Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Solemnity of the Anniversary of the Dedication of St. Pius X Church
    Most of you are old enough (even I’m old enough!) to know the TV show that goes with these lyrics: “Making your way in the world today / Takes everything you got. / Taking a break from all your worries / It sure would help a lot. / Wouldn’t you like to get away? // Sometimes you want to go / Where everybody knows your name / And they’re always glad you came. / You want to be where you can see / The troubles are all the same. / You want to be where everybody knows your name.”  Of course, that TV show was “Cheers” (and now you’ll probably have that theme song stuck in your head).     
     But as we celebrate the Anniversary of the Dedication of this church, we celebrate not only the building, but what the building signifies, what it stands for, what it represents.  So many people find St. Pius X to be a kind, welcoming community, small enough where, at least at the Mass you go to, everybody does know your name, and generally they’re glad you came (we all have off days, right?).  St. Pius X is a smaller community, but it does encourage that sense of belonging and knowing the people at least who come to the same Mass, or join Bible studies, or volunteer together.
    And this building is celebrated because it is a foretaste of heaven.  In heaven, we are known better than we could ever be known here on earth.  Heaven is the place where God wants us to be, where He rejoices in our presence because He made us for heaven.  Heaven is that place where we take a perpetual break from our worries and troubles, basking in the love of the Trinity that brought all things into being, and sustains all things in being.  And this church is meant to remind us of that reality, and also to prepare us for that reality. 
    But sometimes we can get complacent about who is here.  We get so used to having the same people every week, that we can forget that, as people who are configured to Jesus in baptism, our mission is the same as Jesus’: to bring as many people as we can into the joy of heaven, the place where we are known and loved beyond all measure.  And before we know it, because we content with the people we have here, those people start to leave, as generations do, through changing jobs, or moving to be closer to family, or even death, until we’re a shell of the community we used to be.
    The way we used to keep parishes, the communities that gave us a foretaste of heaven, going was simply through baptism.  We conceived and birthed new members of our biological family that we also introduced into the family of God through baptism.  We lived the faith ourselves and shared it with our children, and that faith was also supported by the community.  But we no longer live in a world that supports faith, and we cannot rely on the osmosis of grace simply to do the work for us when we have children. 
    What Pope St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis have all encouraged us to do in the past forty years; what Bishop Boyea and our Diocesan Assemblies have encouraged us to do for the past ten years is not only to keep passing on the faith through baptism of our children, but also to bring in new people to the faith through our words and deeds.  Not pulling other Catholics into our parish from another Catholic parish, but reaching out to fallen-away Catholics, and reaching out to those who have no faith, and inviting them into this relationship with Jesus Christ where their name is known and people are glad they came. 
    Brothers and sisters, this doesn’t happen on accident.  This doesn’t happen by osmosis.  Sharing our faith only happens when we are purposefully doing it.  And if we’re not, we have to ask ourselves, why don’t I want someone to be in this community?  Why don’t I want to share with others a relationship with Jesus?  Are we afraid that it will make this place less of a home?  Are we afraid that Jesus cannot love other people without lessening His love for us?  If this is such a great community, which I know it to be, then why not invite others into that greatness? 
    St. Pius X church was consecrated on 23 September 1956, 63 years ago.  Priests, religious, and parishioners have worked hard to have this place be like “Cheers,” a place where you are known and loved, a place where you can offer your worries to God and be transformed by His grace, a place that anticipates that joy and peace and love of heaven.  Are we willing to invite others into this community?  Are we willing to invite others to the goodness that we have found here?  Do we really want others to have this foretaste of heaven?  Only you can answer that question, and the answer will be manifest in what you do.

How Much to be a Disciple?

