Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Even though today's homily is written specifically for Immaculate Conception Parish, I have approached this reflection from the perspective of "Missionary Discipleship." You may apply this to your life no matter what parish you belong to).
Each year, the Parish Finance Commission gives a financial report to the parish. Since this is my first year as pastor, I thought it would be appropriate to address you on the state of the parish. However, my focus is not financial even though numbers are important. I would like to share with you my thoughts on “missionary discipleship,” a construct given to us by Pope Francis. After all, a local parish, which is an extension of the universal church, exists not for its own sake, but for the mission entrusted to her by Christ. It is an awesome privilege to part of this mission. Our parish is one tangible way to participate in the Church’s mission. Let me share three points with you.
1. Life Is Mission. My view of life obviously comes from my vocation to the priesthood. When I joined the seminary I was barely seventeen. During the course of my seminary life, I came to realize that my primary calling was not to the priesthood, but to discipleship. Today, I think of myself first and foremost as a disciple of Jesus Christ and my priesthood as an expression of my discipleship. Yet, there is something more basic. My discipleship is the living out of my baptismal promises. It is my baptism that gives me my identity and mission. When I look at it this way, the mission of the Church is the mission of every baptized Christian. You as lay Catholics, and I as an ordained priest, participate in the same mission. Let me take this a little further. We have a mission because we have life; we have life because God has breathed into us the breath of life. The breath we just took… was a free gift. Imagine that we had to pay for that breath. How much would you pay? Here is the deal, then, —the life we have, the persons that we are, our freedom, our intelligence, every breath, and every moment — are gifts. But there is more. Our baptism, our faith, and the Eucharist are also gifts. We have an awesome privilege to use these gifts to carry on the mission of Jesus Christ. This is not a burden… this is an awesome privilege. Our work, for example, is not merely a means for us only to make a living… it is an opportunity to take Christ’s mission into places that we otherwise would have no influence. It is the same with marriage and family. Your marriage and family is at the service of the mission of Christ in the same way my priesthood is at the service of Christ. It all begins at our baptism. I want to liken it to the military. Once you are enlisted in the armed forces, you are a veteran forever. Similarly, once we are baptized, we belong to Christ forever. In other words, all our life we are “missionary disciples.” At the end of our lives, our proudest moment will be to look back and discover that our life was at the service of Christ’s mission.
2. What is the Mission of Christ? One of the very first proclamations of the early church that describes Christ’s mission is found in Acts 10:38. Recall, that the church is only a few days old. Peter proclaimed: “… God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” All the gospels say this about Jesus… that he went about “doing good.” Jesus was the goodness of God given to humanity as a free gift. The mission of Jesus Christ has two dimensions: ‘faith’ and ‘works.’ ‘Faith’ means trying to bring humanity to believe in the God of Jesus Christ, and ‘works’ means continuing the good work that Jesus began. Think about this for a moment, you and I are invited to believe what Jesus believed and to do the same good deeds that Jesus did. This is an awesome privilege. This is at the center of every Eucharist. At each mass, we do not just eat the body of Christ and drink the cup - we BECOME the body of Christ. In reality, we are sacraments of Christ. We are other Christs living in the world. Yes, Jesus died, rose, and has ascended to heaven. However, he has entrusted his mission to us. For this, he has also empowered us with of the Holy Spirit. To the extent that we proclaim the good news with our lives, and to the extent that we continue the good work that Jesus began, to that extent the mission of Christ expands and grows. It truly is up to us.
3. Our Parish: The Tangible Mission. One way to look at the mission of Christ is the parish community. Apart from our individual life and our families, the parish is the most visible sign of the mission of Christ in action. The pastor, the staff, the school, the parishioners, the students, and the various ministries - liturgical ministry, youth and young adult ministry, adult faith formation ministry, the ministry for the religious education of children, the ministry of temporal affairs (finances, human resources, bill paying, the maintenance of our building and facilities), the sacramental preparation ministry (baptism, first communion, first penance, Confirmation, and marriage), bereavement ministry, the food pantry, the social justice ministry, the twinning with our sister parish in Paraguay — are all geared up toward participating in the mission of Jesus Christ. However, to be excellent at this task, we need every parishioner’s unique, prayerful, and passionate participation. Each parishioner must live out his or her call to “missionary discipleship.” First, it requires our most precious and limited resource - time. Second, it requires that each one of us reflects on the gifts and talents God has given us and discern how they can be used to accomplish the mission of Christ. Time and our gifts go together. It can range from the upkeep of the grounds to the liturgical ministries, from volunteering at our food pantry to packing food for students at our school, from hosting a bible study to forming small faith sharing communities, from being a sacristan to volunteering at the children’s liturgy of the word, from singing in the choir to writing reflections for our website, from being a greeter outside the doors to stuffing bulletins on special occasions, from providing food to grieving families to planning the funeral liturgy with grieving families, from being a lector to providing meals to St. Vincent hotel, from being a server at mass to simply interceding for the world from home, from taking communion to the home bound to visiting the sick, from organizing the healing mass to organizing the parish library, from organizing retreats in Spanish to translating the Sunday homilies into Spanish. Our parish is very, very fortunate to have immensely generous, good hearted, and passionate people who are the backbone of our parish mission. I am immensely grateful to all of you who give your time and talents to this holy tasks.
