About St. Brendan Church

St. Brendan Parish is a welcoming community, built on faith, committed to spiritual growth, inclusion and living the richness of the Catholic tradition through worship, education, service and outreach, as expressed by the giving of ourselves and our resources to support our church, school and community.

As a member of our parish family, we offer you prayerful and inspiring liturgy, active social ministry, opportunities for learning and growth and a warm and welcoming community of faith where you can develop lasting friendships.

Our patron, St. Brendan the Navigator, once prayed as he was travelling, “Lord, help me, for your sea is so big and my boat is so small.” We offer you companionship on your own life journey, so that the sea will not seem so big to you.

We invite you to join us on our journey.

We Live as a Family

They were faithful to the teaching of the apostles, the common life of sharing, the breaking of the bread and the prayers… Now all the believers lived together and shared all their belongings. They would sell their property and all they had and distribute the proceeds to others according to their need. Each day they met in the Temple area; they broke bread in their homes; they shared their food with great joy and simplicity of heart; they praised God and won the people’s favor. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

—Acts of the Apostles (2:42-47)

One of the defining characteristics of the Catholic tradition is our emphasis on community. Somebody once joked that Catholicism means “Here comes everybody.” Too often in our individualistic society we can lose a sense of community; it is easy even in religion to fall into the trap of thinking “Just God and me.”

As Catholics, we believe that we are saved as a community. Certainly we each have personal responsibility for ourselves, but our responsibility to one another—to serve, to confirm in faith, to pray for one another—is at the very heart of our faith. This fact is brought to life each week when we gather for Eucharist; for how can you have Eucharist without a community?

At St. Brendan, we celebrate community in many ways. We invite you to join in our many celebrations, social activities and especially when we gather together to give praise and thanks to God.

The Role of the Laity is to Transform the Earth

When Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath as he usually did. He stood up to read and they handed him the book of the prophet Isaiah. Jesus unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and new sight to the blind; to free the oppressed and announce the Lord’s year of mercy.” Jesus then rolled up the scroll, gave it to the attendant and sat down, while the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he said to them, “Today these words are fulfilled in your hearing.”

—Gospel of Luke (4:16-21)

If we truly believe that we are the Body of Christ, then these words of Isaiah apply to us as they do to Jesus. We, too, are called by baptism to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, to free the oppressed.

The work of acting upon this baptismal call is known as social justice. Because we are baptized priests, prophets and kings, our royal mission as Christians is to bring about a just social order on earth. Social justice motivates us to help others not just because we are good, but because what we provide them is theirs by justice. For example, God provides ample food for all the people of the world; some people are starving because we as imperfect humans do not have just means of distribution. Some of us have more food than we need, while others are hungry.

At St. Brendan, we have many opportunities for you to become involved in social justice issues in our community and in the world. We invite you to announce the Lord’s year of mercy to the poor and outcast among us.