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
    How much?  We’ve probably all asked that question, usually buying something.  How much?  Maybe we’ve asked it when we were ready to start haggling over the price, whether listed on the product or told us.  How much?
    So it might seem weird for Jesus to talk about the “cost” of discipleship.  He invites us to ask ourselves if we have enough to be His disciple, using the image of a builder about to construct a tower, or even a king about to attack another kingdom with his army.  In both cases, the individual has to ask: do I have enough? 
    I would hazard a guess that the questions, “How much?” and “Do I have enough?” are probably not questions we readily associate with discipleship.  After all, we can all come to Jesus as we are, right?  How do those questions make any sense?
    And that’s exactly what Jesus wants, and what Jesus deserves.  God gave us everything.  Everything we have in life comes as a gift.  Even that for which we toil is indirectly a gift, as our ability to work is itself a gift from God.  So what does the One who gave us everything deserve back?  Everything. 
    That may seem like a lot, but there are probably some people in our life to whom we wouldn’t mind giving our all.  While married couples may not give their all perfectly, they certainly try to give their spouse anything he or she needs.  Parents, even if misdirected to things of lesser importance, sacrifice just about everything for their children.  Sometimes even simply good friends are the ones from whom we would sacrifice anything: time, effort, money. 
    Think about how foolish it would be to barter when it came to a person we loved.  Imagine a husband saying to a wife, “I’ll give you everything that I am, but you’re going to have to let me keep my weird habit of (fill in the blank).”  If he loves her, and she says that he has to give up whatever for her, he will do it.  The same could be said vis versa.  And if we’re not willing to give that whatever up, then it’s safe to say that we don’t fully love that person.  Of course, a person who truly loves us won’t make us give up anything which is good for us.  But a person who truly loves us does insist that we give up things which cause us harm.
    So, now think of Jesus.  How often do we say, “Jesus, I love you, but if you make me give up (fill in the blank), then I’m going to leave you”?  We may not say it directly, but it’s what’s in our mind at times.  For young people, it’s often the Church’s teaching on sexual morality.  For some families it’s the Church’s insistence that we gather each Sunday and Holyday to worship God at Mass.  I think for others, it has to do with our convenience.
    Right now there’s a committee with representation from across the Diocese looking at how many priests we’re going to have retiring and being ordained in the next 5-10 years, and what that will mean for parishes.  I’ve mentioned this before, but over the next four years, we have around 20-25 priests who will be eligible for retirement, but will only be ordaining around 5 priests.  That’s a net loss of 15-20 priests.  So expecting that each parish will have the same amount of Masses in the same number of places is simply unrealistic.  I’m not clairvoyant when I say that some churches will likely close, others will merge, and Mass times will be different.  And, I know that when Mass times change, people leave; that happened here.  And while for some people, Mass at a particular time is not possible because of a work schedule, and for others it’s not practical due to getting children ready, there are no small amount of cases where I’ve heard and been told that if it’s not the time that person wants, he’s leaving.  Which is to say, “Jesus, I’ll only give you everything if it’s not too inconvenient.” 
    This is also a great reminder for us to pray for vocations.  Sometimes parents are open to having priests, as long as it doesn’t come from their family.  But all young men should be open to a vocation to priesthood.  Maybe that’s how a young man is to give his all to Jesus.
    I’m have no plans to change our Mass schedule.  But if we, in the future, went down to one Mass, would you stop going altogether?  What’s most important is not so much where we go, but that we go.  Changes to parish structures all across the Diocese of Lansing are bound to happen.  Will we stick with Jesus no matter what the configuration is?  No matter what the future holds, are we willing to give Jesus everything?  Are we willing to take up our cross, and give our all to Jesus?

Jesus doesn’t do “gotchas.”  He lets us know that following him has a cost, and that cost is everything.  That’s what He means when He says that we have to “hate” family, and even our own life, and have to take up our cross and follow Him.  On the cross, a person lost everything.  You were separated from family, not being able to join them, but being fastened to the wood of the cross.  You were separated from any dignity, not only because you were killed as a criminal, but, as most scholars say, you were naked as the day you were born.  And of course, you were separated from life, as you slowly asphyxiated, where your lungs filled with fluid and your breaths became more and more shallow until you could breathe no more.  Being on the cross meant giving your all.

