Good afternoon/morning. I want to start my homily by taking a look at the words of dismissal at the end of Mass. There are four - the original and three alternative endings, which Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI personally chose after the 2005 Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist. The original is “Go forth, the Mass is ended.” I am going to give you all a few seconds before I tell you the three alternative endings, just to see if you can guess what they are for yourselves. . . Okay. The three alternative endings are: “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord”; “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”; and “Go in peace.” The reason for these alternative endings is because the bishops “wanted the final words to reflect a more explicit connection between MASS and the CHURCH’S MISSION of EVANGELIZATION in the world.”
Now, here is an easy question. Which dismissal do I use all the time. . .? If you guessed - “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life” - then give yourselves a one-handed clap. My favorite dismissal is indeed “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.” The reason this dismissal has a special place in my heart is because I am a servant of the “Suffering Servant born of a Lowly Servant”. Christ is the Suffering Servant and his Mother Mary is the Lowly Servant. The Scripture verse that stuck with me throughout five years of Diaconal Formation was Luke 1:46-48: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on his Lowly Servant.” I love our Blessed Mother Mary and her Magnificat is how I strive to live out the gift of my diakonia with joy. You see, I did not choose the diaconate; rather it was God who called me to serve Him and His Church. Through daily prayer and discernment, I strive to do my best to be a good steward of God’s gifts of time, talents, and treasures, to cooperate with His will for my life, and to answer the Church’s UNIVERSAL CALL TO HOLINESS, so that I may glorify the Lord by my life.
Last Sunday, I started the 33-day “Total Consecration to Jesus Christ through Mary” according to St. Louis de Montfort. While this is the second time that I am doing this Consecration, the graces that I have received after just one week have blessed me in so many ways. Some of the readings for the first week of the Consecration really struck me and I want to share them with you in hopes that you are encouraged by the words of Saint Louis de Montfort to stay “firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain,” as we heard Saint Paul urged the Corinthians in today’s second reading. Just listen to what St. Louis de Montfort wrote for Day 2 of the Consecration: “Chosen soul, living image of God and redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. God wants you to be holy like him in this life, and glorious like him in the next. It is certain that growth in HOLINESS is your VOCATION” (St. Louis de Montfort, SM #3). Did you catch two important messages by the saint? First, God wants us to be “holy like him in this life” and, second, our vocation is growth in holiness. It sounds so simple yet so profound and even harder to live if not for the grace of God.
My sisters and brothers in Christ, the reality of our Christian lives is that we are called by God to different vocations in life and, through prayerful discernment, God reveals to us the vocation - or vocations - to which He has called each of us in life. Some of us are called to married and family life as husband and wife, others to single and chaste life, while still others to the priesthood, religious life, the diaconate, and the list goes on and on. Yet, regardless of the vocation that God has called us to in life, as “Christ's faithful, whatever be the conditions, duties and circumstances of [our] lives”, the UNIVERSAL VOCATION for all of us is to grow in HOLINESS (Lumen Gentium, 41). Saint Louis de Montfort tells us to let all our “thoughts, words, and actions, everything [we] suffer or undertake must lead [us] to that end [ - HOLINESS and SALVATION]. Otherwise, [we] are resisting God in not doing the work for which he created [us] and for which even now he is keeping [us] in being” (SM #3). In other words, remember the desire of the bishops to help us make the connection between Mass and the Church’s mission of evangelization in the world, that we may glorify the Lord by our lives.
Now here is the interesting part. Saint Louis de Montfort wrote that the “means of HOLINESS and SALVATION are known to everybody. . . since they are found in the gospel: . . . sincere humility, unceasing prayer, complete self-denial, abandonment to divine Providence, and obedience to the will of God” (St. Louis de Montfort, SM #4). Where have we heard this before, I wonder? That’s right! We heard about these “means of holiness and salvation” in the Gospel readings the past three Sundays - the Beatitudes (two Sundays ago), Jesus’ call to love our enemy and not to judge others (last Sunday), and the conclusion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain (today), in which Christ tells us that we need to cleanse, purify, and sanctify our hearts. When we read today’s Gospel with our mind and reason, Jesus’ teachings are quite straightforward and obvious. Of course, the blind cannot lead blind. No doubt that a student will one day surpass his or her teacher. It is true that a rotten tree can only bear rotten fruit. However, when we reflect on today’s Gospel through eyes of faith and with humble and contrite hearts, we realize that our hearts are the focus of Christ’s Sermon on the Plain.
I recently talked and prayed with a young man who felt God’s call to the priesthood. However, through prayerful discernment and time spent in Adoration of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, Christ revealed to this young man that he needed the Father’s healing power before he could serve others from the fullness and goodness of his heart. My sisters and brothers in Christ, ours are hearts that need to be cleansed through self-examination and forgiveness. Ours are hearts that need to be purified in the furnace of trials and tribulations through suffering and self-denial. Ours are hearts that need to be sanctified through mutual, self-giving, agape love. How else can we heal the blindness of our souls if not through the examination of our consciences daily, forgiving others and especially ourselves so that we can open our hearts to receive God’s blessings and be cleansed? Only then can we truly see each other with eyes unhindered by the “wooden beam” of our own woundedness, hurt, inadequacy, and weakness that oftentimes are hidden in the deepest recesses of our hearts.
The good news for us is, the period of cleansing, purification, and sanctification is upon us in a few days with Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. Praise be to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! that the Catholic Church, in her Wisdom, has given us these readings to help us prepare ourselves mentally, emotionally, (for those of us doing Exodus90 and Magnify90 these past 40 days or so) physically, but most of all. . . spiritually, so that “[all] [our] thoughts, words, and actions, everything [we] suffer or undertake must lead [us]” to HOLINESS and SALVATION. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in today’s Gospel, is preparing us to embark on this Lenten journey through the desert where he will guide us in his ways of self-denial (through the discipline of fasting), self-giving (through the practice of almsgiving), and, most important of all, for us to experience a deep and personal encounter and relationship with love, mercy, and forgiveness Himself through prayer.
Finally, I want to address my fellow 8:00 Mass-goers. Ever since I was received into the Catholic Church in 2008, the 8:00 Mass was “our Mass.” I learned to be an usher from my friends and brother Knights, Jim Nichols & Jim Lynch, and made lasting friendships at the 8:00 Mass. It was hard to start serving at different Masses during Diaconal Formation but God helped me realize that He was calling me to serve ALL His faithful, not just the parishioners at the 8:00 Mass. I am reminded of a quote from Mr. Rogers, who said: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” Change is hard because, most of the time, it is beyond our control; however, what we can do is be “the helpers”, for ourselves and for others even if it is at a different Mass time now.
After all the Masses this weekend, you and your families will have the opportunity to explore the various liturgical ministries at our parish, to learn more about the important roles of these ministries in the celebration of the sacred liturgy, and how you can help our parish make the experience of Mass a beautiful one for all so that we may glorify our Lord Jesus Christ who comes to us in the Eucharistic species of bread and wine. With that said, at this time, I would like to invite Tracy Smith (5:00)/Karen Ochoa (8:00) to come up to the ambo. She will share with you her experience as a liturgical minister and the abundant blessings and graces she receives from serving God and His faithful people, and doing her part to help build God’s kingdom here on earth. She will tell you how you can “glorify the Lord by your life” as liturgical ministers serving at Mass.
