We
welcome everyone to our youth mass today. Jesus
is very hard on the Pharisees in today’s Gospel. In
fact, in a lot of our Gospel readings this week, he is very critical of them. He
tells them that they invent all of these external things for themselves to
follow, yet in their words and their actions, charity of heart and justice are
nowhere to be seen. It is
a tough balance, isn’t it, living our faith in our modern world. As a
priest, I am called to a life of prayer, I am called to practice social
justice, I am called to celebrate the sacraments with my congregation and to minister
to them in different ways – and it is a hard balance a lot of the time. I cannot devote myself to just one of those
things and ignore the rest. I am
sure it is a big challenge for all of you as well, balancing your life of
faith.
And
then we look at what we are confronted with in the world in which we live. I am sure a lot of you teenagers get questions
and comments from some of your friends and teachers at school about your
Catholic faith, from those who really don’t understand what our faith is all
about. You look at news programs on the TV – it seems like everyone is yelling at
other and not trying to find a compromise or to understand the other person’s
tradition or point of view. It is a lot easier to criticize someone that
to reconcile with someone or to gain understanding, isn’t it? In
today’s polarized climate, it seems like you are labeled on thing or another. If
you drive around Tupelo and Lee County, you see churches on just about every
street corner, don’t you? Yet, I went to
the ministerial association meeting last week, which is supposed to be a
meeting of all the churches in Tupelo and Lee County working together, and
there were only 4 churches represented there.
In fact, some of the other churches take pride in not being a part of
that group and not trying to work together – they mock and criticize the other
churches and think that their way of doing things is the only right way. Some of them will go on mission trips to
another country, but they don’t want to work together for Christian unity in
their own community. Seems a little
strange, doesn’t it?
I remember when I was in seminary during my
last year, I was taking a class on the spirituality of the priesthood. Our instructor asked us: What type of priest
are you going to be? He explained that we
cannot be everything as a priest, and so we priests have to choose how we are
going to live out our priesthood. It is
funny, at the time I naively thought that I could be everything I wanted to be
as a priest. As I am running around all
over northeast Mississippi in my duties as a priest and sometimes being busy
from early morning to late at night, I know now what our instructor was saying
was true. That
is the challenge for all of us as Catholics.
How are we going to live out our lives of discipleship? How are we going to live out our faith? We can always make excuses to say we are too
busy to go to mass on Sunday or too busy to pray or too tired to get up for
religious education on Sunday morning when we’ve been out late the night
before. No one is going to decide for us
– each one of us is accountable to God and accountable to the commitment we
make to him.
I
want to say this to all of you – we as a Church are committed to everyone – to
young and old, rich and poor, to anyone who wants to become a part of our
community of faith. I
hope that you youth feel welcome at our parish and feel like you are an
important part of our community – because you are. Thank
you all for taking time out of your busy week to celebrate around the table of
the Lord with us. May today’s Gospel
challenge each one of us to think about the ways we live out our faith.
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