Seeing the Colosseum Daily

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    When I was a junior in college seminary, I had the chance to do a study abroad in Rome for the Fall Semester.  My studies were at the Angelicum, not that far from the Colosseum.  In fact, in one of our classes, if you looked out the window, you could see the Colosseum.  The first time I saw the Colosseum, it was amazing.  The tenth time I saw the Colosseum it was pretty cool.  The twentieth time I saw the Colosseum it was ok.  After seeing it daily, sometimes multiple times in a day, it honestly lost a lot of its charm.  But when my parents and sisters came to visit at Christmas, they were so excited to see the Colosseum, and were in awe of it when I took them there.
    What we experience on a regular basis can become pretty boring because we are so used to it.  There’s that phrase that we hear from time-to-time: familiarity breeds contempt.  It can happen with places, even places like the Colosseum.  It can happen with people; how many times do we take for granted those who are closest to us?  It can happen with the Mass.
    Now, this is the point where some of you are about to turn off your hearing aids or your attention, because it’s another Fr. Anthony homily on the Mass.  Contrary to what the Letter to the Hebrews says, Mass might be better attended if it had “blazing fire and gloomy darkness, and storm and a trumpet blast and a voice speaking words…” from the clouds.  And yet, the author states that it’s not that, and implies that it’s something better.
    In Mass we approach:

Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and countless angels in festal gathering, and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.

But we’re used to it.  We’ve been coming, hopefully every week, and it’s like the Colosseum; maybe it was awe-inspiring at one point, or maybe it still is at different points in our life.  But generally, it’s mundane.  The homilies don’t always grab me; the music doesn’t always move me; the readings don’t always seem to apply to me. 
    This is much different from the description of the ambassadors of King Vladimir of Russia in the late tenth century, who, upon attending a Divine Liturgy (think Eastern Rites) at the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, said, “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is no such splendor or beauty anywhere upon earth.”  They probably meant the building.  And, truthfully, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome never got old for me like the Colosseum did.  St. Peter’s always inspired awe, even as I became familiar with the ins and outs of the building. 
    But what we have here is much greater than a building.  And maybe I’m not the best messenger, but Bishop Barron certainly did a great job in his series on the Mass.  I know the parishioners who attended that DVD series told me how much it changed their appreciation of what happens at Mass.  At each Mass, we do enter the narthex, as it were, to heaven, to the city of God, and countless angels worship with us, with their eyes veiled to what we humans are allowed to receive: Jesus, the Body and Blood of Christ, which does not cry out to God for vengeance, as did Abel’s blood, but pleads for our forgiveness.  And united with us, worshipping God the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit are all the saints, including the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, St. Joseph, St. Pius X, Sts. Ambrose, Athanasius, Augustine, and John Chrysostom, your patron saints, and the whole multitude of heaven.  That’s a pretty impressive thing.
    To be honest, I sometimes forget this, so it’s not as if you’re alone in this temptation.  But when I take a minute to sit back and think about it, I remember just what is going on, and I wonder at the great mystery in which I am able to participate.  After all, what we come to is not a what, but a Who, God, who communicates His life through His Word, through the signs, and especially through the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Jesus.  All those things I said earlier may still be true: the homily may not grab you, the music may not move you, and the readings may not seem to apply to you.  But you get to spend time with Jesus, who loves you more deeply than anyone else could, who died for you because He loves you, and can think of no other place better to be than right here with you.
    There are so many places in the world where this simple joy, the joy of coming to Mass, is not possible on a weekly, let alone a daily, basis; where coming to Mass means walking miles, sometimes as many as some of you ran or walked in the Crim; where coming to receive Jesus who shed His Precious Blood for you means you may shed your blood in witness to Him.  Let’s do what we can–preparing for Mass throughout the week; pre-reading the readings before Mass begins; thinking of all the people who need prayers and all the good and bad things that we want to offer with the bread and the wine–to make sure that coming to Mass does not become as routine as seeing the Colosseum every day in Rome.