What Can I Offer?

Normally, I would just post the homily I gave at the daily Mass, but today it would make more sense for this post if I start off describing what I did.

They teach us in seminary that there are three reasons to preach: to delight, to teach, and to persuade. Any preacher can, and ought, to rely on the Holy Spirit to supply the right inspiration for the first and the last of those goals, but teaching is very much dependent on the knowledge one has "up there." I found myself seriously questioning what I could possibly teach to the daily Mass crowd here at St. Peter's in Saratoga. Like most daily Mass congregations, they all know way more than I do about life. On top of that, most of the things I know that they don't, they wouldn't really want to know anyway! Then, I had an idea…

As a part of the internship program, I have to look over the statistics for the parish and send a profile back to Mundelein. One of the things I learned was that only about a third of the people registered at St. Peter's attend Mass regularly. (They have just over 3,000 registered parishioners, and they're average weekend Mass attendance is around 1,000.) It occurred to me that this probably weighs on the minds of the daily Mass goers. It also occurred to me that the majority of the people in the parish who don't go to Mass are around my age. So… I got my idea for what I could teach: I can share the insights, arguments, and stories that have made sense to me, touched me, and my friends, and have kept me in church so that they can in turn share them with their friends and neighbors.

Today's Readings were from Deuteronomy and the Gospel According to St. Matthew.

The other night I was leading a discussion group for the 11^th-graders preparing for confirmation here at St. Peter's. I asked them to share their thoughts with me on Jesus and the Church. One girl said something to the effect of, "Well… I like Jesus… he talks about peace and being a good person. But it seems like the Church is just about rules and regulations." Today's gospel reading, in fact, highlights Jesus' relationship to rules and sheds light even on the relationship between him, the mission he gives us, and his Church.

Here's what people have said that make sense to me. First of all, Christian discipleship looks like something. The ten commandments, for instance, show us the bare minimum of what loving God and loving our neighbor looks like. In other words, Jesus never tells us to do something without first showing us how. Second, he never asks us to do anything alone, he has given us the gift of the Church to support our discipleship.

That works for me… maybe you'll find it helpful too.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory Forever!

~J