Pat Lehr has spent 36 years helping the faithful seek God’s glory

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In celebrating her retirement as a pastoral minister in Kirksville, Pat Lehr traced moments of her unusual and pioneering role with participants, at a Mass and reception in her honor.

“Thirty-seven years ago, I was working on a master’s degree in administration here at Northeast Missouri State University,” she recalled, referring to what is now known as Truman State University.

“I’d been a teacher for a while,” she noted. “I was going to become a principal, then a director of curriculum, and then I was going to teach in college.

“Of course, I was also going to meet Prince Charming and have a lot of kids and be the president of the Altar Society and PTA!” she added.

But there was a little glitch in all that.

When the job she had lined up in Quincy, Illinois, fell through, she met with the pastor of Mary Immaculate Parish in Kirksville.

“He helped me figure out what to do when your life does a flip-flop,” she recalled.

The priest wanted her to become a pastoral minister and director of religious education (DRE) there at Mary Immaculate.

“Why not give God a year?” he suggested. “Just a year.”

She drew inspiration from her parents’ phenomenal example of faith, as well as all of the catechetical and Teens Encounter Christ (TEC) retreat experience she had garnered in her home Diocese of Springfield, Illinois.

She also recognized: “I’m grieving. I’m free. I don’t know what to do with my life.”

The pastor impressed upon her the need for her to “pull things together so everybody in the parish feels a part of one family.”

“It doesn’t matter what school they go to,” he told her. “It doesn’t matter what program they are in. We are all one Body of Christ.”

So Ms. Lehr came to Mary Immaculate for one year, “to hide out and to heal.” 

She freely admits that at that point, she didn’t have a clue about what a pastoral minister or pastoral ministry is.

“I’d never been involved in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), which was a new program at that time,” she said.

She had done a great deal of catechetical work, but in her home diocese, there were no laywomen serving in the role she was being asked to serve in.

“So I thought I’d give it one year,” she said.

Her openness to God’s plan stretched to 36 years.

Three fingers

Ms. Lehr employed a wealth of teaching techniques during her time as pastoral minister and DRE.

She was known to hand out stones with the word “First” painted on them.

“First” is an allusion to an utterance of Jesus’ to a crowd poised to stone a woman caught in adultery in John 8:7: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

She recalled that when she was a child, her mother always reminded her that if she ever pointed a finger at another person, three of her own fingers were pointing right back at her.

It was a good reminder to “check my own life first before judging others,” she said.

That lesson stuck with her as she collaborated with priests, deacons, religious and parishioners of all temperaments and dispositions.

Rather than focusing on their faults or traits that might have annoyed her, she looked for the good — for the gifts they possessed, trusting that God has a way of sending someone with the gifts that are most needed at that particular time.

She witnessed with awe as God worked with and through her to draw people to Himself.

She recently recalled in a letter to parishioners: “I learned what it was to become more fully alive because of your faith journeys and your stories — returning to church, baptizing your children, preparing them for receiving Holy Communion, discovering things in a way I had never experienced, listening to the word of God, doing all kinds of services.”

There were “a few roller coasters over the years, and God kept me here,” she said, adding, “Thank You, God!”

Ups and downs

Among the rough rides for Ms. Lehr, the eldest of six children, were the loss of her little brother Michael and the deaths of her parents.

She said parishioners “loved her through it.”

She recalled when Kevin Baiotto insisted on following her car when she drove on wintry roads from a hospital in Columbia, where Michael was being treated for cancer, to her home in Kirksville, to ensure her safety.

She called to mind the times when Jakie Grgurich insisted on making arrangements for her to fill up her gas tank as she made the treks back and forth.

In all, she served the two Kirksville Catholic communities — Mary Immaculate Parish with its 505 registered households, and the Newman Center at Truman State University — as well as the Mission of St. Rose of Lima in nearby Novinger.

She worked alongside 11 priests, six deacons, three Sisters of the Charity of the Incarnate Word, one School Sister of Notre Dame, four principals, five coordinators of youth ministry, five religious education administrative associates, four parish secretaries, two bookkeepers and three bishops, as well as hundreds of parishioners and college students and countless volunteers.

She helped parishioners weather the roller-coaster “downdrafts” with calm and steady reassurance.

The numerous “updrafts” she experienced included the realization that a laywoman can make a profound impact on the lives of parishioners.

Early in her tenure, she had discovered a quote from St. Irenaeus: “The Glory of God is the human person fully alive.”

“I didn’t really quite know what that meant,” she told the people at her retirement celebration. “But you taught me what the Glory of God looks like,” she added.

Among those who congratulated her after her retirement celebration was a man who said having her serve in the role as a laywoman was so unique, it made him think more seriously about his own call as a layperson, as a father and a husband.

“That was very humbling,” she stated.

Next chapter

Ms. Lehr plans to spend her retirement in Kirksville and will remain an active Mary Immaculate parishioner.

She is hopeful about the future of the Catholic Church, confident that the Holy Spirit will “purify our Church and keep us going.”

“We must trust in God!” she said.

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