And finally, our faith is at work when we allow God to direct our finances for furthering Christ’s mission. This is true - no parish can exist without the financial contribution of its parishioners. It sustains just wages for parish staff, pays electric, water, and gas bills, maintains our buildings and facilities, and sustains the many ministries of parish. Without the financial generosity of its parishioners, the mission of the parish would be greatly hampered.
When I became the associate pastor in 2008, the parish had a $350,000 debt. There was no Coordinator for Youth and Young Adult Ministries, for liturgy, for religious education, many needs of the facilities remained unattended, and the school staff and parish staff were significantly underpaid. My personal approach was simply this - let us get busy with the mission of Christ and the finances will follow. And this has come true. Whether it was bringing staff salaries to archdiocesan standards, paying off our debt and building healthy reserves, hiring new staff for important ministries, or taking care of our facilities, we have made unprecedented progress. Really, we have made unprecedented progress! For example, for the first time in over 12 years we have two kindergarten classes. The school is growing. More recently, we completed our bell-tower project. However, this couldn’t have happened without your trust, your generosity, and the very hard work of the Finance Commission. Our “Blessing of Ten” program and careful financial planning with “IC 20/20” has put us on a firm financial foundation. My most sincere gratitude to all of you.
However, I believe that we are at a very crucial juncture in our parish. We have a choice to make. Either we can maintain what we have accomplished or take the mission of Christ to new areas. For example, apart from all the other ministries we have, I believe that we must hire an additional staff person who dedicates his or her time to family life. This is because during critical times in the family - divorce, death, sickness - the parish has no person dedicated to accompany the family. There are about 10-15 wedding each year in our parish. We do not offer any post-wedding resources to the new families. Families, new and established, need immense spiritual support. Pope Francis calls for this ministry in his encyclical, Amoris Laetitia. Another area is our school. Our school is proactive in taking children of first generation immigrants and refugees. These children need a full time ESL teacher to help them navigate the complexities of learning a new language and culture. There are many other areas in which we can grow. We urgently need volunteers for the Children’s Liturgy of the Word ministry. In fulfilling these aspect of the mission of Christ, I trust you, your generosity, and your absolute commitment to the mission of Christ. But let me be the first person to take the first step. Besides pastoring two parishes by myself (thus sharing my time and gifts), I am deciding to increase my tithe contribution to the parish by ten percent. May I request you to consider two things: bring your time, gifts, and finances before God. In prayer and in conversation with your family, recommit yourself and your family to the mission of Christ and his Church. Secondly, I hope that the financial resource you dedicate to the mission of the parish is a decision you have arrived at in prayer. Through sound planning please consider “sacrificial giving.” By sacrificial giving I mean, making a sacrifice - setting aside a luxury, an avoidable expense, or even denying yourself something - for our parish’s mission. By sacrificial giving I mean “generosity that costs us something.” Even the smallest sacrifice from each one of us can make can make a big difference in furthering the mission of Christ into uncharted and critical areas of the parish. As I said, I am raising my tithe by ten precent. I am inviting you to prayerfully arrive at any percent to which God leads you. Critical ministries of the parish depend upon you.
May I share two important small but important pieces of information. First, the archdiocese conducted a financial review of Immaculate Conception. The reviewers were very satisfied with the sound practices we employ and the safeguards against financial mismanagement. Let us assure you, that I am not aware of any area in which we are at risk. I am indebted to our staff Deb Bauer, Martha Lombard, Cindy Reaster and the Finance Commission members, Ed McGarry, Janet Burkhardt, Joan Bowling, Lisa Schulte, and Greg Bracket for their hard work and commitment. Secondly, within a few weeks we intend to begin electronic giving. You will be able to donate electronically and automatically. This is make it possible for the parish to receive your financial support more consistently. We will make adequate information available to you very soon.
Let me conclude with these words: May I invite you to evaluate all the gifts God has given you, recommit yourself to the mission of Christ that was given to you at your baptism, dedicate your time and your talents to the mission of Christ, and finally, generously commit your financial resources to the parish so that we can be the presence of Christ in our neighborhood and even in the larger world. Do not wait for the other person to take the first step. Please be the first one.
Today, at this mass, let us rededicate our parish to Mary, the greatest missionary disciple. May the parish entrusted to her care imitate her commitment and generosity. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception: Pray for us! Amen.
- Fr. Satish Joseph