Don't Take the Bait! Pauline's Valedictory Message

The following is taken from the homily I preached at the Mass that ended the year for the students of St. Anthony’s Elementary School, at which we bade farewell to the grade seven students.  It is posted here with the kind permission of Pauline Correa, who generously shared her text with me.

Father Gary, Father Xavier, Mrs. Maravillas, parents and grandparents, teachers, staff, students, and most particularly our grade sevens:

How many of you know the expression “take a walk down memory lane”?

Maybe some of you are just too young for that walk!   But the grade sevens, at least, know what I am talking about. They’ll be taking that walk after lunch, as they watch a video that captures many memories of their time at St. Anthony’s School.

But last night I did something different—I was invited to take a swim down memory lane!

I was at the graduation ceremonies for St. Thomas Aquinas High School. Pauline Correa was the valedictorian for this year’s graduating class—a student chosen to speak to her classmates and on behalf of her classmates.

Pauline called it a “swim” down memory lane because “high school is very much like the ocean.  It is vast and intimidating and yet dauntingly beautiful. Shiny and bright on the surface, but even more beautiful when one dives into its depths.”

She remembered her first day in grade eight when she “said a little prayer and took the plunge.” 

Her speech said fascinating things about high school, using images of tides, and floating …. and keeping your head above water.

Pauline’s images were clever and interesting. Then all of a sudden the speech made us sit up straight in our chairs.  It turned into one of the simplest parables I’ve heard outside of the Bible.

“High school is like the ocean,” she repeated. It’s beautiful and wonderful, but you can also drown in it. You can get lost in the dark depths of it.

“And that is why we need God,” Pauline said.

“God is the sunlight.” He is the oxygen we long for and need to survive.

 What a fantastic idea, I thought. You need an air supply to swim under water, and God provides it.

But then Pauline really hooked me. “It is so easy for us to fall for the bait,” she said, “but we must focus on what is important.”

Fall for the bait! Isn’t that the greatest risk a Christian faces—the greatest risk a young Christian faces? The world’s bait of false fun, fake happiness, and conformity to the crowd?

If there is one prayer I have for this fine group of grade sevens, which I have watched grow and mature both in mind and spirit, it’s that you don’t take the bait—that you recognize the things that lure you away from God in whom all true happiness is found.

Pauline gave bold advice to her friends: go to the light. Swim towards the sun. It’s the sun that fuels the water, the sun that gives us strength.

“For without God,” she warned, “nothing is possible.”

What’s true at STA is true at SAS. He has taken you this far, and as high school looms you need to take a deep breath and trust in him.

          I leave you with the words St. Paul wrote to his student St. Timothy: “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for believers in speech, in conduct, in love and in faith.”

          May your high schools be better places because St. Anthony students are swimming in their oceans, with Christian courage and commitment.

Peace in the Storm (Sunday 12B)

Father’s Day is a fine time to mention that my Dad taught me many things. Some of them were simple, like riding a bike. But others were more complicated, like rhetorical questions.

What? You don’t know what a rhetorical question is? Then your upbringing was quite different from mine. My father taught me rhetorical questions when I was still quite young.

Here’s an example: “Do you think I’m made of money?” (I heard that one fairly often.)

Another one was “Do you want to watch TV after dinner or not?” Which loosely translated meant “So are you going to load the dishwasher?”

You get the idea—rhetorical questions were the questions my father asked when he didn’t really expect an answer. Actually, my mother also used them sometimes, like “Who do you think is going to make your bed?”

Our first reading today reminds us that God is a Father, too, and he uses the occasional rhetorical question Himself. Did you notice what he asked Job? “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” Do you think God is waiting for Job’s reply? Obviously not—and of course that’s exactly what a rhetorical question is—a question that’s asked to make a point, not to get an answer.

Just in case Job misses the point, God carries on with another rhetorical question. He asks Job who kept the sea behind closed doors—in other words, who decided the limits of the ocean, who stopped the world from being swept by one great tidal wave?

