MISSION STATEMENT

Divine Redeemer Catholic Church is a parish community of the Diocese of Charleston serving the people of Hanahan and North Charleston by our common witness to the Lord Jesus Christ.  We, the clergy and people of Divine Redeemer, seek to be instruments of God's grace for the sanctification of His people through divine worship, evangelization and catechesis, and service.

We are committed to proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe, through our words and deeds, and we aspire to lead others to a saving knowledge of the Paschal Mystery by the way we live and pray together.

Our principal means of evangelization is Divine Redeemer School.  Through the spiritual, academic, and athletic formation of our children, we seek to teach them to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ and to prepare them to become vibrant adult witnesses to the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  The mission of the school is complemented for those who cannot attend full time by our parochial Sunday School, designed to transmit the Faith through careful catechesis.  In both the parish and Sunday School, we invite the children to consider the possibility of serving God and His Church in the priesthood or religious life.

We acknowledge that Christian families are our foundation and that the youth of our parish are our future.  We strive to promote strong marriages and healthy families and to make each household in the parish a vibrant domestic church, and we aspire to give special attention to the integral formation of our youth, to enable them to meet the unique challenges of adolescence.

Our commitment to evangelization includes ongoing adult religious education and the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.  We seek to lead all of our people into full communion with Christ and His Church through a deep and mature understanding of and a worthy sacramental participation in the Paschal Mystery.  We are also dedicated to fostering ecumenical cooperation and common prayer with our separated brothers and sisters in Christ.  We recognize that the wounds of division in the Body of Christ are an impediment to the spread of the Gospel, and we are committed to pray and work for the restoration of full, visible unity in the Church, that all who follow Christ may be one as He and the Father are one.

We seek to serve all of our brothers and sisters, most especially the poor, the sick, and the elderly.  In responding to their spiritual, emotional, and financial needs, we serve Christ and promote the human dignity of those in distress.  We also seek to protect the unborn and to promote the Gospel of Life by bearing witness to the human dignity of all persons from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.

Finally, we find the source and summit of our Christian life in the sacred liturgy, most especially in the celebration of the Holy Mass.  We desire to live in the grace of our baptismal consecration by a constant conversion from sin in the sacrament of Penance and a faithful adherence to the Gospel and thus to bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, with whom we were sealed in Confirmation.   Above all else, for our creation and redemption, we give thanks and praise to the Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit by a solemn, reverent, and dignified celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist, in which the Paschal Mystery is recalled and renewed for our salvation and sanctification.

By our teaching of the Gospel, our celebration of the Sacred Mysteries of the new and everlasting Covenant, our family lives, and our loving service to our brothers and sisters, we proclaim by the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father that Jesus Christ is Lord!