Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: mission

  • The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “So what?” I content that that is one of the most important questions in life, certainly in our spiritual life. Because after we have all taken time to absorb the information around us, after we have learned all that we have been taught, we have to decide what, if anything, that information and teaching mean for us as human beings. What is the impact of this information on our lives? What difference does it make to have come to know this? How will this experience change my life? So what?

    I mention that because I think today’s Liturgy of the Word gives us a “So what?” moment today. As you know, these past several weeks, we have been reflecting on the “Bread of Life Discourse” as presented in chapter six of the Gospel of John. It all began five weeks ago with Saint John’s telling of the feeding of the multitudes: how thousands of people were fed with just five loaves of bread and two fish. It was a great miracle of abundance: indeed, the leftovers were even more food than they started with: twelve baskets intended to feed those who couldn’t make it to the banquet, those who hungered throughout the whole world.

    Ever since that, in these last three weeks, Jesus has been unpacking the meaning of that miracle for the crowd. They wanted more food, but he wanted to feed them in much more important ways, in ways that touched the deepest hungers of their lives, in ways that could lead them to the eternal banquet of the Lord where no one would ever hunger or thirst again. He made a bold claim: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6:58) And now, the crowds grapple with that information.

    Some of them are offended by the notion that he, the carpenter’s son, the one they have known and whose family they have seen, could ever be anything eternal. How on earth could this common man, this one who is one of them, be the Son of God, the Bread of Life, the answer to all their eternal questions? Others are disgusted that the answer to these eternal questions involved eating his flesh and drinking his blood. How horrible that he would even suggest such a cannibalistic approach to eternal life! And in today’s passage, we see the impact of all that: some of them leave and return to their former way of life. Those who walked away weren’t just hangers-on or spectators – they were among his disciples. And then Jesus asks the Twelve – the Apostles – the question of all questions: “Do you also want to leave?” He might as well have said to them: “So what?”

    And, as usual, it’s Saint Peter who expresses the faith of these twelve men: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” For them, at least, the “So what?” moment had led them to recognize something deeper in this miracle of feeding and in the words of this uncommon common man, and that something was the possibility of an eternity, which would never be possible without Jesus. Of course, they couldn’t have known the full meaning of that statement of faith, or the cost of it, but they would certainly see it all unfold in the death and resurrection of Christ, which would solidify their faith: well, for all but one of them.

    For me, the prayer of Saint Peter: “Master to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” has played a particularly important role. It’s come up more than once in my journey of faith. I remember as a young adult, before I went to seminary, having a crisis in my own faith. Even though I was always going to Mass, for a time I had also been attending Willow Creek – the big megachurch up in Barrington – with my friends. The music was nice and the sermons sounded good. But along the way my pastor, Father Mike O’Keefe, of blessed memory, called me in and had a “come to Jesus” with me. It was irritating at the time, but now I couldn’t be more grateful. I remember he told me, “Patrick, I know you would never be able to go to the chapel and stand in front of the Tabernacle and say that Jesus wasn’t there.” I took a while to think about that, and one night when I went to Willow Creek they were having their monthly communion. They passed around bread and grape juice and I realized that Father Mike was right: Jesus was in the Tabernacle, not there at Willow Creek, and that I would never be able to live without the Sacraments of the Church. In retrospect, that moment was pivotal in my vocational call. Father Mike’s fatherly pastoring of me and gentle rebuke helped me to see that I couldn’t leave the Catholic Church: “Master to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

    A few years later, when I was in seminary, that prayer became important again. I started seminary in fall of 2001, and in the spring of that year, the clergy sexual abuse scandals broke open. Half of my class left seminary that year, and by the end of my time at Mundelein the 23 of us who started together dwindled to just eight of us who graduated. Plenty of times in those five years, I wondered if I should leave too. Why would I want to get involved in the priesthood at this moment in our Church’s history – this painful moment? As I prayed about it over and over, I kept getting the same answer, over and over: “Master to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

    In these days, during our nation’s Eucharistic Revival, following the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis this summer, we continue the revival with a view toward mission. And every one of us plays a part in that. Our mission is to reach out to those who don’t know how much Jesus loves them, or at least don’t give it a lot of thought. The ones who should be sitting next to us at Mass right now. Whether they are our loved ones, or people we come into contact with in our communities, schools, or workplaces, they need to know that Jesus desires to feed them too. And maybe the only way they will see Jesus is in you and me. We have to keep the door open in relationship with them, so that they will see in the way that we love them, that Jesus’ love for us is very real and very zealous. We need them to see our faith in such a way that the “so what?” that they ask means something like, “I’d like to have that faith too.”

