Homily: 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
This week the Church transitioned back
into Ordinary Time. Perhaps for most of
you the switch was rather unremarkable.
Generally these transitions are pretty smooth for me, too, but because
of my vocation, I can never just “roll through” them with little notice. In the breviary, which is the book of prayers
from which all priests must pray every day, there’s always a little note at the
end of a season. For example, this past
Monday was the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which officially ended the
Christmas season in the Church. At the
end of Evening Prayer there’s a simple note that says: “After the feast of the
Baptism of the Lord, Ordinary Time begins.”
Even though I know that this is coming, I almost always pause when I
read that and think to myself: “[sigh] Suddenly, everything just feels so…
ordinary.”
This can be how we feel, right? How many of you were lamenting to put away
Christmas and get back to the “rest of your life? We know that we can’t live our lives in
constant celebration, and that we have to get back to work and school, and so
we go back to “ordinary” things and we leave Christmas, and all the excitement
of celebrating Christ’s birth, packed away in boxes until next year. Can you see that there’s a problem with this,
especially when we apply it to our lives of faith?
“Ordinary Time” never means “just go
back to doing what you were doing before”.
Rather, Ordinary Time is the time to take all of the blessings that you
received during the celebratory season (like those new things that you received
at Christmas) and apply them to your everyday life so as to help renew your
everyday life and thus grow as a Christian disciple. Ordinary Time is the time in which we engage
the hard work of growing in holiness. It
is not “throwaway” time in between the great seasons of Advent/Christmas and
Lent/Easter, rather it’s valuable time given to us so that we might produce
fruit in the world for God’s kingdom.
And so, let me remind all of you of something:
holiness is a great privilege to which we have been called. This is what Saint Paul says to us in the
second reading: that we are “called to be holy”. He says these words as if it is an exclusive
gift that not everyone is chosen to receive.
In reality holiness is unobtainable by ourselves; and so to be chosen to
receive it is a great privilege. Yet,
how often do we see it as a burden!
“Well, I guess I ought to be holy today… ugh!” To be holy is difficult and if we weren’t
called to be holy we wouldn’t be able to obtain it ourselves, but we are called
and so we can obtain it. The problem, it
seems, is that we’ve lost touch with the understanding of the amazing gift that
holiness—that is, Godliness—is; and so we’ve lost the ambition to become holy,
even though we’ve been called to it.
If we have, indeed, lost touch with
the understanding of what a gift holiness is, then how do we turn back to see
it? We have to embrace what is
essential, once again. We have to
embrace those essential works of the spiritual life: Mass, prayer, confession,
mortification, reading, devotion to Mary and the saints, etc. In order to for this to be fruitful, however,
we first need to re-center our hearts and our lives on what is essential: that
is, on Christ, himself. John the
Baptist, in today’s Gospel reading has to point out Jesus to his followers—men
and women who were flocking to him to receive his baptism of repentance. They were so caught up in the work of
repenting, that they were missing the reason for their repentance—Christ,
himself, walking among them. Today, if I
can be so bold, in order to inspire us as we enter into Ordinary Time, I’d like
to do the same for all of you.
Our recently adopted parish purpose
statement reads: “The sacred purpose of All Saints Catholic Parish is to be a
Christ-centered people whose active faith and love of the Eucharist inspire all
in Cass County to be united to Jesus in the Catholic Church.” We, the people of All Saints Parish,
therefore, have as our purpose to be
a Christ-centered people. This purpose
is realized when both our faith is active and when our love for Christ in the
Eucharist is fervent. The first priority
towards realizing our purpose that we identified is “Integration – Uniting in the Heart of Jesus”. The Eucharist, of course, in which Jesus is
truly present to us, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, is where we have the
opportunity to unite most perfectly in the Heart of Jesus. Love of the Eucharist, therefore, is the most
perfect way to become and remain a Christ-centered people.
Now, if we say that our purpose is to
be a Christ-centered people, and that Christ is truly present to us, in the
fullness of his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, in the Eucharist, and in the
Blessed Sacrament that we reserve in the tabernacle, then we have to ask
ourselves a question: is that demonstrably obvious to anyone who walks into our
Church?
Back in the seminary, I took an independent
study on church art and architecture and I read a little book that I found to
be very helpful. It was called “how to
read churches” and it was designed to help someone walk into a church and
discern what the art and architecture says about what the people who worship
there believe. In other words, it says
that the way that our church is designed and arranged sends a clear message
about what we believe; and it captures a very Catholic truth about us humans:
that what we do physically affects us spiritually.
And so the question comes back to us:
If Jesus is truly the center of lives as Christians, and if we believe that
Jesus is truly present to us in an abiding way in the Blessed Sacrament,
reserved in the tabernacle, then why is his enduring presence placed off to the
side in our place of worship? It should
be obvious to anyone who walks into this church that what happens at the altar
is the most important thing for us; and it is.
But what happens at the altar seemingly has been artificially separated
from what is reserved in the tabernacle, which has been relegated to the side
where “those who give it greater importance” can exercise their devotion, but
where it otherwise doesn’t gather much attention. I’m afraid, my brothers and sisters, that this
has had the unintended consequence of hurting our love of the Eucharist instead
of helping it, which, I’m sure, was not the intention when it was moved here.
One of the first goals that we
identified under the priority of Integration,
therefore, is to realize all-day Eucharistic Adoration, because we believe that
having parishioners praying before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament every day,
throughout the day, will be the fuel that motivates and powers everything else
that we will do as a parish. Our goal is
to convert the chapel in the parish hall into this place of enduring devotion
to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.
First, however, I think that we need to make a move to remind ourselves
of the central importance of Jesus’ presence among us by moving the tabernacle
back to the center of our worship space and to surround it with beauty worthy
of one whom we honor as Lord and Savior.
Then, both believer and unbeliever alike would know, without even one
word being spoken, that we are a Christ-centered people, whose love of the
Eucharist inspires and drives everything that we do.
My brothers and sisters, Ordinary Time
in the Church is never ordinary.
Nevertheless, this year, as we enter into Ordinary Time, our parish has
a special opportunity to truly embrace this time for what it is: a time to heed
the call to be holy by re-centering ourselves on Christ through our love of the
Eucharist. I pray that the power of
Christ that we receive in this Eucharist will inspire you to join us in this
bold work of allowing our Lord to renew this parish into a place that proclaims
from every side once again the proclamation of John the Baptist: Behold the
Lamb of God!—so that we, along with all those around us, might encounter him
anew and say once again (or, perhaps, for the first time) those words that
bring us salvation: “Now I have seen and testified that He is the Son of God.”
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – January 14th & 15th,
2017
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