Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Dear Family,
With a good deal of prayer as well as hope, I may be getting the very best birthday present I have ever received in my long, if not so illustrious seventy-four years: the return of our wonderful Main Sanctuary to an air-conditioned state!!!
We have a new air-conditioning company (family), A.M.I. Dennis and Corey Mullins have my admiration because of the patience they had in working through the fun and games of the permitting department of our fair city.
Hopefully, they will also earn their stripes as competent installers of two new 20-ton condensing units. That happens (happened) tomorrow. (That’s last Wednesday for you all reading this on Sunday. Sufficiently confused? Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention.)
Here’s an interesting tidbit, part of my birthday joy. As you may remember, when we do the ArchBishop’s Charities and Development appeal (ABCD) each year, the amount of money that we raise over our goal is given back to us. This year we had an overage of $26,035.63. Guess what the A.C. bill is going to be: 26,973.00. We’ll scrounge up the 937.37 difference. Cynthia, Sue and Scott assure me that between pancake breakfast and donuts 937.37 is a slam dunk!
At this point let me insert a small commercial for having a little bit of faith that the Lord knows what we need, when we need it. I can make jokes about lots of things, but this part is serious. Maybe I am a little over-sensitive on the issue, but again I think we need to remember that we are a community of faith. There is nothing wrong with having good planning and good accountability practices. But we are NOT a business.
We ARE a faith community, which means that our common purpose is touching the face of Jesus. We do that together, not as a local franchise of McCatholics, but as family who take the time to see each other and listen to each other and experience the Jesus who wants to reveal himself. The day when business practices becomethe model for the Christian endeavor called St. Sebastian’s will become the day when I’ll retire. I’ll be grateful for all the challenges I experienced as a pastor. I may lament that at times the financial ones seemed more compelling than the pastoral ones. But I also will remember that every time I pushed myself back to the pastoral agenda, finances among others things, worked out.
Today is the third of the five Sundays we are spending on Chapter Six of John’s gospel. Have you taken the time to read through it in one sitting as I asked? The Bread of Life discourse as well as the multiplication of the loaves and the walking on the water all combine to give us an incredible overview of God’s love and providence working in ordinary people’s lives. We are some of those ordinary people.
What do ordinary people do when they want to touch the face of Jesus so they can receive the gaze that bestows eternal life? As today’s gospel says.
“Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me…whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.” We listen and come. We focus and believe. We meet Jesus because he is the nourishment we need. It isn’t just physical bread; it’s knowing him as well as we can and believing in his mission to tell us about love. That’s what parish community is supposed to be about, making a place where Jesus can talk.