    Witness to the faith by your love. Live the Gospel in everything you do. Keep the door open to relationship with the people in your lives. Gently guide them to Jesus and the Church. Those are the things that people of mission do. Those are the things Eucharistic people do. The answer to “so what?” for us is very clear: So go, be people of mission. Go, love people into the Kingdom. Go, and announce the Gospel of the Lord.

  • The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today, as we listen to the proclamation of the Feeding of the Multitudes, we begin a five-week reflection on the Eucharist that is known as the “Bread of Life Discourse,” from chapter 6 of Saint John’s Gospel. We get this marvelous reflection every third year, during Cycle B of the Lectionary, a little break from our consideration of Saint Mark’s Gospel.

    Now, you may have heard some teacher or preacher or Bible Study leader talk about this miracle story as something less than a miracle. They may have framed it like this: “Jesus was preaching and the people were hanging on his words and it was getting late. So someone remembered the fish sandwich they brought with them and shared it with the people around them. Then other people saw that and got out the picnic they had brought, and before you knew it, everyone was eating. And much like an Italian family dinner, everyone was stuffed and there were twelve baskets of food left over.

    Now, I think you probably already know how I feel about this explanation just by the way I said it. You all know me pretty well by now! But in case you don’t, I’ll be plain: it’s garbage. First of all, there is absolutely no evidence that such a thing happened. With over five thousand people there, someone would have talked about how inspired they were by Jesus’ words that they just felt they had to share their picnic. But no such story has ever been found. Secondly, if it had been that simple, people wouldn’t have continued to clamor after Jesus looking for another miracle. No, they knew a miracle had taken place, and they wanted more of it, thank you very much. There are lots of other arguments against this explanation, but let’s just be clear: it was an argument that someone dreamed up much, much later, during the nineteenth century by people who were rationalistic and had no relationship with Jesus. So yes, this explanation is pure theological trash.

    The whole point of this wonderful story being told by all four Evangelists, by the way, is that it makes clear the absolutely incredible miracle that God wants nothing more than to feed us in the most wonderful way possible. He does that with a huge group of people who are not just hungry for food, but more importantly and urgently for God’s Saving Word, and he provides it working with just about nothing – five loaves and two fish – and turns that into enough, and more than enough, to feed that whole hungry crowd. Finally, he provides twelve baskets of leftovers – twelve symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel, or the whole world as they knew it – to feed even those who were not there to see that amazing miracle.

    In John’s Gospel, this story is the story of the Institution of the Eucharist, because John doesn’t have a Last Supper story like the other three Gospels. And so by feeding this whole crowd, Jesus makes it clear that God’s intention is to feed us all, always and forever, with the Bread of Life and the Cup of Eternal Salvation. The Eucharist will always and forever be God’s presence in the world and in our life. Thanks be to God!

    I was not able to be there but just last week, many thousands of Catholics gathered in Indianapolis for the Eucharistic Congress. Over two hundred thousand hosts were consecrated to be the Body and Blood of Christ during those days, showing that those twelve baskets of leftovers just keep on giving! That Congress was evidence of the joy that the Eucharist continues to bring us, that our God doesn’t give up on us when times look bleak, that young people still long for the presence of Jesus in their lives, and that God is still working miracles every single moment of every single day.

