Homily Year C Week 20

 Year C Week 25 Sunday Homily 

Good morning! Hello to my new fellow parishioners. I am delighted to be with you and look forward to getting to know you all.

It seems only fair, that before I preach I should take a few minutes of  our time, to tell you a little bit  about myself. My name is Deacon Marc Simard and I am delighted to join you as a parishioner of Saint John the Baptist parish. I am a native Haligonian, in fact a Home of the Guardian Angel  baby ,from where I was adopted and then brought up here. My father was in the Navy, and so we lived back and forth all over Canada and of course on both coasts.  

During my very early years I lived with my grandparents on Fleming drive and attended school at Fleming Heights.  My family moved a lot but always coming home to Halifax . In fact I still live in the  home my father built in Wedgewood Park. I am a widower, my wife passed in July 2015 after a two year battle with cancer 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 support 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 to the margin will always be focused. This love comes from my understanding of what the Church (The 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 parish have had  the opportunity to observe and participate in their efforts.

Today's Gospel speaks of the untrustworthy steward. Jesus was one heck of a story teller. He knew his audience well and understood, as we would expect, our underlying human values. When he tells his parables they are meant to catch our attention and open the door to his message. 

At this time and in particular, in Greek influenced Israel there was not only many Gods but many people driven to the accumulation of wealth or power. This story catches our attention, because the dishonest steward while being dismissed for mishandling the owners property, is then  rewarded for reducing the value of the estate even further.

Our response is one of disbelief ,which causes us to be attentive. through cognitive dissonance,  and it is then that Christ is able to show us, tell us, that in his kingdom wealth is not the important value . Our Christian charity is for others . Keeping in mind that “mercy” in the Catholic context is another word for love. 

It is impossible to both worship God and  the false God of society that calls us to accumulate power and material things.

It doesn't take much imagination to see that today we face a similar circumstance, we live in a secular culture  that values personal control and the accumulation of things that dismisses our Christ driven values.

Our secular society in its desire for inclusivity, excludes us more and more. We ar seen as by society, to be not only irrelevant, but in fact are often seen too stand against their values.  

We are left with a fundamental choice of either 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 Gospel speaks of the values of the kingdom and what our response to it should be , but is not as clear as Matthew's writing of Christ's call to action which we know as the great commission. It is the foundational call, that we are called to by Jesus

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 the 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. I

I encourage you to read this months Diocesan Newsletter that speaks to this call to evangelization, what it means, and the root cause that has led to this required response.

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,  when ever 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 tricked into becoming a confirmation cathecist and those young people forced me to 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 failings the people 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 somehow become irrelevant to many people. 

This downward trend has grown for the last sixty years, until we look out to our churches and see only a declining 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 ?  We have a responsibility in love to reach out to those we are in relationship with, those we love, those we care for to bring them to Christ, for their immortal souls.

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 to the great commission. 

So this is what I ask of each of you. Please reflect, discern how this community may serve the world. Pray deeply , be not afraid of what you are called to. 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.

Do not expect this to be easy, it won't be.  Support the work of the Pastoral Planning team that is addressing these very issues, we as church need to focus on the mission and not maintenance. You have done good work as a parish but now we are called to take on an other role. To reach out to the world to look out more than we look in To as Pope Francis says we are called to be a field hospital to the world. It will be messy,  but will makes us the difference in the world that will bring people to Christ.

So please close your eyes and pray. I would like you to think about what will you do in the next few months to bring those who are lost in your circle to Christ and his church, what will you do in your life to become more evidently Christian what steps will we take to make John the Baptist church a field hospital for those in need in the world... Amen.