Weekly Sunday Homilies

Fr. Joseph's Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A)

Fidelity, faithfulness . . . These pillars which you see throughout the church are made of cedar. They were cut from local cedar, curated and cured, painted with a sand-blast technique to give it a stony appearance painted and restored. They have faithfully stood here for nearly 150 years (yes, we are soon approaching our 150th anniversary in 2031). They stand as a testament to the precise and hi-fidelity engineering or builders past, but also, the faithful work of Creation through which God provided us the materials to build. So, when we see these pillars faithful after nearly 150 years, we’re reminded that God builds with us—especially by building us into His people.

God has been building up the real Purpose of this place, us, the People of God. Our faith is a gift to us from God through the Jewish people and has and will continue to become more universal as more and more hear and accept the Gospel of Christ in His Church. The calling is universal but not in a way that dilutes what we believe! It rejects the particularity that the Chosen People of Jewish faith so cherished and by which God worked, and that universal call has brought us all here today, Jew and Gentile alike. People of all walks of life are called, for the Jews have no missionaries but because of the calling to holiness that Christ has given to everyone, we know that everyone is welcome, and when we get here, though, all of us are called to conversion, letting go of the pieces of our ways of life that need to be remolded into an acceptable gift, a fitting sacrifice of ourselves upon the altar here. If God builds with precision and restoration, then that same God meets us in our ‘fuzzy’ lives and makes us clear.

Maybe you have heard of lo-fi music—it's a popular kind of music that uses the kind of sounds that you would expect to hear from an old record player or a gramophone, that sounds kind of scratchy and fuzzy, not as clear as it might be. It's popular today because in an age of AI where perfection seems fake, something authentic and a little messy just feels more real. And oh, when it comes to us individually in our bad habits or poor decisions that we have all made, all of us can relate to that Lofi music! Jesus has an amazing way of taking our fuzzy messy sides and helping them to become clearer and more universal, more beautiful as we become less self-centered and more self-giving. Following Jesus more closely doesn't mean that we lose who we were before, we just become the high-fidelity versions, cleaned up, renewed, made bright, that Christ knows that we are able to be.

All of this becomes concrete at Mass, where we offer ourselves and where God helps us grow!

And let me tell you, Jesus delights in seeing us grow! Growing with Jesus might appear messy, tears when we realize our shortcomings and when we go and confess our sins, frustration when things seem to be difficult because there is always at least someone who will not like how you are growing in loving holiness. And so, I want to teach you a very basic lesson in growing in holiness that you can practice right here, at Mass, at any Mass you go to, with people around you who are trying to do the same thing: so . . . all of us are called by our baptisms to holiness, but that isn't an idea, that's a way of life. When we go to mass, we say all throughout mass that we are “offering a sacrifice, or that my sacrifice and yours (meaning everyone here) is being offered”, so what sacrifice are you and I supposed to be giving?

Jesus doesn’t want fancy gifts as offerings, or money, or our fame or success, he asks us to lovingly do this: As you get to mass, or when I get ready for mass, say “Lord, help me know and do your will.” Then, take a moment and think about what was good this week, what was bad this week, what was awesome, what was boring, what was the worst, take all of that that you are feeling in your gut and your heart, all the thoughts you are thinking about as you do that and imagine that you are taking all of that up to this altar and placing it on top of the altar, and I am doing the same, and then we I lift up that bread and wine, and they become Jesus’ body and blood, soul and Divinity, that everything we just put on that altar in our minds is now going straight up to God . . . God has called us to do this, and so we respond by doing it at Mass, and God responds to us by feeding us, strengthening us and assuring us that He is with us no matter what happens tomorrow or the next day until we get to next Sunday.

This is the gift of offering ourselves up, this is what faithfulness looks like at its most basic: worshipping God, and asking him to know what he wants us to do: remember the prayer - Lord, help me know and do your will.

Today there are those of you here who are called to become a priest as I felt called years ago. Today there are those of you who are called to become nuns-sisters or religious brothers who either work with others or who focus on prayer. There are those of you called to Marriage. The key is this—no matter what, we are all called to be faithful, and it starts with being truthful: we are truly-fulfilled when we do God’s will, the will of the Father who loves us with tenderness.

Lord, help me know and do your will.