    The Eucharistic Revival doesn’t come to a conclusion now that the Congress is over. This coming year, the focus is on mission. A Eucharistic people need to take up those baskets of leftovers and continue to feed a world hungry for newness and revival and light in a dark and sad world. It is our mission now that our hunger is fed at this celebration of the Eucharist to follow the direction we get at the end of every Holy Mass: “Go!” Go and glorify the Lord by your life. Go and proclaim the Gospel. Go and be the hands and feet of Jesus in a world that desperately needs his presence. Go and feed others with the grace with which you have been fed. Go, and give them something to eat.

    So as we pray today, let’s focus on a couple of things. First: in what way do you find yourself hungry right now? What is missing in your life, especially in your spiritual life? Whatever you find that to be, give it to Jesus and let him feed you. And then second, for the mission: in what way can you take the grace of Jesus and fill up the emptiness of others? How can you enliven even just one person by your presence? What small act of love can you take from those baskets of leftovers and feed someone who is starving for salvation?

    Pray all that, and listen to the Psalmist sing: “The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.”

  • Graduation Mass

    Graduation Mass

    Sometimes when we come to major moments in our lives, there is this crazy though that comes to us – what do I do now?  It’s kind of like, I’ve looked forward to this moment for so long, even though I know the next step, I don’t know how to be me in that next step. 

    The good news is, right in the middle of tonight’s Gospel reading, there is one word that sums it up for Christian disciples.  This is the word that marks what we’re supposed to do; it wraps up all the instructions Jesus gave to his Apostles, and to all of us who are his disciples.  It tells us who we should be and what we should do.  This one word is especially appropriate for you graduates today, as you get ready to begin the next phase of your life in a new school.  That word is: GO!

    We hear that word a lot.  Once we have learned the rules of a game or a race or some kind of contest, the person officiating the game will say something like, “Ready?  Go!”  “Go” is a word we look forward to: we can’t wait to begin the game or start the project, or whatever it is we’re doing.  There’s no time like the present, and we always want to keep going.  But that same word can trigger a bit of sadness.  We don’t always want to go; we like where we are, where we are has been home, and it’s comfortable.  When we go, we’re often in unknown territory, and so going can be as much an occasion for pause as anything else. 

    So going is part and parcel of life, both our life in this world, but also our life with Christ.  In this life, we will, like it or not, experience a lot of coming and going.  We are always on the move, until that great day that we get home to heaven, that place that is our true home, that place to which we journey all through our earthly lives.  So I thought it might be well to take a quick look back and review some of the important things you’ve been taught during your time here at Saint Mary’s.  The first thing I’d mention is what I have taught you is the most important thing that you can know about God in this life.  And that is that God loves you – in fact God is love itself.  God is a love so perfect that it surpasses anything we can know about love in this life.  God is a love so pure that God cannot not love – that wouldn’t logically be possible.  And so God, in love, made people – you and me and everyone else – so that he could have a way to show his love.  And so God loves us, forgives us, guides us, challenges us, and loves us some more.  And so I’ve told you that writing “God loves me” as the answer on a religion test would get you at least half a point.  I’m not sure if that works in high school, but I obviously think it should!

    The second thing I’d want you to remember is that it’s not all about you.  You, and your relationship with God, are certainly part of the equation, but we disciples aren’t just supposed to live for ourselves.  We are a people who are to go out and preach and teach and share and witness what we’ve been taught.  Sometimes, we will do this with words, but most often, we will do this with actions.  We will reach out and take care of people in our lives, and people God puts in our lives.  We will make a decision to give of ourselves so that people in need can have a better life, or at least a better day.  The gifts that we have are never given to us just for ourselves; they are meant to be shared, and when we share them, we find they don’t run out, we just keep getting more to share.  It’s kind of like the feeding of the multitudes: when we share our little offering of five loaves and two fish, God makes it enough, and more than enough, to feed everyone.  But only when we remember that it’s not just about ourselves.

    The final thing I’d like to remind you is that as a leader – and all of you will lead in some way at some time – you should never ask people to do something you’re not willing to do yourself.  Jesus is the absolute best example of that.  In teaching us to love each other and lay down our lives for each other, he literally laid down his life for us: dying on the cross to pay the price for our sins and to give us the possibility of eternal life, of going to that place prepared for us in his Father’s house, that home that is our true home – in heaven.  And so just like Jesus, we too have to lead by being servants, and taking up the cross, and doing what we might not want to do but what needs to be done, so that others will see the way to live too.  We have to witness by example and to lead the way we want others to live.

