30th Sunday in Ordinary Time Homily
October 29, 2017
Fr. Tim Hedrick
 

       Many companies spend a lot of time and money coming up with a catchy motto or slogan so that as soon as you hear a company’s name, you automatically think about what they are known for. For example:

“Nike…Just Do it!”
“McDonalds…I’m Loving It”
"Subway…Eat Fresh”
“Marines…The Few, the proud, the Marines”               
“Visa…It’s everywhere you want it to be”

       Companies often spend a lot of time marketing their product or organization.  If something is repeated often enough, it catches on and consumers know who they are and what they do. It’s becomes automatic; it becomes engrained in them.

       While we are not selling any products, what if I asked you today about St. Catherine of Siena?  What would we be known for?  If we summarized who we are and what we try to be into a few words, what would it say?  We will come back to that in a minute.

       It’s hard to believe that Fr. Ronnie and I have been here for 3.5 years so far.  Some days, it seems like it has been an eternity.  Other days it seems like it was just yesterday.  When we arrived, we were the “new kids on the block” so we hosted 42 coffees with over 800 parishioners attending those coffees.  We got lots of feedback from the coffees.  We took that feedback and went on a retreat with over 30-40 parish leaders and we prayed and asked God to guide us as we discerned our future.  We specially asked two questions: Where God is calling us as a parish?  What will we be known for as a community of faith?  

       Through lots of prayer and discussion, it become clear as day based on all our feedback that we received at the coffees that we were called as a community of faith to be “Centered on Christ, Ablaze with Love.”  In the same way you associated Nike with “Just do it!” we felt God inviting St. Catherine of Siena to be “Centered on Christ, Ablaze with love.”  Since that retreat, we have been doing a lot of preparation work, but the preparing is over; now it is time to implement everything.

       This weekend we are kicking off a campaign about who we are and what we do as a community of faith.  It’s going to take a while to fully unpack what it means to be "centered on Christ and ablaze with love," but we picked this weekend as the kickoff because of the readings.

       In the gospel today, a scholar of the law asks Jesus what the greatest command is: He gives him not just one answer, but two:  You shall love God with all of your heart, mind and soul.  AND...You should love your neighbor as yourself.  Jesus twofold response is the goal of every disciple.  It’s also the same as our new motto at SCS.  Loving God with all your heart, mind and soul….That’s being centered on Christ.  Loving your neighbor as yourself…that’s being Ablaze with love. 

       In the gospel, Jesus lays out the expectation for each of us is to love God…ABOVE ALL ELSE.  That He would be the most important person in our life.  But we can’t love what we don’t know.  God is hard for us to fathom as humans…St. August said, “If you think you understand God, then that is not God.”  But God wants to be knowable SO He became one of us…he took on flesh and walked among us.  Jesus was born in order to reveal God to us in a way that we can understand as humans. We get to know God through Jesus.  We get to know God, his love for us, he plan for us, his mercy…when we spend time with him…when we encounter the living God. 

       When we know God not just in our heads, but in our hearts, there is no going back.  No changing.  He becomes the center of our life.  It decides everything!! Our hearts will burn with love God and that love will naturally overflow into love for our neighbors…for those around us.  We will want to treat others the way that God wants us to treat them.

       The question for us to reflect on both individually and as a community today: Do I/we know God?  Do I/we know Jesus? Do I/we know the Holy Spirit?  Not in my mind…not head knowledge…but in my heart?  Do I have a relationship…a friendship with God? Is my life centered on Christ?  Am I ablaze with love? Has my encounter with the living God changed my life?

       I know what some of you are thinking….“I'm Catholic...I’ve never had that encounter.  I know about God, but I don’t know him as a friend.”  Well I was there at one point and it was in high school that I encountered God in a powerful way.  I know I am always talking about Rummel (and it drives some people crazy) but this is reason…I came to know God in a powerful way when I was there and it changed my life and I am forever grateful for that experience.  Our goal at St. Catherine is that everyone…every single person in this church and in this parish will have an encounter with the living God.  And everything that we are going to do here at SCS is going to be about fostering that encounter and bringing people closer to God.  

       As we kick off this very intentional effort, I invite you to pray today and everyday for this endeavor.  I invite you to pray for our community as a whole…to pray for an openness to the Holy Spirit to guide us and everything that we do.   I also invite you to pray for yourself…to pray for an openness…maybe for the first time…to God in your life in a powerful way….or a stronger commitment to God.

       This is just the beginning.  We are going to be hearing about all this a lot in the coming months.  As we kick off our “Centered on Christ, Ablaze with Love” campaign we have blue bracelets for everyone after mass. We have adults sizes and children sizes.  The bracelet simply says “Centered on Christ, Ablaze with love”.  It is a simple reminder about who we seek to be as a community of faith and hopefully who you seek to be as a disciple of Christ.  We invite you to wear it each day.  Whenever you put it on, to pray a prayer of openness to God each day.

       There is also a prayer listed on page two in the bulletin.  We are going to ask you to pray that as often as you can.  We are going to ask groups on campus to prayer it before all meetings.  We will pray it each weekend as mass begins.  Imagine what our parish would look like if we all commit to this in a new way?  

       As we celebrate the Eucharist today, we pray for our community of faith…we pray for an new outpouring of the Holy Spirit…a new openness to God.  We pray that whenever we hear St. Catherine of Siena…the first thing that we think about it is “Centered on Christ, Ablaze with Love”