Here is a call to all of our parishioners and school families: come to our church on Wednesday evening at 7:00 PM for a special Mass to begin a 24 hour vigil for our principal, Jan Altevogt, as she prepares for surgery to address the recurrence of cancer in her one remaining kidney. Let’s, all of us, storm heaven for Jan’s welfare and come as well for an hour before the Blessed Sacrament as we hold Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for 24 hours in a row.
And now here is my homily for this Fathers’ Day: On this Father’s Day I would like to share with you some reflections on our parish family, like a father with his family.
As you know we have been going through a major restructuring of our parish to deal with our new realities. Saturday evening we bid farewell to deeply dedicated servants of the parish who were ending their time with us because of the paradigm shift we are going through. Until now we have had a Youth Minister and a Director of Liturgy and a Director of Hispanic Ministry and receptionists, but no more.
An image that might be useful to understand this paradigm shift is how a father and mother might need to shift the way their family functions. When faced with an abundance, a family can pick up the tab for the members of the family to embark on significant adventures, have the freedom from homebound responsibilities so as be free to do what ordinary families could not afford to do.
This is what we have been doing as a parish in the early years of this millennium. We have had salaried professionals to serve the wellbeing of the parish so the rest of our parish family could go and do wonderful things elsewhere and not worry about their homebound responsibilities.
When a lean time comes upon a family, the father and mother need to lead the family into another way of thinking about the family and how we need to take care of each other. Instead of feeling free from taking care of things at home, the family that wants to be loving and healthy moves into a new sense of shared responsibility, a sense of tending to each other, a sense of genuinely caring about each other. Why? So that the vulnerable are not ignored by the hale and hearty, so that the needs of the family are not ignored by the members of the family, and so that everyone gets taken care of by all the members of the family.
My brothers and sisters, we have come upon a lean time. And as father of this family I want to lead us all into a new way of thinking about our parish family. What is this new way of thinking, this paradigm shift? It’s this:
Like a family needing to pull together and think about each other, our circumstances are such that necessitate a new growth in a willingness to die to self for the sake of each other.
You and I have been placed in this parish family by Christ Himself. It’s really not so much that each of us has chosen to be a member of this parish. Christ Himself has called us to be His presence here in Boulder, to bear witness to His love in a town that does not yet know His love. We are called to be so aware of Him, and so loving and caring in our response to each other, and to people in need, that together we live up to our calling to be a chosen people, a royal people, a priestly people who, by our love, make Him known to a people who do not yet have the foggiest notion of how loved they are by our Lord Who is a God of love.
Oh Lord, the harvest here is so, so rich, but we are not yet realizing what our call is here!
So, my dear friends, perhaps our lean times are the Lord’s way of teaching us that we really need to rethink how we will be church to each other.
This paradigm shift means that being a member of this parish family can no longer be a matter of letting someone else do it, whatever the “it” is. We will not have the staff members who have taken care of so much and so many in our name. There will be no staff to do it, whatever the “it” is. So, if you see a piece of paper or trash on the grounds as you pass by, pick it up. Who else will do it? That tiny gesture will be your way of realizing that all of us, if we really are church to each other, if we really are like a family, then all of us need to chip in and do even the most menial of things.
In the Gospel Jesus called 12 apostles, we have their names, to go and bring the good news to the world. The calling must have seemed impossible to them, but it was the Lord who took their willing hearts and transformed the world around them, even within their own generation. We must do the same now!
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