By Lois Rogers | Correspondent

The Lakewood Blue Claws may have come up short in their game against the Hagerstown Suns, losing 6-5, but there was no scarcity of winners on the field at FirstEnergy Stadium the night of June 15.

Thunderous applause from hundreds of baseball fans in attendance clearly signaled that together, the choir from St. Mary of the Lake Parish and the youth choir from St. Anthony Claret knocked one out of the park with their flawless rendition of the National Anthem at the start of the game.

Their exuberant performance reflected the momentum gathering as the two Lakewood parishes begin focusing together on Faith in Our Future – the collaborative Diocesan process underway to secure the Church in Mercer, Monmouth, Ocean and Burlington counties for years to come.

And the wave of enthusiasm for the effort among the 65 or so singers as well additional members of both parishes who attended only increased throughout the game. The group feasted together on a southern style barbecue at the annual event, organized this year as an evening of appreciation for altar servers and staff.

Against the backdrop of the action-packed game, Father Michael D. Sullivan, pastor of St. Mary of the Lake Parish and Cori Scotti, parish music and liturgical director, explained that a lot of joint sweat equity went into securing the picnic area for the event.

In order to qualify to use the area, members of both parishes volunteered at the stadium – a lynchpin of sporting and social life for the community at-large in Lakewood and its surrounds – in the weeks preceding the game, Scotti said.

“Everyone really stepped up to the plate,” Scotti said. “They wanted to make a real success of this. There is a lot of energy and enthusiasm,” said Scotti, who directed the blended choirs, capturing the anthem’s high notes with her soaring soprano voice.

Father Sullivan spoke of how the joint-effort fit into the growing vision of the parishes working together. The seeds for this collaboration were planted, he said, even before the Faith in Our Future process got underway.

It was part of a natural recognition of a need for the parishes to cooperate because of what he called the “current huge” Catholic demographic in greater Lakewood consisting mainly of older adults who worship in St. Mary of the Lakes and young Hispanic families who worship in St. Anthony Claret under the leadership of Divine Word Father Pedro Bou.

While there are more than 3,000 families registered in St. Mary of the Lake, the number of children and youth has been declining, he said. In St. Anthony Claret, the situation is reversed. With 1,000 children in the religious education program, the facilities at the Route 88 church where there is only one large room for religious education are “bursting at the seams,” Father Sullivan said.

With its two campuses – St. Mary of the Lake perched at the intersection of Routes 88 and 9 in downtown Lakewood – and Holy Family Church and its former school spanning a broad section of East County Line Road – the decision to collaborate on sharing the facilities for religious education was a natural, said Father Sullivan.

Since Holy Family School closed a year ago, the facility has been rented by Lakewood public schools for kindergarten through first grade. “They don’t need to use it in the evening except for an occasional PTA meeting,” Father Sullivan said of the arrangement with the public schools.

“We have evenings and weekends. We were using our facilities less and St. Anthony Claret needed more space. Now they have individual classrooms.”

At the current time, each religious education program has two nights a week in Holy Family School while the Polish Supplementary School meets there for one night, he said.

For members of the two communities, the evening under the stars and a rising full moon at the ballpark, was a shining example of this process underway.

Josette Peterson, a long-time parishioner of St. Mary of the Lake and a member of the core team who is helping with the planning process, called the budding relationship “a wonderful idea – something that was needed to be looked at. Cooperation and relationships are what we need to grow as a community. The Hispanic community needs it and we need it.

“(Since) we were already working toward this before beginning the study,” she said. "It is an easy thing for us."

David Roman, coordinator of religious education, threw out the first pitch. He and Ismael Rivera, who coordinates the music ministry shared their excitement over the growing collaboration which, in months to come, will include youth of both parishes sharing two nights with Net Ministries along with Bay Head’s Scared Heart Parish.

“We like the concept,” said Roman. “There are a lot of things we can do together."

Rivera expressed his joy at seeing all the families sharing this night together. He looks forward to the prospect of more times like this.

“We are working together. The choir is a family ministry. If you are going to have little kids, you need the parents. It is nice to mix the cultures,” Rivera said.

Agreeing with that philosophy were sisters Bridget and Victoria Magnussen and their friends and fellow choir members, Zoe Perozzi and Odalys Axalco. The girls, who variously attend Veterans Memorial Middle School, Brick, Toms River Intermediate East and St. Veronica School, Howell, shared a wide range of joyful enthusiasm as the game unfolded.

“It was fun to go out on the field and sing,” to begin with, said Zoe. “But when you go out on the field with a bunch of new friends, it’s so much better,” she said. “If you saw the choir at St. Mary’s you would see that it was getting very small. For this, we had a big crowd and more voices. It was great!”

Odalys chimed in saying she is usually quite shy but singing together with so many people from her church, St. Anthony, and St. Mary, took away her fears. “You don’t have to feel shy – with the choir tonight – if felt confident.”

“We became stronger and less nervous,” said Zoe.

“We became a unity,” agreed the Magnussen sisters.