A Welcoming Parish! (13.A)

Back in those happy days of full churches, a man came to Mass wearing a hat. The ushers asked him to take it off, but he refused. Several folks in the nearby pews did the same, but the hat stayed on.

 The priest noticed this too, and spoke to the man after Mass. He told him he was happy to have him as a guest, and invited him to join the parish, but he explained the traditional practice about men not wearing hats in church. And he said “I do hope you’ll take it off the next time.”

 “Thank you, Father,” the man replied. "And thank you for taking time to talk to me. It’s good of you to invite me to join the parish. In fact, I joined two years ago and have been coming ever since, but today is the first time anyone paid attention to me.”

 “After being an unknown for two years, just by keeping my hat on I’ve had the pleasure of talking with the ushers, several of the parishioners and you. Thank you very much!”

 I’m sure the parish in the story isn’t ours! While we’re not perfect, we’ve been trying hard to make this a welcoming church. It’s a big part of our parish plan to invite people to become intentional disciples.

 And as you’ve just heard, welcoming is an important part of the Christian life.

 In today’s Gospel, Jesus says “whoever welcomes you welcomes me.” That’s a powerful statement. In the first place, those who welcome the Apostles are welcoming the Lord himself. Then he says that those who welcome a prophet—a teacher, a preacher—will also be rewarded.

 Even those who show hospitality with as simple a thing as a drink of water are promised a reward.

 This is a wonderful weekend for Christ the Redeemer Parish. Yesterday, Archbishop Miller blessed our new entrance doors; tomorrow, we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the old doors at the dedication of the church in 1990.

 Our call to be welcoming and inviting was an important part of the Archbishop’s homily at the blessing ceremony yesterday, which was attended by members of the parish pastoral and finance councils who helped to plan the project, and by members of the Project Advance team who helped to raise the funds.

 Here’s what the Archbishop said: “The new doors of this church beckon people, above all but not only parishioners, to come in and be enfolded in God’s love and mercy.

 “But once inside, once nourished by divine worship, we are to push through those doors, which open to the world in need of your witness to the Gospel, your compassion and your willingness to give to others an account of the hope that is within you (cf. 1 Pet 3:15).”

 Thirty years after the dedication of this church to the glory of God, we thank him for how the Gospel has been preached not only in its sanctuary but in the lives of our parishioners. The parish community has certainly welcomed apostles, prophets, and righteous persons, but it has also put faith into action by offering much more than a cup of cold water to the needy, the lonely, and the young.

 I not sure where I fit on that list, but the parish has also welcomed me. Today is the 34^th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood, which means I will have spent more than one-third of my priestly life as pastor of Christ the Redeemer Parish.

 During my years here, I have always experienced your spirit of welcome and kindness, but never more so than during these months of the pandemic, where an astonishing number of parishioners have emailed, texted, and called with words of encouragement at a very difficult and uncertain time.

 I wish the whole parish could have been here for the blessing of the doors; I wish we could have a party to celebrate our thirtieth anniversary. I wish we could be having coffee and welcoming visitors after Mass today.

 But for now, my prayer to God comes from the words of the late Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary General of the United Nations. He wrote “For all that has been: Thanks. For all that is to come: Yes!”

 On-line or in-person, “church never stops” in our family of faith.

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Our parish is blessed this summer by the presence of Joseph McDaniel, a seminarian with the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales. A gifted teacher and speaker, Joseph offered the following reflection after Mass this morning. I hope you will find it as inspiring as I did.

He also presented a beautiful half-hour devotion to the Sacred Heart that you can view here on our parish YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyE-qWkAgkM 

In our lives, we give our hearts to many people and to many things.
We give our hearts to our spouses, our children, our friends, our careers.

To give our heart to someone, to something, is to give of our life and our love, and hopefully, to receive love and life in return.

But we also know that, sometimes, when we give our heart to someone, to something, we do not receive love and life in return.
We receive a wound instead.

We know this from our own experiences, or the experiences of those close to us. 

We know of relationships grown cold because of indifference, dashed upon the rocks of betrayal, or ended prematurely because of death.

We know of years spent building up something in our careers, only to see it taken from us or thrown away by those to whom we entrusted it.

