Thirty Third Sunday in Ordinary time Year C

 Thirty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Theme : We live in a culture of relativism that tells us that what Christ teaches is out of date or misunderstood by us. That somehow these universal and eternal truths should be changed to reflect modern values. Our response is in Prayer that we  take on the mantle of Christ and are given the strength and desire to take on change and response to God’s charge to "Go and make disciples, baptize them and teach them to observe all that I have commanded you."

Next week is the feast of Christ the King and the end of the church year. Then we will prepare for His arrival during advent . So now we hear, end of time readings. In the old testament and the new today we are told the day he returns will  come and we hear of the signs and challenges we may face. In the letter from St. Paul he speaks to the Thessalonians, who were anticipating the return of Christ within their lifetimes , and he warns them not to live  in idleness in this waiting period but rather to work quietly and earn their own living.

Rest assured I am NOT here to speak to you of end times. I only know, that that timing  is in God's  hands and  that our roles is to live our lives in Christ. 

Christ is telling us to get on with the mission of the church , with our lives not to stop and wait for the end but just keep going.

Each of us were baptized in the faith. With water and the oils used in the sacrament  transformed us to service.We received the attributes of Priest, Prophet and king.  In this moment the Holy Spirit filled our bodies and made us new. The Holy Spirit  is the agent of the trinity that provides us the  potential to be Christlike. It is through baptism, that we have the potential to leave behind our human nature , our darwinian behaviours that makes us attempt to dominate the world around us , for the benefit of our offspring and instead  we become cheek turners and Christ followers , who live his beatitudes. 

This is not a time limited option. When baptized, we become disciples and that is an indelible role that accompanies us to eternity. This is not easy, as is testified in the Gospel.  As Christ says" By your endurance you will gain your souls" 

So what does this really mean to us , as individuals and members of the parish of Saint John the Baptist . First remember that we believe in one God. As believers we all want to know God and understand him. Fortunately we can look to Christ, the human and still God, and know that we he teaches us , how he lived his life, shows us what God is. This simply because when we look to Christ, we see God. If we follow Christ then we are invited by the Holy Spirit  and our Triune God to become like God.

Being Catholic is not culturally mainstream any more. Those things that Christ has taught , these God behaviours do not readily match the values of our secular age. We are surrounded by a culture of death, where we end the lives of the elderly and of babies in the womb at our own command without reference to the God who gave us life. A culture of relativism that tells us that what Christ teaches is out of date or misunderstood by us. That somehow these universal and eternal truths should be changed to reflect modern values. Not to say that the church doesn't grow or increase in it’s understanding of what Christ has taught us. This is done in the revelation of understanding of the Gospel and rooted in the writings and understandings of the church fathers but is not rushed into like the cultural fads of our age.

Our path is not an easy one, there was a time when we could expect our youth to take up the banner, but as we look out to our church we see that this is no longer the case .

Here is the good news, in a survey published this summer , while less than twenty percent  of Canadian Roman Catholics attend church on a regular basis, eighty percent of those who were brought into the church through baptism or culturally STILL see themselves as being Catholic. 

You see our faith is sticky. Unlike any other christian tradition, those that were connected to the Catholic Church still self identify as Catholic. More interestingly a vast majority of these same unconnected Catholics tell us that they would come back to church if it was worth their while.

So this sets two challenges before us. The first is that we must be an invitational church that proposes Christ. This does not mean standing at a corner or the entrance of a mall with a kettle collecting money and selling our faith. Rather  we are asked to live our live as Christians and to do so visibly, not angrily but quietly and radically as Christ has taught us.  Let people ask us , why we are different and then we can explain and invite them here . Let us invite those, in our family who have fallen away with the busy ness of life  to rejoin us here. You see if we do not do this, there will be no church here for them to come to in not to many years.  

The second challenge is to create an environment that is welcoming to the unchurched, that when they come to our doors they experience something that is worth their while.

Studies of growing churches show that this is done by focusing on the three H’s. Hospitality, Hymns and Homilies. We need to welcome the stranger, to greet them joyfully , to help them adjust to our strange Catholic behaviours and to make sure that they feel un-judged and smilingly invite them to return. We need to provide great music , well performed and liturgically focused. This is not a challenge for our gifted musicians alone, but all of us. Outsiders will want to see us singing joyfully as a community to the lord. Lastly our homilies need to great, they need to be spiritual, relevant to the world and understandable , not filled with Roman Catholic  jargon, to the unchurched.  The three H’s make great liturgy but only make a foundation for a host of other activities in areas such as fellowship, social justice , outreach, and discipleship.

This calls us all to dig in , to share our gifts, to help build up the kingdom in whatever role we are able to take. More on that on another occasion.

A number of Parishioners are working on  this. They are called the Pastoral Planning team , and they have been working for months to look at the strengths and weaknesses of the parish, they are tasked to consider new ideas, to review ministries , to look to work with other groups that do great things, to share with them or support them. 

This group was asked to look at these opportunities as well as the challenges we as a community face. They are looking, not just at the now, but how things may look in three to five years from now and to consider strategies to deal with this future. All of this will be shared with Pastoral council and with you  and the Diocese. 

After all there is nothing worse than a plan which once developed sits on a shelf. So sharing it will be important ... Change is inevitable, those that don't adapt or plan for changing times can disappear. We are in age of disruptive change, look at businesses that don't adapt they disappear or become niche players. 

So we must use our catholic tradition of observing, judging and then acting. This is what the pastoral planning team is doing and preparing a plan for you.

There is the caveat , as we move to Christ ,under the framework of the great commission, there are forces that may hold us back, the first is our human desire to avoid change, the second is the possibility of insufficient resources . Lastly and I fear the greatest challenge, is that whenever the evil one sees us move to Christ, he exploits human weaknesses to create division, to create conflict, to create a sense of fatigue and an environment of fear.

So I ask and beseech you, as you say your daily prayers, to pray also for the community and specifically for the pastoral planning team . Pray also for yourselves to take on the mantle of christ and give you the strength and the desire to take on change and his charge to "Go and make disciples, baptize them and teach them to observe all that I have commanded you."