Addiction is widespread across our nation and world today. So many people are feeling the weight of addiction in their lives or in the lives of someone close to them. The Lord offers us peace, forgiveness, and healing! Freedom is possible! This addiction ministry began during the summer of 2024 at St. Mary’s and continues to meet twice a month.
Addiction ministry will be meeting next on Wednesday, January 15 at 6:30 PM in the St. Joseph Room (no meeting on January 1). These meetings will then proceed on the first and third Wednesday of each month starting in February 2025. You can contact Jim Rathburn for more information – [email protected] or 612-383-8232.
As you look to your goals for the new jubilee year of hope 2025, perhaps the Lord is inviting you to take a new look at addictions in your life, whether that is you or someone in your family. We are here to support you and walk with you on this journey. The Lord offers us abundant grace and freedom if we invite him into those areas which we usually keep secret. Whether you are struggling with alcoholism, drugs, eating disorder, gambling, sex or porn – this ministry is here to accompany you and help give you tools to find new freedom in life with Christ and community. Attendance at these meetings is kept anonymous and confidential, so attendees find a place of safety and support. Check out our addiction ministry flyer here.
Walking through the following 12 steps in community is crucial to sobriety and freedom, as well as developing a consistent prayer life and sacramental reception (Eucharist and Reconciliation). For those desiring more resources, please check out: https://catholicinrecovery.com/.
For other questions about this ministry, please reach out to Nathan Schuster, Manager of Mission, at [email protected].
Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that He will make all things right, if I surrender to His will. That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.
The 12 Steps:
- We admitted we were powerless over addictions, compulsions, and unhealthy attachments—that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Saving had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