    I believe these lessons will serve you well.  Know that you are loved just for who you are.  That will give you peace on your darkest days.  Know that you are called to reach out to others so that they can find light in the darkness.  And know that you are a leader when you witness by your life and example.  When you do all that, you’ll be successful beyond your wildest dreams, and you’ll have a relationship with your God that no one can take away from you, and will bring you to that place of ultimate happiness.

    Having learned all this, I charge you all to GO.  Go, make a difference.  Go, live in God’s love.  Go, be a witness to what you’ve been taught.  Go, lead the world to a better place.  Go, be a disciple and make disciples of everyone you meet.  Go, knowing that our Lord is with you until the end of the age.  Go, and glorify the Lord with your life.

    Because Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • Saturday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I think it’s amazing to let your imagination wander to this vision that the prophet Isaiah had in today’s first reading.  Looking upon God in all God’s glory would be awe-inspiring, perhaps even terrifying.  Seeing that, Isaiah is inspired to do a kind of examination of conscience, where he sees how sinful and unclean he is, living among people who are sinful and unclean, and realizing that having seen God’s greatness, he is doomed.

    It’s a useful reflection for us disciples, I think.  Because sometimes I think we are overly familiar with God, and don’t remember his greatness and power and glory.  God is our intimate friend and loving redeemer, but he is also the creator of all the universe who holds all of us and everything in being by his own power.

    So I get why Isaiah felt like he was doomed.  But God will not have that; he has chosen Isaiah for the task of prophecy to the nations.  So he purifies Isaiah’s lips and asks who he should send.  And purified of his wickedness, Isaiah is able to say, “Here I am, send me!”

    We too have been purified by Holy Baptism, and in that ritual the minister touches the lips and ears of the infant, opening them to the praise and glory of God.  Not by a burning ember from the altar, but by the sacrifice of Our Lord, we have been purged of sin and called to holiness and ministry.  Today and every day, we are asked by our awesome God, “Whom shall I send?  Who will go for us?”

  • Thursday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s readings reveal the power of God’s love in the world.  Joseph’s brothers didn’t realize they were, in fact, in the presence of the “dreamer” they had sold into slavery.  But his forgiveness of them shows that God’s love and providence overcome even the most grievous of sins.  Jesus sends his apostles out to preach, but without any of the things that one might think necessary: “Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick.”  In this way, the apostles learned that, against all odds, the Gospel, the preaching of God’s love in the world, would bear fruit no matter what was lacking. 

    In our work and living and family life today, may we all look for opportunities to let God be God and show his love where he wants to.  Then we may look back one day and remark as the Psalmist did this morning: “Remember the marvels the Lord has done!”

  • Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    Today’s readings

    In today’s Gospel, Peter and the others are asked, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Now, both Peter and Paul were committed to the truth about who Christ was.  They had too much at stake to let that go.  They had both messed up their estimation of who Jesus was: Peter was expecting a Messiah with earthly exaltation who would never undergo something like crucifixion, and Paul (then called Saul) had early on estimated Jesus to be a rabble-rouser and charlatan.  They both, of course, underwent conversion through the mercy of Jesus, but they forever remembered the trap of underestimating Jesus.  So for them Jesus could never be just a brother, friend or role model – that was inadequate.  And both of them proclaimed with all of their life straight through to their death that Jesus Christ is Lord.  We too on this day must repent of the mediocrity we sometimes settle for in our relationship with Christ.  He has to be Lord of our lives and we must proclaim him to be that Lord to our dying breath.  We must never break faith with Saints Peter and Paul, who preserved that faith at considerable personal cost.