And if you think this puts Job on the spot, take a look at the rest of chapter 38. God asks no fewer than twenty such questions. Can you tell the clouds what to do? Have you visited the storehouses of the snow?

Of course I feel sorry for Job—how would you like to have a debate with God? But I don’t think God’s doing this to make Job feel small—God’s doing it so that we’ll know how big He is.

Do you remember hearing about the man who said “When I was seven, I thought my Dad knew everything. By the time I turned 16 I discovered he didn't know anything. Now I'm 30, and it's amazing how much he's learned.”

Well, that’s the way a lot of us are with God—only we get stuck at the adolescent stage. We don’t move on to appreciate God’s wisdom and his power, either because we’re too busy rebelling, or just too busy, period. Or maybe we’re just too scared to think straight.

Isn’t that what happened to the disciples in the boat that night?  They knew Jesus well—by this point in Mark’s Gospel Jesus has already cast out an unclean spirit from a man in the synagogue, healed Peter’s mother in law, cast out demons, cleansed a leper, made a paralyzed man walk, and healed a man with a withered hand. How could they still say “Teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing?”

Surely one answer is fear. The disciples knew better, but they were terrified. One of the founders of AA said that fear is the chief activator of our defects. It clouds our thinking—whether about ourselves, others or God Himself.

This incident in the Gospel is particularly dramatic, but the story is as old as humanity. Today’s Psalm tells the same story with a different cast of characters. The seafarers of the Middle East saw God at work as they sailed the seas; they were grateful to Him for the power of the wind that propelled their ships, and the rain that gave them fresh water. But when the waves started to pound and the ship began to toss, their courage melted.

However, like the disciples, the sailors had just enough energy left to cry out to the Lord. And He stilled the storm and hushed the waves, just as He did for the disciples.

So what is it that stops us from asking the Lord to calm the storm of our lives? I’ve already mentioned fear; Jesus mentions something else: a lack of faith. If we don’t believe that God cares, we’re not going to disturb his sleep. If we think he’s not interested in our cries for help, we’ll keep them to ourselves.

And yet our Christian faith teaches that it is normal for a Christian to experience peace in every circumstance. God’s inspired Word tells us so in two of St. Paul’s letters.  In the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he writes “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”

And then comes the promise: “Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  (Phil 4:7, NAB)  To the Thessalonians he writes “may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in all ways.” (2 Thess 3:16).

One thing’s for sure: St. Paul believes Jesus cares that we’re perishing.

So far we’ve seen how fear makes us lose sight of Jesus, while a lack of faith stops us from even looking for Him. But there is another reason why we let life toss our boats around. We lose our peace because we don’t turn to Jesus; we forget he’s right beside us.

Prayer is the shortest path to peace. Not the kind of prayer where we ask God to change things, but the kind where we speak with him about our troubles.

This kind of prayer is a conversation. It helps us answer those two questions Jesus puts to his disciples in the boat:

“Why are you afraid?”

“Have you still no faith?”

As with all rhetorical questions, Jesus already knows the answers. The disciples don’t yet know Him well enough, for all his signs and wonders. That’s clear from what they say to one another. “Who is this man whom the wind and the sea obey?’

At least we know the answer to their question. We have seen the Lord’s ultimate deed of power in the Resurrection—a sign that makes calming the storm seem insignificant. But we still need to know Him better, in order to put our trust in Him. And we need to know ourselves better, too, if we’re to overcome our fears and receive the gift of peace in every circumstance.

Prayer helps us know and trust the Lord, and opens us to knowing our own hearts as well. It is the path to peace.

In church this morning there are young people heading out to the job market in an uncertain economy.  There are high school graduates waiting for the final word from universities and colleges. There are grade sevens looking nervously towards high school.

There are parishioners mourning the loss of a loved one, or facing serious illness. Some face unemployment, others worry about investments. And some of us even worry that things are going too well, and wonder when disaster will catch up with us.

We can start now—whatever our circumstances—to seek peace, in faith, by prayer.

For which one of us doesn’t want that peace that surpasses all understanding?

And that, in case you didn’t notice, is a rhetorical question. Thanks, Dad!

