{"id":2272,"date":"2017-09-24T12:13:07","date_gmt":"2017-09-24T16:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=2272"},"modified":"2017-09-24T12:13:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T16:13:07","slug":"25th-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-a-homily-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/25th-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-a-homily-2\/","title":{"rendered":"25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily"},"content":{"rendered":"

25th<\/sup> Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A<\/a>
\nIsaiah 55:6-9
\nPsalm 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18
\nPhilippians 1:20c-24, 27a
\nMatthew 20:1-16a<\/p>\n

Paul says to the Philippians, \u201cChrist will be magnified in my body<\/em>\u201d and \u201cOnly, conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel of Christ.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

To do so begins with, as stated in our opening prayer, by keeping the precepts of the Lord.\u00a0 Do we live according to what Jesus teaches?\u00a0 This begins with keeping the Ten Commandments but not just because they are commandments.<\/p>\n

We must live remembering what Jesus tells us the two greatest commandments are, to love God and to love our neighbor.<\/p>\n

Loving God calls us to show our love in the way we praise God.\u00a0 This can be centered in what goes on at Mass.\u00a0 We all <\/em>come together<\/em> to praise God.\u00a0 As I have said multiple times before, we count on many people to help at Mass.\u00a0 We have lectors, Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, altar servers, ushers, and musicians.\u00a0 We are grateful for those who help us in these roles to glorify God.<\/p>\n

But your generosity in helping our parish doesn\u2019t end there.\u00a0 Some of you help in other ways.\u00a0 We are thankful for those who help with our Martha Ministry for funeral luncheons.\u00a0 We are thankful for the volunteers for our rummage sale and our Rosary and Altar Society.\u00a0 We are thankful for our catechists who volunteer to help with our faith formation program.\u00a0 There are the people who make our festival possible.\u00a0 The list could go on.\u00a0 While we are thankful for those who do help, for some things, like our festival and those who count our collections as well as musicians we do need some new volunteers.<\/p>\n

All these people \u201cglorify the Lord by their lives.\u201d\u00a0 I use this specific phrase because it mirrors the dismissal formula that I generally use at the end of Mass, \u201cGo in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.\u201d\u00a0 We are to take what we receive at Mass, grace, and go out the world.<\/p>\n

I am also aware that we have numerous parishioners who volunteers in our community from our men who lead a weekly Bible study at the Wayne County Jail to those who take Communion to the hospitals, nursing homes, and homebound.\u00a0 There are numerous parishioners who volunteer with groups like Catholic Charities, Habitat for Humanity, and Laurel House.\u00a0 In all these our volunteers follow Jesus\u2019 commandment to love our neighbor.<\/p>\n

You are also generous with your financial contributions.\u00a0 We recently raised $4,000 in an emergency collection for the victims of Hurricane Harvey (with another collection coming for Hurricane Irma and potentially Hurricane Maria).<\/p>\n

You responded last year with great generosity to our diocesan Catholic Ministries Appeal (CMA)<\/a>.\u00a0 All this on top of your weekly giving to our regular weekly collection.<\/p>\n

In all of this, we are \u201cGlorifying the Lord by Our Lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is time to start our CMA for this year.\u00a0 The theme for this year is what I have been talking about, \u201cGlorifying the Lord by Our Lives.\u201d\u00a0 As we begin this year\u2019s appeal, I am happy to be able to say our goal for this year is up just $445 (1%) while the goal for the diocese as a whole is up 3%.<\/p>\n

So, the good news is that after you responded so generously last year, I don\u2019t have to ask for big increases this year.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean we don\u2019t need some to contribute more.\u00a0 Among last year\u2019s donors are people who have passed away or moved, or maybe their income has changed and they can\u2019t contribute as much.\u00a0 Increases by some who can or contributions from new donors will help offset this.<\/p>\n

Here, I want to take the opportunity to speak about our own parish finances.\u00a0 Hopefully you have read our annual report<\/a> that we sent out at the end of August.\u00a0 In the report<\/a>, we told you about the $48,000 deficit for this year.\u00a0 We need to receive more in the regular collections if we are to continue our ministries as they are now.<\/p>\n

I know nobody likes to hear the priest talk about money.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like to talk about money but it is your parish and you need to know what is going on and what our needs are.<\/p>\n

So, I just encourage you to think prayerfully about what you contribute to the CMA and to the parish.\u00a0 You will find an insert<\/a> in today\u2019s bulletin as well as large poster boards in church that talk about how your CMA contributions are used.\u00a0 Please remember that if we don\u2019t make our CMA goal, the parish has to make up the difference.\u00a0 Thus, it doesn\u2019t do us any good to decrease your CMA contribution to put it in the Sunday collection.<\/p>\n

It is your money and you are, in the spirit of the landowner in the gospel, \u2018you are free to do as you wish with your own money.\u2019\u00a0 Here is what I suggest for the average parishioners.\u00a0 For the CMA, please contribute the same amount as last year (perhaps a little more if you can).<\/p>\n

As to your contribution to our regular collection please pray about being able to contribute more.\u00a0 Going back to what I wrote in the annual report, we need about $2\/person more per week.\u00a0 Some will not be able to do that.\u00a0 Others can do more.\u00a0 Please give according to your means.<\/p>\n

Thank you for giving of your time, your talent, and your treasure so that we may all be \u201cGlorifying the Lord by Our Lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A Isaiah 55:6-9 Psalm 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18 Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a Matthew 20:1-16a Paul says to the Philippians, \u201cChrist will be magnified in my body\u201d and \u201cOnly, conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel of Christ.\u201d To do so begins with, as stated in our opening prayer, by …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily’ »<\/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":[82,49],"tags":[343,196,128,344],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-AE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272"}],"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=2272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2273,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272\/revisions\/2273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}