13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
June 26,
2016 4:00pm and 10:00am
Saint Margaret Parish, Bel Air
Repetition
Did you
ever have a teacher who kept repeating things to make sure the class learned
the lesson? I remember a French teacher
I had in high school.
He spoke
in French for the entire class period and kept repeating new phrases like, “Comment allez vous?” – which means “How are you?” He wanted to make sure we learned them.
Or,
have you ever heard a priest repeat his one point in a homily – maybe three
times? 1) He tells you what he’s going
to say, then 2) he says it, and then 3) he tells you what he said.
The Repetition of “Journey”
In
today’s gospel, Luke repeats the word “journey”
four times.
He does
this as he talks about Jesus’ travel, his journey
from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem in the south. Luke wants to make sure we hear this word.
Jesus
is on a geographical journey, but
Luke is also conveying that he is on a spiritual journey. He is in the
process of doing his mission on this earth.
And
Luke is also making the point that Jesus wants us to see our entire life as a journey.
We are in process, travelling, on the way to our destination the whole
time we are on this earth.
My Sense of Journey
When I
realized that this was the gospel for this weekend, my last weekend here at Saint
Margaret’s, I thought – how appropriate!
This
theme of journey has really been dominant
in my spiritual vision for us. We as
persons or persons of faith are on a journey.
We are in
process, travelling, on the way to our destination. We are all human, imperfect, and still becoming
the persons God made us to be.
So I believe
that we are to take each other and I am to take you as you are. Being welcoming and inclusive is very
important.
In
today’s gospel, when the Samaritans are unwelcoming to Jesus, the disciples
want to rain down fire upon them and treat them as good for nothing. But Jesus says no, let’s just respectfully
move on.
So Jesus
wasn’t even excluding from his care those who had excluded him. So, accepting one another as human and still on
the journey – that is to be the
hallmark of us as a parish and a Church.
Maybe
we can state it another way. The positive
requirement to be here and be part of this community is simply the desire to be
on the journey with Christ.
The
gathering song that we sang at the beginning of Mass says this so
beautifully. We are to “walk humbly with God.”
“Walk humbly with God” on the journey
of life. This is what we are to be all
about.
Thank You
For just a minute, I want to change focus and offer some
words of thanks.
I thank all of you, the people of Saint Margaret’s, for
these ten years. I thank you for your
faith and for your your generous support of the ministry, services and programs
that make us Saint Margaret’s.
I thank you for your patience with me. I have my own idiosyncrasies and I have made
some mistakes and I am grateful for your understanding and patience.
I thank the many of you who have volunteered in one way or
another. It might have been baking a
casserole for Our Daily Bread, teaching religion, assisting here at Mass and on
and on it goes – there are about 100 opportunities to participate here.
There are 950 listed volunteers in the parish and another
700 in our school – that’s over 1600 listed volunteers and that is
wonderful. I thank all of you.
Finally, I want to publicly thank the parish staff. They are a wonderful, dedicated and talented
group of women and men who really give of themselves to this community.
I have been very blessed with them. So, to all of you, I say thanks this
weekend.
May the peace and love of the Lord always remain in your
hearts. Amen!