Growing Old Grace-fully (Sunday 11B)

Therese Sangster is a former parishioner in her nineties, blind and rather frail. She now lives in a care facility some distance away so I can no longer visit her regularly.

But when our seminarian Juan was visiting the sick on Friday, I asked him to make an extra trip and take Communion to Mrs. Sangster. When he got back, I asked how he found her.

“She was wonderful,” Juan answered. “She said ‘I may be blind, but I can still tell that you’re good looking!’”

I told him that it was clear Terry Sangster lives by faith and not by sight!

That humorous story captures the spirit of a great lady, but it also introduces the subject of my homily today: growing old gracefully. Terry Sangster is one of those people described in today’s psalm, which says that “the just will flourish like the palm tree, still bearing fruit when they are old, still full of sap, still green…”

When was the last time you heard a homily on the Christian view of growing old?

I think it’s about time. In the first place, of course, most of us will grow old—older, for the most part, than a generation ago. Thinking about aging in terms of our faith is a very sensible thing.

In today’s second reading, St. Paul talks about the attitude a Christian should have to the passing years. While we are on earth, we need to keep one foot in heaven: “While we are in the body, we are away from the Lord.”

At no age, but especially in old age, we should not be overly attached to our earthly life. Paul says plainly that “we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” In his letter to the Philippians he says that our citizenship is in heaven, our true homeland.

He doesn’t mean that Christians have no interest in this world, but that the source of their deepest identity and hope is their faith. You might compare it to the citizen of one country living in another.

All of us have to struggle to balance our daily duties and burdens with the need for prayer and reflection. Although retired people can become very busy, for some a slower place is just what they need to get their spiritual priorities straight. A wise monk has written that “being immersed in our everyday world is what very often prevents us from lifting our minds toward the realities of the life to come.”

Even ill health can be a hidden blessing if it slows us down enough to pray or makes us focus on the shortness of life.

But there’s more to growing old gracefully than just keeping the right balance between this world and the next. To grow old gracefully—that is, to grow old with God’s grace—is first of all to grow.

Sometimes we think that Christians emerge fully-formed from the baptismal font, or from their Confirmation. Or maybe it’s the sacrament of marriage that completes our character. Yet Ezekiel, in our first reading, shows how God worked slowly in restoring Israel: God plants a twig and waits for it to grow into a lofty cedar.

A chapter earlier, Ezekiel prophesies to Jerusalem about the covenant the Lord made with her when she was young—even the holy city needs to grow in accordance God’s plan and purpose.

Nothing about God’s plan seems to be all-or-nothing or all-right-now. The whole Bible is a story of God’s patience with sinful humanity, from Adam and Eve on. And Christians are called to imitate God’s patience even in dealing with themselves. The Letter of James calls us to be like the patient farmer, who waits though the autumn and spring rains before he sees the crop. And St. Paul tells the Galatians they must not grow weary in doing good, because eventually they will reap a harvest.

St. Francis de Sales says “have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them– every day begin the task anew.

Blessed John Henry Newman said “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” Who knows this better than the elderly?

Let’s also look briefly at today’s Gospel, in which Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God.

There was an article in the paper this week about the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It described the establishment of this modern dynasty kingdom was established on a specific date by specific means. If you go to the royal website, there’s a timeline and if you click on it you lean that the kingdom dates to May 25, 1946.

There’s no such timeline for the Kingdom of God. This is one of the most complex terms in the New Testament, but there’s one thing quite certain about it: the Kingdom is a work in progress. Today, Jesus compares it to the seeds that grow slowly and produce a harvest, or to the mustard seed that becomes a great shrub.

Our Lord is speaking of his Church, now spread to the ends of the earth, fulfilling Ezekiel’s prophecy in our first reading. But he is also speaking to us about our own growth as Christians. Like the sower who scattered seed on the ground, we do not know precisely how God’s grace works to produce good fruit in our lives. The Kingdom of God becomes our true homeland only through years of discipleship and perseverance, as we await the final day when God brings in the harvest of our lives.

