{"id":1213,"date":"2013-10-27T12:35:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-27T16:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=1213"},"modified":"2013-10-27T12:35:18","modified_gmt":"2013-10-27T16:35:18","slug":"homily-30th-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/homily-30th-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-c\/","title":{"rendered":"Homily – 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C"},"content":{"rendered":"

30th<\/sup> Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C<\/a>
\nSirach 35:12-14, 16-18
\n2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
\nLuke 18:9-14
\nOctober 27, 2013<\/p>\n

I have competed well, I have finished the race.\u00a0 I have kept the faith.<\/i><\/p>\n

These are the words Paul writes to Timothy as this letter draws to a close.\u00a0 Paul was a passionate Apostle for Jesus.\u00a0 As Paul writes to Timothy, he has been under house arrest.\u00a0 He continues to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ through letters like this.\u00a0 He knows his life will be given in martyrdom soon.\u00a0 As he looks back on his ministry, he has no regrets.\u00a0 He speaks confidently.\u00a0 I have competed well, I have finished the race.\u00a0 I have kept the faith.<\/i><\/p>\n

This same reading is sometimes used at the funeral of a faithful person.\u00a0 When someone dies, we like to remember the good things they did.\u00a0 When a person has lived a faithful life, this reading can be very appropriate.<\/p>\n

But we are not here today for a funeral.\u00a0 Our Sunday celebration is not about death but new life, new life shown to us in the Resurrection.<\/p>\n

So what message can we hear in this reading today that is appropriate for each and every one of us today?\u00a0 None of us has finished the race.\u00a0 We do not finish until death.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to wait for death to decide if we are living well.\u00a0 We can ask ourselves each day, have I competed well, have I kept the faith.<\/i><\/p>\n

Paul lived his live as a sacrifice, a libation, for Jesus.\u00a0 Do we?<\/p>\n

Paul proclaimed the gospel.\u00a0 Do we?<\/p>\n

Paul knew that even when others abandoned him, the Lord was at his side.\u00a0 Do we?<\/p>\n

How well have we learned our faith?\u00a0 How well have we lived our faith?<\/p>\n

When we are asked about learning our faith, our thoughts often zip back to our childhood with Sunday school or Catholic school.\u00a0 People often think that once we receive Confirmation, we have learned all we need to.\u00a0 Then our faith may go by the wayside for a while.<\/p>\n

When we get \u201cold\u201d, we start thinking about our faith more.\u00a0 People ask why there are so many old people in church.\u00a0 Because they are studying up for the final exam!<\/p>\n

Thinking about the end of our life puts faith into a different perspective.<\/p>\n

As children we learn our faith as \u201crules\u201d and \u201cfacts\u201d.\u00a0 The \u201crules\u201d, centered on the Ten Commandments are important.\u00a0 The \u201cfacts\u201d, like that Jesus died on the Cross so that our sins might be forgiven out of love are important.<\/p>\n

We should never think we have learned it all.\u00a0 Confirmation is not graduation.\u00a0 We have 18 people receiving Confirmation in a couple of weeks but that will not end their faith learning.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I preach each Sunday, to help us learn and grow in faith.\u00a0 It\u2019s why I have been doing presentations about our faith.\u00a0 In the past, Sr. Edna offered sessions for adults and Pat will be doing the same in future.<\/p>\n

But I would like to take a moment to focus on two particular age groups.\u00a0 Today is World Youth Day.\u00a0 We think of youth as our teenagers but the Church also includes 18-35 year olds here.<\/p>\n

Our youth and our young adults are at a crucial point in their lives.\u00a0 Our youth are in that stage of life of moving from just following \u201crules\u201d to asking \u201cwhy?\u201d\u00a0 When no one is around to answer why, faith can diminish.<\/p>\n

Our young adults are moving out on their own, establishing lives for themselves.\u00a0 If faith doesn\u2019t seem relevant, it isn\u2019t a priority and falls off the radar.<\/p>\n

We want to support our youth and our young adults.\u00a0 Of course, we have our parish school and our religion program that we refer to as FAMBRE but as our children outgrown that age group, we have our middle school youth group with fourteen members.\u00a0 We have eighteen in our senior high youth group.\u00a0 I\u2019m happy to say we have fourteen youth going to the National Catholic Youth Conference.<\/p>\n

We have also been working to develop activities for our young adults.\u00a0 Back in January, we started having some events geared to our young adults.\u00a0 We are now started some activities to support the parents in our parish.<\/p>\n

These activities are all geared to make our faith relevant.\u00a0 It is good that we have but there are a lot of people in these age groups that don\u2019t come than do.<\/p>\n

To our youth who aren\u2019t in our youth groups, know you are welcome.\u00a0 They\u2019ll be meeting about 11:45 over at the school.\u00a0 If you are in our youth groups, bring a friend.<\/p>\n

There are also more young adults in our parish than come.\u00a0 Think about it.<\/p>\n

If you aren\u2019t in these age groups, pray for those who are to come.<\/p>\n

As to all of us, may we always live our faith in all we do that we can say the words of Paul, I have competed well, I have finished the race.\u00a0 I have kept the faith.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Luke 18:9-14 October 27, 2013 I have competed well, I have finished the race.\u00a0 I have kept the faith. These are the words Paul writes to Timothy as this letter draws to a close.\u00a0 Paul was a passionate Apostle for Jesus.\u00a0 …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Homily – 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-jz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1214,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions\/1214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}