    Perhaps Saints Peter and Paul can inspire our own apostolic zeal.  Then, as we bear witness to the fact that Jesus is Lord of our lives and of all the earth, we can bring a world that has accepted mediocrity and convenience to real relevance.  Perhaps in our renewed apostolic zeal we can bring justice to the oppressed, right judgment to the wayward, love to the forgotten and the lonely, truth to a society that settles for relativism, and faith to a world that has lost sight of anything worth believing in.  One might say that all of that is the Church’s mission, but that assumes the Church is primary, when actually the mission is what is of primary importance.  And so we believe that the apostolic mission has a Church, and it’s time for the Church to be released from its chains and burst forth to give witness in the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

  • The Third Sunday of Easter: Do You Love Me More Than These?

    The Third Sunday of Easter: Do You Love Me More Than These?

    Today’s readings

    What Satan wants is a community of disciples so mired in their sins, that they do nothing to foster the Kingdom of God and live the Gospel. Bookmark that thought, because I’ll come back to it in a bit.

    I love today’s Gospel because it features one of my favorite characters, Saint Peter. Saint Peter has been inspirational to me because, despite being called to do great things for God, he does a lot of messing up and often has to pick himself up and start all over again. Today’s Gospel reading has him trying to figure things out. He’s very recently been through the arrest and execution of his Lord and friend, only to find out that he is risen, and has appeared to various disciples, including Peter himself. I think today’s story has him trying to make sense of it all and figure out where to go from here. But he’s trying to figure it out in the midst of having fallen again, since he denied even knowing the Lord three times on the night of Holy Thursday.

    So, in an effort to figure things out, he goes back to what he knows best, which is to say he goes fishing. And he takes some of the others with him. And, as is very typical of Peter’s fishing expeditions recorded in the Gospels, he catches nothing even though he’s been hard at it all night long. It’s not until the Lord is with them again and redirects their efforts, that they eventually pull in an incredibly large catch of fish. Jesus then invites them to dine with him, using one of my favorite commands in all of Sacred Scripture, “Come, have breakfast.”

    Then we have this very interesting, and in some ways tense, conversation between Jesus and Peter. Jesus takes him off to the side after breakfast, and just as he redirected Peter’s efforts while they were fishing earlier, now he redirects Peter’s efforts in his life. There are a couple of points of background that we need to keep in mind. First, just as Peter three times denied his Lord on the night of Holy Thursday, so now Jesus gives him three opportunities to profess his love and get it right.

    Second, the Greek language has a few different words that we translate “love.” Two of them are in play in this conversation. The first is agapeo, which is the highest form of love. It’s a love that always wills the best for the other person, a love that is self-sacrificing and enduring. It’s the love that God has for us. The other kind of love that is used here is phileo, a bit lower form of love that is something like a strong affection for someone else. Where agapeo is an act of the will, phileo is more of a feeling. Many scholars don’t see this as an appreciable difference and say John in his Gospel just uses two different words to mean the same thing. But I think John is careful with language, and the two uses mean something, as we will see.

    So the conversation begins, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” That’s literally a loaded question, so let’s look at it. First of all, Jesus calls Peter “Simon, son of John.” But Jesus is the one who changed his name from Simon to Peter. So this seems to be a bit of a rebuke: Okay, Peter, if you’re just going to revert to your former self and pretend you haven’t known me the last three years, then I’ll just use your old name. I’m sure Peter didn’t miss the inference. Then at the end, “do you love me more than these?” Scholars have a lot of opinions on what “these” are: Do you love me more than you love these other guys? Do you love me more than these other guys love me? Do you love me more than this fishing equipment, the tools of your former life? It doesn’t matter what he meant by “these,” the effect is the same: Peter is called to a higher love, which is evidenced in the word Jesus uses for love, which is agapeo. Peter responds, acknowledging Jesus’ omniscience, “Lord you know that I love you.” But he uses phileo, perhaps acknowledging that he is not capable of the agapeo kind of love. And he’s probably right about that, since sin does diminish our capacity to love. He receives the response “Feed my lambs,” of which I’ll say more later.