One of the blessings of life in a parish community is seeing how faithful Christians grow as they get older. I know some children in our parish who have all the qualities of the child saints of history; there are a few young adults living lives of great virtue; there are a number of middle-aged married couples whose lives are heroic in charity and fortitude. But if you were ever to calculate the statistics, the greatest number of saints in our parish are those who have run the race and fought the good fight—the elderly.

Parishioners of a certain age—I dare not name a figure—are the backbone of some ministries, disproportionately generous donors, and remarkably faithful to daily Mass. Some make it to Sunday Mass at great sacrifice. Others provide tireless assistance to their children and grandchildren. And many of them are models of charity and patience at home and in the parish.

Let’s thank God today that we have these women and men who so faithfully promote the coming of the Kingdom in our parish, especially since our world almost seems to have forgotten the virtues of perseverance and fidelity.

The current debate about euthanasia and assisted suicide is being driven by fear—fear of living and fear of dying. The serious Christian does not need to live in fear. As today’s psalm says, they bear fruit when they are old, because they live by God’s grace.

So let us all be inspired by the lasting faith and the good cheer of people like Terry Sangster, and by the prayerful devotion of the elderly parishioners right beside us in church. By imitating their perseverance, we can all grow old grace-fully.

First photos with our new Assistant Pastor

I join the other priests in laying hands on Father Paul Goo, soon to join us at Christ the Redeemer.

Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB is in the background flanked by recently-ordained deacons Lucio Choi and Larry Lynn, while Vicar General Father Joseph Nguyen is to the right with Father Matthew Gerlich, OSB, rector of the Seminary of Christ the King, where Father Paul studied.

The Holy Trinity: No Mystery About It!

There was once a pastor who liked to preach about money. And, truth be told, he wasn’t all that good when he talked about theology.

Still, when Trinity Sunday came around, he knew he’d have to say something more spiritual than usual.

He began with the notion of a mystery.

“There are three kinds of mystery,” he said. “The first kind of mystery is where you know the answer and I don’t. Only you can explain it to me.”

“Then there are mysteries where I know the answer, and you don’t. Only I can explain it to you.”

“And the third is something neither of us know. We can’t explain it at all.”

“An example of the first kind of mystery,” he continued, “is why you give so little to the collection. Only you can tell me.”

“An example of the second is how I’m going to pay the bills with a collection this small. Only I can explain this to you.”

“And an example of the third kind of mystery is the Blessed Trinity. And since neither of us can explain it, today we’ll talk about the first kind of mystery!”

That joke, of course, is founded on a common misunderstanding on what we mean by the word mystery when we’re talking about our faith.

We all know the ordinary definition—a mystery is something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain. We talk about “the mysteries of outer space,” for instance.

And some of us like to read mysteries, novels that deal with a puzzling crime, especially a murder.

Small wonder we get confused when we read in the Catechism that “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian life.”

Whoa. What’s the point of talking about something that’s impossible to understand or explain? Maybe that priest had it right after all, and I should preach about the collection.

Of course you know where I am going with this… Christians use the word mystery in a very special way. In our context, a mystery is a truth that God has revealed to us even though it is beyond human understanding.

Far from being ‘secrets,’ Christian mysteries are things God wants us to know.

St. Paul gives us a perfect example of this meaning in the Letter to the Colossians. He says he has been called “to declare the mystery of Christ” (4:3) and to make it “fully known” (1:25).

This mystery, Paul writes, “has been hidden throughout the ages and generations” but has now been revealed (1:26).

In short, we are celebrating today a great mystery but not something mysterious. The Catechism explains it well: “The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the ‘mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God” (CCC 237).

Although God gave hints of this truth in the work of creation and in the Old Testament, his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is something we could not have understood before the coming of Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

God alone made this mystery known to us by revealing himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit (CCC 261).

With this possible confusion out of the way, I want to go straight to the question that a priest friend of mine calls the heart of any good homily: So what?

What difference does it make that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? What difference does it make that we believe in one God in three persons?

I’m going to answer those questions by asking you one. Do you want to know God? I mean really know him, the way you want to know someone you love.

