Not a Fund Raising Homily!

 

Many of my professors were distinguished scholars, but three of them made out particularly well.

One of them became Prime Minister of Canada and two were named Cardinals. (As far as I know, I had nothing to do with it!)

The future prime minister, Kim Campbell, taught me Russian politics. Sad to say, those lessons have come in handy lately.

One of the future cardinals taught me the theology of canon law, although that’s not really what he taught—the entire course revolved around one single thought.

It certainly made the exam easy! But that’s not why his course was wonderful. The one idea has shaped my understanding of the Church itself, not only canon law.

Here it is: the Church, like the Lord himself, can be seen as both divine and human: Like Christ, true God and true man, the Church is one reality “comprising a human and a divine element.”

Of course, this wasn’t an original thought from the future Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda; it comes from the Second Vatican Council. Vatican II’s document Lumen gentium teaches that the Church can be compared to the mystery of the incarnate Word.

(It’s not a perfect analogy, of course: Christ’s human nature was perfect, and we know well that the Church’s human element is not.)

If we understand the Church properly, inseparably human and divine, we can avoid big mistakes and reap important benefits.

Very simply, if we see the Church as incarnational, we will not try to separate the visible structure from the invisible mystical Body of Christ. We will never think of our parish as a visible assembly and a spiritual community that can be divided in two. The earthly Church and the heavenly Church are one single reality.

If you love the spiritual Church but reject our messy, human, and sinful Church, you aren’t relating to the Church established by Christ on earth.

Believe it or not, I’m sharing all this heavy-duty theology just to introduce my annual homily on Project Advance! Precisely because the Church is incarnational, truly human, and truly divine, some apparently nonspiritual realities matter every bit as much as the more obviously spiritual aspects of parish life.

Just as Jesus, the incarnate Word, took on flesh and blood in order to fulfill his divine mission, so a parish has bricks and mortar, pews and kneelers, statues and stations.

Even more essential, our parish church relies on sound and light as it fulfills its divine mission.

“Sound and Light” is the theme of this year’s Project Advance campaign. Without both, we would struggle to worship together.

Project Advance 2022 will, as in the past, show the parish’s generosity beyond our walls and borders: your donation will allow us to support the good works of Ukrainian refugee relief, Alpha Canada, Domestic Abuse Services, and Good Shepherd Ministry.

But this year’s campaign will also sustain our most important gathering place: the church. It will pay for replacing our obsolete lighting and sound systems. The lights were failing regularly, while the sound has kept working due to the tender loving care of a generous and skilled parishioner who made regular adjustments.

But he has told us that none of the aging components can be repaired or replaced when one fails catastrophically, as is expected after more 30 years.  For many months we would face having no amplified sound from the sanctuary and the choir loft. So we have taken the initiative by starting this lengthy process now. The new system will also improve the quality of the sound.

If this were a fund-raising pitch, I would happily stop now. With or without all the theology, you all understand the need for sound and light. But I don’t believe in fund-raising pitches—at least not since I first read the story of the wealthy farmer who made his kids work in the barns.

When someone asked him why he didn’t just hire others to tend his cows, he replied “I’m not raising cows, I’m raising children.”

Project Advance reminds all of us, me included, that we support the Church financially because we are children of God. There is an unbreakable connection between the material and the spiritual in our parish. While I may talk about giving to meet our needs, that’s much less important than our need to give.

Certainly numbers are important in a financial campaign, and I am very grateful that our parish has already raised over $100,000. But that’s not the most important figure. The number that concerns me is 88—that’s how many households have donated as of last week—just under 14% of our registered households.

This year, right in front of us, we have great reminders of how visible things serve invisible aspects of our parish mission. They just happen to  have been the fruit of last year’s Project Advance, which paid for the beautiful renovations of our meeting spaces.

I admit that I had no idea how much these renovations and furnishings would make people feel valued at Christ the Redeemer. Let me give you one excellent example of the power of combining welcoming spaces with welcoming faces. It came in an e-mail I got last week:

“If the ‘Lost and Found Coffeehouse’ is able to make a difference for just one person, it has succeeded. I have been lost and slowly I have been found with my beautiful parishioners whom I have been able to visit and share with. This open space in the Parish to come and go, knowing that there is always someone there on certain days is just what I needed. I know that there are plenty more that feel the same. Thank you for this.”

Not much more I can say about that, so please listen to the mastermind behind Lost and Found in this video produced by the Archdiocese to highlight for all parishes the wonderful things that Project Advance can do.

Project Advance Video 2022