    The conversation continues in the same manner, using the same forms of the word “love” in both the question and the response, and ending with the injunction, “Tend my sheep.” But the third question is interesting. Jesus asks the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” But this time Jesus uses the word phileo, as much as to say, “Okay, Peter, do you even have affection for me?” And Peter seems to get the inference, because he responds emotionally: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” And he’s right: Jesus does know. But Jesus needed Peter to know it too. Jesus, in his Divine Mercy, has healed Peter, forgiven his sins, and helped him to remember his mission, redirecting his efforts to “Feed my sheep.”

    Because if Jesus hadn’t done this, Satan would have won. He would have had that community of disciples so mired in their sins, that they do nothing to foster the Kingdom of God and live the Gospel. And then we wouldn’t be here today, would we?

    And let’s be clear about this. We, like Peter, all have a mission to accomplish. We all have some part of the Kingdom to build, or extend, or proclaim. We may not be the rock on which Jesus will build his Church, but we are indeed part of it. And we are all affected by our sins. We have all denied our Lord in one way or another by what we have done and what we have failed to do. And so the Lord in his mercy says to us today, “Patrick, do you love me?” “Susan do you love me?” And we respond with whatever love we’re capable of. In that moment, Jesus redirects our life’s efforts too, so that we can do what we’re called to do. We, who have been purified by our Lenten penance, are now called to live the life of the Resurrection, in which all God’s lambs are cared for, and all his sheep tended.

    Jesus puts the question to us today: “Do you love me more than these?”

  • Saturday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the most vivid Church memories I have was of a friend who was making final vows as a Benedictine many years ago now. It was a very beautiful Mass, but what really stood out so vividly to me was that, while the assembly sang the Litany of the Saints and my friend lie prostrate before the altar, the abbot and some other monks placed the funeral pall over him.  This symbolized that he had “died” to his former life, in order to take up his new life in service to Christ.

    So when we hear today’s first reading about Elijah placing his cloak over Elisha, it calls that memory to mind.  Elisha knew immediately what the action meant: he had been called to serve as prophet to succeed Elijah.  So after protesting he was not ready, he immediately set out to put to death everything in his life that held him back: he slaughtered his oxen and burned the plowing equipment to cook their flesh to feed his people. Then he freely left it all behind to serve God.

    We too have, at some point, the mantle placed upon us.  Whatever our calling is, it involves a death to whatever has come before so that we can freely serve in whatever way God is calling us.  For most, it won’t be quite so dramatic, but there is that death. For example, for those getting married, it’s a death to the single life so that they can serve their spouse in love and fidelity.  We have to be ready to die to whatever holds us back from fulfilling God’s call, so that we can pray with the Psalmist today, “You are my inheritance, O Lord.”

  • The Ascension of Our Lord

    The Ascension of Our Lord

    Today’s readings

    When I was on my pastoral internship in seminary, my supervisor and I talked about the fact that our Liturgy is very wordy. Think about it: all of the prayers and readings and songs – it’s a lot of words to take in in an hour or less, but we do it all the time. So once in a while, I like to reflect on what are the important words in the Mass. We have the words of institution of the Eucharist – those are extremely important. The proclamation of the Scriptures, especially the Gospel, well we can’t discount those either. And let’s not forget the Creed, the words of which were the cause of many arguments and literally fights over the centuries – those words are very carefully chosen.

    But there is one word that I think is the most important, and I bet it’s going to surprise you. Because that word is “GO.” Go: we have to wait all the way to the end of Mass to hear the deacon or priest say it. “Go in peace.” Because it’s way at the end of Mass, I wonder if some people ever get to hear it. But whether we hear it or not, it’s kind of a throw-away, or it seems so. But it’s not. It’s not just a word of dismissal kind of like “you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.” It’s not just a word to get us out of the church and on to the next thing in life.

    “Go” is a word of mission, and we hear it in our Gospel today. Jesus tells the disciples: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” That was what the disciples were to do. They weren’t supposed to just stand there staring up into the sky: they were supposed to GO and do the work of salvation until Jesus returned in glory.