Because if you want to know God, you have to know him as he is. Not as you imagine him to be, or want him to be, but as he is. And God has chosen to let you know him as he is—as Father, Son, and Spirit.

He didn’t need to do this. After all, he had many centuries of relationship with the Chosen People during which he was known only as the one God. But in the fullness of time God chose to let us know his inner being—and surely there was a reason for that.

The reason why the Catechism calls the Holy Trinity the central mystery of Christian faith and life is simple: “It is the mystery of God in himself.”

“It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith,” and sheds light on them.

The Catechism even makes the bold claim that the whole history of salvation is “the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men ‘and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin’”(CCC 234).

That’s a pretty big “so what?”!

The consequences of this are way too big for one homily. But let’s look briefly at three of them. You can find them spelled out more fully in Youcat, the beautiful Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church (35-39).

Knowing God as Father is knowing God as the Creator who cares lovingly for his children. In the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict, this “sheds light on our deepest human identity: where we come from, who we are, and how great is our dignity.” Jesus knew from where he came, Pope Benedict says, and from where all of us have come: from the love of his Father and our Father.

Knowing God as Son is knowing God’s plan in its fullness. Jesus tells Pilate “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth” (Jn 18:37). And he tells the skeptics “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me” (Jn 8:42).                                  
In fact, knowing God as Son is knowing God. The Son makes the Father known. Jesus “is the image of the invisible God,” as St. Paul tells us (Col 1:17). Do you want to know God the Father? Jesus says clearly to Philip “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9).

And what about God the Holy Spirit? Youcat says something remarkable: “When we discover the reality of God in us, we are dealing with the working of the Holy Spirit” (38).

There are also consequences that come from knowing God as a Trinity of Persons. The mystery we celebrate today is a mystery of communion—the communion in love of Father, Son and Spirit. God is one but God is not solitary. So Christians cannot be solitary: we too must live and love in communion: in the first place with God, but also in communion with one another and in communion with the Church.

If even these points aren’t enough of a “so what” for you this Trinity Sunday, consider what Father James Mallon says in his challenging book Divine Renovation: Bringing your parish from maintenance to mission about the importance of this truth for our mission as Christians.

He writes that “evangelization is always Trinitarian—but not in an abstract, theoretical manner.

“The goal of evangelization is to bring people to Jesus Christ so they can then be filled with the Holy Spirit and come to know God the Father. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption, who speaks to our spirits so that we cry out ‘Abba! Father!’ (Rom 8:15) It is totally Trinitarian.”

The goal of evangelization is “totally Trinitarian,” as Father Mallon says, because evangelization is about bringing people to know God. And, as we have seen, God is “totally Trinitarian.”

So marvelous is this mystery that I really have the opposite problem to the tongue-tied pastor who preferred to preach on money instead. But let me close with something of a commercial nonetheless.

On Wednesday. June 10, I’ll be the first speaker in a series of talks at Holy Rosary Cathedral that are intended to lead people to a deeper friendship with the Holy Spirit—whom we sometimes neglect. The talks are called “The Life in the Spirit Seminar,” and Archbishop Miller will also be a speaker in the series.

There’s information in this Sunday's bulletin. It might be your way of responding concretely to God’s gracious revelation of himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit that we celebrate today.

Don't Just Stand There! (Project Advance 2015)

Not long after my ordination to the priesthood, I visited a beautiful new church. The congregation had waited many years to build it, but at last got the funds they needed by selling some land beside the parish. They got a really good price which solved their money problems.

A week later I was chatting with Archbishop James Carney—who, among his other distinctions, was probably the only Archbishop of Vancouver who had been pastor of a parish. Indeed, he had built Corpus Christi church in South Vancouver.

“Boy,” I exclaimed. “That parish was sure lucky. One land deal and they got their church.”

The archbishop gave me one of his trademarked withering looks.

“Father,” he said, “they weren’t lucky at all. They lost years of sacrifice and community-building by getting their church the easy way.”

It was a lesson I’ve never forgotten. Parishes don’t raise money just to do things: it’s one of the things we do.

