pew, I thank God for those who are already there — because I can see them; I know every person —, and then I pray the Lord to fill in the blank spaces.’”
“I was really inspired by that,” Bishop Ricken said. “I did that at Holy Rosary (Parish), between six and eight months, both Masses were full. I did that and I got some of my parishioners to help me, too.”
When Bishop Ricken was appointed as bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay, he told now Vicar General Fr. John Girotti, who was the rector of St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, his story of praying over empty pews, and Fr. Girotti quickly picked up the practice as well.
He now encourages all pastors and priests of the Diocese of Green Bay to do this in their own parishes and lead parish staff in the effort as well.
“I think it would be most effective if priests and deacons did it first and then invited others to join,” Bishop Ricken said. “They’ve got to be there leading it. What’s more important than filling your church on Sunday? If we take care of that, that’s going to solve a lot of other problems.”
Bishop Ricken wants the faithful of the diocese to know that filling the pews of the parishes on Sunday and sharing Jesus with others in general is always simpler than it is made out to be, as God constantly invites his children into his simplicity, he said.
“In answer to that fundamental question, when people ask me, ‘How do we fill up our pews on Sunday?’ I always say, ‘Fill them up! We make it way too complex,” he said. “Prayer is extremely powerful, and why wouldn’t God be thrilled when people ask him to fill up his Church?”
As the bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay, Bishop Ricken has been convicted to make the Lord’s Day and participation in Sunday Mass a top priority, directing all priests, parish staff and leaders of the diocese to do the same and calling this effort “Reclaiming Sunday.”
The initiative has stemmed from his study of Pope St. John Paul II’s 1998 apostolic letter, Dies Domini, which details why keeping the Lord’s Day holy as Christians is so important.
“What I love about ‘Reclaiming Sunday,’ that theme, is that it sets things right,” he said. “When we give the Lord the first day of the week, which is what Sunday is … when we give him the first hours of the first day of the week and we keep holy the Lord’s day, it really helps to set good order for all of our lives for the other days of the week.”
Having a “regular rhythm of going to Mass, giving worship and praise to God on Sunday and spending the rest of the day in Sabbath rest” is a “beautiful theme from the Old Testament,” Bishop Ricken said.
“A boat with a rudder gets to the place it wants to go; a boat without a rudder is like having a Sunday-less week,” he said. “It just doesn’t work.”