Homily Year C Week 20

 Homily Year C Week 20 (my first homily for the parishes of St. Michaels and St. Peter and St. Paul )

Good morning! Welcome to any visitor here today. Like you , I am brand new here. And hello to my new fellow parishioners. I am delighted to be with you and look forward to getting to know you all over the months ahead of us.

It seems only fair, that before I preach I should take a few minutes of  your time, to tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Deacon Marc and I am delighted to join you as a parishioner of both Saint Michael's and Saint Peter and Paul Parishes. I am a native Haligonian, in fact a “Home of the Guardian Angel”  baby , from where I was adopted and then brought up in Halifax and away . My father was in the Navy, and we transited  back and forth all over Canada.  Always coming home to Halifax, in fact I still live still in my childhood home , in Wedgewood Park. I am a recent widower, my wife passed in July 2015 and am the proud father of three adult children and grandfather of 7 with another due to arrive in mid November.  I have been a Deacon for just four years and until recently was appointed to Saint Benedict, my home parish since 1968. 

I am excited to be here and looks forward to supporting  Father . Already he and I have spent some time together and I am delighted to work with him , supporting and serving this, our community. As a Deacon I am called to be of service to those at the  margin. I have come to understand , even before my ordination, that I have a great love for the new evangelization and this is where my service will always be focused. This love comes from my understanding of what the Church (Christ) calls us to do. I have been privileged to work in a parish that holds the new evangelization as a key value, and through that, the opportunity to observe and participate in their efforts.

As I reflected on today's Gospel I did what I most often do, which is to close my eyes and put myself into the Gospel ... today as a witness of the event , somehow hearing Christ's words as if he was speaking them for the first time. 

I can hear Christ saying "I come to bring fire to the earth and how I wish it were already kindled"  These are words said with passion, even intensity, for me , I can see his eyes shining brightly and see him challenging and preparing the Disciples for what was to unfold for them, not just his death, but their struggle in a world where Christ's message was counter-cultural . He calls them passionately, to NOT just believe,  but to be prepared to live in a world where their words and actions could make them outsiders and lead to division in their society and even families. In a world of many Gods, who each supported separate human endeavours, Christians presented one God , who did not support war and the Roman culture of death , and introduced a world where each believer supported all other believers.

It doesn't take much imagination to see that in our times we face a similar circumstance. We live in a culture of death, a culture where every human believes that they are in charge of their life and want the ability to take life, even their own to meet their own needs. Our secular society in its desire for inclusivity, excludes us more and more as we are to them, not only irrelevant, but in fact are often seen to stand against their values.  

So we are left with a fundamental choice of ignoring our  values and becoming more like the world, or like our earlier Christian brothers and sisters , to listen carefully to Christ's words and the values He teaches us, then act on them.

This passage speaks of the division , but is not as clear as Matthew's writing of Christ's clear call to action which we know as the great commission. Let me quote it. "Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."

Listen to these words carefully!.... They call us; to go, to make disciples, and baptize them... In  grammar , there is an order in these things, and THE important task is making disciples. The call to action is to go to the unchurched and make them disciples and the resultant action is to baptize them. In the early church they heard these message and Christ's warning, as to the price of it,(today's Gospel). 

They gave up their lives in some cases but still in a few brief years the faith Christianity grew from just a small roomful of disciples to enough,  that by the time of the great fire in Rome ( less than 40 years after the crucification ) emperor Nero uses these Christians as scapegoats . By the time of Emperor Constantine Christianity a few hundred year later is already so widespread that the majority of Constantine’s  army is Christian .

So today's Gospel is a call to you and I to be missionary disciples, a call for us to be noticeably Christian . The great modern lie is that faith is and must be a private matter. I cannot recall anywhere in the Gospel where Christ says faith is a solo act, in fact just the opposite. He always is going to the outsider to invite them in , to join the disciples. He tells us that we will face many challenges and even tough choices, but calls us to carry on in his name.

I am NOT a super Christian, in fact in all humility, I may be much better at being a sinner than being a follower of Christ. I was brought up in a singularly secular family. My dad was Catholic and my Mom Anglican... So in our household religion was never brought up, or in any way discussed. 

The only time I can ever remember going to church with my parents was when we lived in Rome and then we went not as Catholics but as tourists,.... and on those occasions whenever I received a sacrament as part of my Catholic school upbringing. 

My conversion had many authors , over many years but really came about when I was convinced into becoming a confirmation cathecist and those young people demanded that I tell them what I stood for. This led me to explore my faith and eventually led me to a conversion , and to developing a personal relationship with Christ.

I often wonder how many Catholics attend Church on a weekly basis who have never entered into a personal relationship  with Christ as their faith stopped maturing  after cathecetics. 

Of course this is not their fault , but rather the failing of the church , which had culture on its side and for nearly two thousand years needed to do no more than build churches and work on vocations to fill these buildings with priests and people. In the process we were so confident of attendance, that along the way we as Church somehow have become irrelevant to many people. 

This downward attendance trend has grown for the last sixty years, until we look out to our churches and see only 12 % of self-identified Catholics attending mass and the vast majority of those attending are as old or older than I am .

So we are facing the challenge of being called by Christ to be missionary disciples in a challenging environment. How can we build up his kingdom, what are we called to do ? 

I am not sure what we in this community are called to, I know that it will involve tough choices and commitment to His church to make disciples. It will involve engaged parishioners discerning what we must do to achieve Christ's call of the great commission. 

So this is what I ask of each of you. Please reflect, discern how this community can serve the world. Pray deeply , be not afraid of what you are called too. Consider how we as a community of Christian believers can engage with the world and bring our communities fully to life. 

This cannot be the action of others , it is our call together to explain to others why our faith is relevant to them and look at what we are doing to make this community a place where many are welcomed, engaged and join us in Christ's call to the great commission.

We will reflect more on this when I preach next, do not expect this to be easy, it won't be. Listen to the Gospel it warns us of the challenge. Christ will bring fire to the world through us , not a fire of death and destruction but rather the fire of the Holy Spirit, a fire of love , caring and through Christ redemption. It is our time to follow Christ, to bring the world to him. Amen.