Supporting your parish doesn’t just help our congregation, it helps your spiritual life. 

Protestants seem to understand this better than we do.  Luther famously said that there are three conversions every person must experience: a conversion of the head, of the heart and of the purse. 

Billy Graham put it a little differently when he said “there is no clearer indication of a person’s ethical priorities than their cheque book.” 

And the wisest of us all said in the Sermon on the Mount: “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

We’re delighted on this great feast of the Ascension to have with us Bishop Mark Hagemoen from the missionary diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith. It’s a shame he’s not preaching, though, since I know he would have his own way of looking at our first reading, where the angels ask the disciples “why do you stand looking upward to heaven?”

Bishop Mark would almost certainly interpret this as “Don’t just stand there, do something!”

Christianity is an active faith, not a passive one. We’re called to act, and we’re given power to act.

But not all of us are called to the same thing. The second reading tells us that there are many different jobs to be done in the Body of Christ, and we all recall where St. Paul reminds us elsewhere that there are many gifts given to us for these purposes.

The key thing is that no-one is called to be a spectator in the Church. Well, I take that back. There are a few. Their parents are keeping them busy in the crying room.

I’m not going to belabor this point. You know it, the Bible proves it, and I’ve spoken about it many times. We all must contribute to the accomplishment of the mission Christ gave the Church as he ascended to the Father: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.”

In our parish, there is a young man obeying this command by studying for the priesthood. Another’s on the altar today. There are three young people doing so as Catholic Christian Outreach missionaries. We have catechists, baptismal preparation instructors, Alpha volunteers, teachers and all kinds of generous parishioners working hard to spread the Gospel.

But there are folks whose responsibilities make it hard to be on the front line.  Catholic parents can be too busy creating the future Church to become fully involved in evangelization work; some parishioners face challenges from age or mobility. And others face major demands at school or work.

So how do we all participate in the mission? From the very beginning of the Church, one way has been by offering material support. The Holy Spirit enriches the Church with gifts, but not with riches. Part of our baptismal call is supporting financially the work of the Church,

Unlike the call to teach or to preach, this call is for each one of us, according to our means. Like every other parishioner, I’m expected to use Sunday envelopes, and I do. And every year, I donate to Project Advance.

The Sunday collection pays the bills for Christ the Redeemer Parish.  But that’s all it does. Our regular income has little or no surplus, as you’ll see when we provide the financial report next month. We depend on special collections like the one today for Nepal to help those most in need. And we depend on Project Advance for everything else.

Project Advance helped to build our church twenty five years ago and to rebuild our school in 2004.  Project Advance made it possible for us to commit well over half a million dollars to the first phase of reconstruction at St. Thomas Aquinas High School.

Project Advance helped our young adults attend World Youth Day in Spain in 2011, and it will do the same next year’s World Youth Day in Poland. We’ve supported our brothers and sisters in Sudan and in the northern Diocese of Whitehorse thanks to your generous support in past years.

More recently, the campaign has helped closer to home. Our washrooms have been renovated, and leaking roofs repaired. The back outside wall of the church has been redone, just in time to avoid significant water damage.

This work was necessary stewardship of our beautiful buildings, not cosmetic upgrades. And it’s not finished, which is why we’ve continued last year’s theme of “Rebuild my church,” taken from the life of St. Francis of Assisi.

Practical projects may not pull at your heartstrings. But they are an important part of the mission of the Church. Jesus told us to baptize. Where do we do that? In the parking lot?

And to baptize we must first instruct, whether it’s parents or adult converts. We do that indoors as well, and if this year’s Project Advance is the success we hope for, there will soon be efficient projection equipment in all the meeting rooms to support the work of adult faith formation.

Brother and sisters, Jesus has ordered us to go into the whole world and proclaim the good news. But where do we start? This morning/afternoon I suggest we start here, right here where you are sitting. Our “going out” must begin somewhere if it’s to mean anything at all.

One way to begin is by making a gift or pledge today to Project Advance. As the bulletin explains, no gift is too small, because no person here is not called to the mission Christ has given to each and every one of the baptized.