During the last week before leaving, when everything seemed like it was about to fall apart, I knew that it was only by God's grace that this trip would happen, so I decided to praise God outwardly whenever possible. Each time I saw Humberto (my "partner in crime" for planning this trip) I would say: "Hey Humberto, how often is God good?" and he would reply: "All the time!" And then I would say: "All the time God is what?" and he would reply: "Good!" This helped us to place this trip completely into God's hands and he spoke to us in this storm by providing a solution that we thought wouldn't be possible.
Now that we are back, we will continue to encourage our youth to Amplify their faith in actions so as to grow God's kingdom right here in Cass County. May each of you have the courage to respond to God in this way so as to join us in this good work.
Happy Father's Day to all Dads (natural and spiritual)!
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Homily:
12th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle B
As most of you know, this past week I was with a group of
27 teens and their adult chaperones at Catholic Heart Work Camp in Virginia
Beach, Virginia. Although we call it a
“summer mission trip”, in reality what the teens and adults participate in
during this week is a Catholic summer camp for those who have been initiated
into the faith. The purpose of the camp
is to provide Catholic youth with an experience of discipleship that will lead
them to transition from having a faith that is merely received (that is, a
faith that simply repeats what is taught) to having a faith that is owned (that
is, a faith that is personally acknowledged and accepted as one’s own
choice). It does this by providing a dynamic
environment that mixes high-energy programming with prayerful times of
reflection and, most uniquely, the opportunity to experience what it means to
truly live out that faith in actions by serving those in need through work
projects.
The hoped-for result from this camp experience is that the
teens will bring this new-found energy for owning and living their faith back
into their home communities and begin to act in order to be a force for
building up God’s kingdom here on earth.
Thus, the camp programming emphasizes what we heard from Saint Paul’s
letter to the Corinthians in today’s second reading: that “the love of Christ
impels us” to go forward and to work for the building up of God’s kingdom in
part through relieving the suffering of the poor. I can personally testify that this is what
happened with our teens (and the adults, as well) after this week of camp.
One of the other things that the camp acknowledges is that
there will be challenges to living out this faith once they return home. There are many storms that teens face today:
bullying, separation and divorce of parents, betrayals by friends, and the
pressures that social media place on them to be noticed and liked by their
peers. For many teens, this leaves them
fearful both that God may have abandoned them in their need or, worse yet, that
God is not powerful enough to save them from these storms. In reality, each of us must face stormy times
in our lives and each of us has to wrestle with the fears that come with
them. Thankfully our Scripture readings
speak to this today.
First in the book of Job, we hear that God speaks to Job
“out of the storm”. Right away, we learn
that it is not from outside of the storm that we encounter God, but rather that
we encounter him right there in the midst of it. In other words, God is there with us in the
storm and if we seek him within it, instead of from without, he will speak to
us there. We also hear how God reminds
Job of his power over the storm as he reminds him that he made the seas and the
storm clouds and set for them the limits which they must not pass. Job had feared both that God had abandoned him
in this stormy time in his life and that God, perhaps, did not have the power
to overcome them. God, however, came to
him to assure him of his presence and with great authority reminded him of his
power over every storm.
Then, in Mark’s Gospel, we hear the story of how Jesus and
his disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee after a full day of teaching
when a fierce storm rose up against them; and we hear that the disciples feared
for their lives while Jesus slept.
Finally they gave in and cried out to Jesus: “do you not care that we
are perishing?” Their fear was not that
Jesus didn’t have the power to save them, but rather that Jesus was choosing
not to save them by remaining asleep. In
other words, their fear was that Jesus had abandoned them in their need. Both of passages from Scripture, then, invite
us to acknowledge in our own lives how we fail to recognize God’s presence in
the midst of the storms in our lives as well as how we fail to have faith in
his power to overcome them.
The call that we receive today, therefore, is the call that
Saint Paul gave to the Corinthians in his letter that we read from today: that
is, the call to look at all things in a new way. Paul boldly proclaims that, “once we have
come to the conviction that one has died for all”, we must also acknowledge
that in Christ “all have died”; and since Christ now lives so do we also now
live in him. Therefore, “the love of
Christ impels us”, Paul says, to see all things in a new way: because worldly
death is no longer death and thus there is nothing left to fear: because what
greater fear could there be than the fear of an irreversible death? Therefore, this new way of seeing leads to a
new way of living: for now we must live knowing that Christ is with us in every
storm; and thus we must take courage to acknowledge that he has not abandoned
us to die, but rather that he is with us and that he has the power to calm
every storm. Armed with this knowledge
and courage, we can go forward boldly to serve those feeling abandoned in their
own storms so as to be Christ’s powerful presence to them. This is the message that Catholic Heart Work
Camp hopes to instill into the heart of every teen that participates in one of
their camps, and it is the message that we are receiving in this Mass today.
My brothers and sisters, this level of faith doesn’t bloom
overnight. Rather, achieving this level
of faith is a process of growing and flourishing over time. Nourished by the Sacraments and strengthened
by our works of love, our faith grows and the kingdom of God is amplified here
on earth. Therefore, may the love of
Christ encountered here at this altar impel us to this growth in faith: the
faith that can make God’s kingdom truly present here.
Given at All Saints Parish:
Logansport, IN – June 21st, 2015
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