    Obviously, the command that was given to those first disciples is one that we are supposed to get as well. We are supposed to GO and preach the gospel in what we say and what we do. We are supposed to GO and baptize people by leading them to the faith in our witness. We are supposed to GO in peace, glorifying the Lord by our lives. We are supposed to GO and announce the gospel of the Lord. We do that by volunteering at the parish, looking in on a sick or elderly neighbor, living lives of integrity in the workplace. We do that by striving to be Christ-like to every person we meet.

    So I hope that you’ll hear that word “GO” at the end of Mass differently now than perhaps you have before. I hope that you’ll hear it as a calling, as a challenge, and as a sacred duty. I hope you’ll take up the call to GO and make the world into the Kingdom of God among us.

  • The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Stewardship Sunday

    The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Stewardship Sunday

    Today’s readings

    This is indeed our home.  It can be easy to come to think of this place as a school, or an auditorium, or even as a worship space and fills a function and other than that, doesn’t mean anything different.  But as I said in the video this is our home: this is where we come to find peace when we’re struggling; this is where we go to make a difference as we did (earlier today/yesterday) and witness to our faith; this is where we gather to celebrate our faith in God and receive the grace he pours out on us through the sacraments of the church.  This isn’t just any old building, it’s a community, it’s a family, and it is us.

    And because this is our home, we have to attend to it.  We have to fix what’s broken, we have to strengthen what’s weak, we have to invest in a community so it will be here for our children and grandchildren.  And so this is one of the very few times that I will come to you and give the “money” talk.  Because I get it: I know that everyone has demands on their finances, sometimes very significant ones.  But if this is our home, then we are called to make an investment in its present and future, just as previous generations have done for us.

    Our Gospel reading today calls us to give to God what belongs to God.  This then becomes a reflection on the first commandment of the Decalogue: “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me.” This is echoed by the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading: “I am the Lord and there is no other, there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none besides me. I am the LORD, there is no other.”

    Giving to God what belongs to God is foundational. Failure to do that leads to all other kinds of sin. Today, we have in our Scriptures an examination of conscience. Have we been zealous to give to God what belongs to God? Have we taken time for prayer? Have we been of service to our brothers and sisters in need? Have we made teaching the faith to our children our primary priority? Have we been vigilant to prevent anything from getting in the way of celebrating Mass as a family? If we have fallen short in any of those ways, this is the time to reverse the course and get it right. Caesar gets what’s his one way or the other. We have to be the ones who are on fire to give to God what belongs to God.

    We’ve accomplished a lot as a parish in the last year.  I hope you saw that wonderful list in the bulletin a few weeks ago when we presented the parish financial report.  It was a full and engaging year, and we should take pride that we as a parish could do so much together.  I am grateful for the way the parish came together to provide a beautiful sign out on Route 59, that we found a way to repair many of the sidewalks and other concrete around the facility, and to revamp our parish gym.  What a blessing that we could get those things done!  But, just like any home, there’s a lot to be done.  We need to repair the parking lot, the floor in Cana Hall, and the windows in the Commons, to name but a few.  We need to take care of those things and provide space in our budget for when stuff happens, like the air conditioning going out in the school office, or a leaking pipe in the narthex.

    One of the very first things I did when I found out I was coming here was to sign up for online giving.  I wanted to make sure that I was giving expression to my gratitude for all that God does in my life.  And so it is in that spirit that I ask that each of you discern how you can help us to meet our increased budget needs through your offertory support.  While we all have different resources to draw from and commitments to fulfill, we can each give something in support of our parish family.  We are doing our best to use modern conveniences to assist parishioners in their giving.  We have electronic giving options to help meet the demands presented by the fast pace of our lives.

    In the past week or so, you probably received a letter from me asking for your support.  After you have prayed about your response, I would ask that you fill out the enclosed letter of support and send it back to us.  You can mail it to the parish office, to my attention, or you can drop it in the collection basket this week or next.  Please know how very much I appreciate the support you give to our parish.  It helps me accomplish the mission we have as a parish to worship, teach the faith to people of all ages and to reach out to others in acts of service and charity.  Please know of my prayers for you every single day, and how much I love being your pastor.  May God bless us all as we continue to Make Christ Known together!