It seems that when we give our hearts to someone, to something, our hearts sometimes become emptied, through both our own voluntary giving and the involuntary bleeding that ensues when they become wounded.

It sometimes seems that the greater the love, the greater our self gift, the greater the possibility of being wounded, and the more it hurts when it happens.

When feel like we have nothing left to give, we may ask ourselves,
“Why bother give my heart to anyone, to anything, anymore?”
“How can I possibly give when my heart has been emptied?”

It is precisely at these moments of emptiness when Jesus says to us,
“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest...for I am gentle and humble of heart” (Matthew 11:28).

When we are feeling hardened and empty of heart, Jesus invites us to draw near to his gentle, humble heart, because he knows exactly what it is like to give of one’s heart to another and to be wounded for it.

When God willed the human family, when God willed each of us into existence, Jesus foresaw each of the many great and small ways in which our sin would wound his own heart, even unto the nails of Calvary.

Yet, he chose to love us anyway, to give us his Heart anyway, even to the point of “emptying himself” on the Cross. And it is from that Heart, as St. Bonaventure writes, that flows the power of the sacraments of the Church “to confer the life of grace” (Office of Readings, Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus). It is to that Heart, that Love of God to whom we bring our own hearts, from whom we can drink “a spring of living water” to refresh us when our own hearts feel wounded and empty.

It is that Sacred Heart of Jesus, who gives Himself to us, here and now, until the end of time, as the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation.

As we approach the Sacred Heart of Jesus, may we come before Him singing for joy, praying together, as St. Francis de Sales wrote at the conclusion of his Treatise on the Love of God:

“O love eternal, my soul needs and chooses you eternally!

Come Holy Spirit, and inflame our hearts with your love!

To love - or to die! To die – and to love!
To die to all other love in order to live in Jesus’ love, so that we may not die eternally.
That we may live in your eternal love, O Saviour of our souls, we eternally sing, “Live, Jesus! Jesus, I love! Live, Jesus whom I love! Jesus I love, who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.” (Book 12, Chapter 13).

Did You Miss Me? (Jesus Asks Us) Corpus Christi 2020

"I'm back! Did you miss me?"

When your spouse, parent, child or friend asks that question after returning from a trip, there's only one right answer. Yes!

But what if, deep down, your answer isn't really yes? What if you realize that you didn't really miss your loved one all that much? 

If that's the truth, that's the truth. It doesn't mean you're a bad husband or wife or parent. But it does mean you've got some work to do on the relationship.

(Although when I used the line on Father Jeff when I'd been away for a week before the pandemic, he replied "well, it was rather nice to have the rectory to myself"!)

On today's feast of Corpus Christi, on which we celebrate the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, we might hear him saying "did you miss me?". How much have we missed coming to Mass and receiving him in Holy Communion?

Some of us, if we are really honest with ourselves, might realize that this long absence hasn't been particularly painful. It's made for relaxing Sunday mornings watching Mass on-line, or not even watching Mass at all.

Of course many parishioners have really suffered deeply from being deprived of the Eucharist. But what if you realize you haven't missed going to Mass all that much?

That doesn't mean you're a bad Christian or a bad Catholic. But it does mean you've got some work to do on your relationship with the Lord.

It could even be a blessing to know just how you feel about the Sunday celebration--an invitation to start thinking and praying about it.

In our first reading, Moses tells the people that God humbled them by letting them hunger. He tested them to know what was in their hearts. Might that not be what God has done with us, during this long Eucharistic fast?

Even for those who truly longed to get back to Mass, the opportunity to receive the Body and Blood of Christ can be a time to reflect on the place that the Eucharist has in our lives--and in our parish.

In the months before the pandemic hit, the parish team worked hard to create a graphic that would show the life of Christ the Redeemer parish in a simple way. Here it is (you'll need to click on it to see the full image):

You can see the various stages through which we move as we grow as disciples, and as a parish. But notice that all those circles revolve around a symbolic Host. At the center of our parish life is the Mass, to which everything tends and from which all these invitations flow.

Let's think today about what is in our hearts as we begin to return to church, taking stock honestly and humbly, knowing that the Bread of Life will draw us ever closer to him and one another as parish life resumes.