Welcomes the Challenge of Bigger Parish

Fr. Mike: Happy to be Here

By Mary Donovan

St. Mary's new pastor is an old hand at the job. He comes to our parish from 12 years as pastor at St. James in South Grafton. Father Michael Rose said he had a wonderful experience as pastor of the 900-household parish, but he’s happy to be here in a much larger parish with its challenges and demands.

"I anticipated coming to St. Mary's," he said. "It’s exciting to be working with a large staff."

He was already familiar with the parish, he said. He knew St. Mary's anecdotally through the years because of his friendships with both Fr. Paul and Fr. Dennis. In addition, he said he already knew many of the staff. He knew it was a team of energetic, committed, enthusiastic church people, and he looked forward to being a part of it.

While he was pastor at St. James, he also served as Director of Continuing Education of Clergy. For five years before his pastorate he was campus minister and faculty member at St. Peter-Marian Junior Senior High School in Worcester. For three and a half years before that he was associate at St. Joseph's in Auburn, arriving there the same day as Fr. John Cahill, his second pastor. His first pastor, three and a half years before that was Fr. Paul O'Connell at Christ the King in Worcester.

Fr. Mike grew up in Worcester. He attended public schools through junior high, went to St. John's for high school and Holy Cross College after that. He spent four years in the seminary at St. Bernard's Seminary at Rochester, New York, and was ordained in 1981 He is the oldest of seven children.

He is happy to have St. Mary's School as part of the parish, he said.

"Having spent some time in Catholic education, the opportunity to come to such an active, dynamic parish with a school was an additional blessing," he said.

Fr. Mike described himself as very much the kind of a pastor who likes to work with ministries that have a history and tradition, building on much of the work of the pastors that have come here before. At the same time, he said, he will always be assessing needs of the community and seeing what new ministries and efforts might be needed.

"I see my role as pastor enabling the staff to carry out their roles in their particular area of expertise," he said. "I really look to encourage - affirming and preparing parishioners to assume their rightful role in ministries; through preaching and celebrating sacraments with community to encourage even more people to become involved in ministries within the parish and even beyond."

He said he hopes to encourage people to live out their baptisms, to be more than a passive recipient of others such as church professionals. He hopes to find something for everyone in the parish. This is the ultimate effort of Vatican II, he said.

"Parish is where it's at," he said. "People live out their faith in community and family first. The question that begins every day is: how am I going to be Christ today?"

The image of the Body of Christ from Vatican II is powerful, he said. Together, church, religious and lay people; we are actually Christ in the world today, being who He was and doing what He said. Can we be willing to accept rejection and suffering?"

He said it is reassuring to him knowing the work of Fathers Paul and Dennis, knowing how hard they have worked to encourage and build up ministries.

"I'm just where I wanted to be," he said, "in a parish alive and active. Prior to coming here, priests would say, do you have any idea what you're walking into? I'd say, yes I do."