Called to serve
Dear Friends,
This weekend is the last Sunday for our opening Message Series: “Who Do You Think You Are?” We have been welcoming new faces in church every week, so if you have missed any of the weeks, please go to our newly revamped website to check out the messages. Typically, I try to write a letter every week that compliments the message, goes a little deeper or tells a longer story, while also sharing some parish news. The letters are found here if you ever miss them in the bulletin.
Each message series is kind of a journey for our whole parish. We consider one question or one issue over several weeks and we are able to go deeper on a topic. A wise priest once told me: “Preach to yourself, first. Your homily has to speak to your heart.” These weeks on identity have brought me to consider more deeply my own identity and the factors that drive and shape who I am.
John Henry Newman once said: “To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.” Now, I must admit that I do not like change. I am not sure many people do! But also, as I look back at my life and even these past years as your pastor, I admit how much that I have changed and how often I have been called to change, to adjust, to adapt – above all in service to you. It is clearer to me now that leading is mostly listening.
One of the important adaptations we are trying to make in our parish culture relates to engagement. We are trying to engage our parish more, to activate the base, to get people up and moving, out of the pews and into small groups (as we invited you last week) or just to be part of our hospitality team, our events team, our office volunteers, our – you get the idea! My vision is for our parish to be vibrant, engaging, and ready to serve.
The possibilities for serving in our parish are many. And the idea is that when we serve, we are living out our faith. All Christians are called to serve, at every point in their lives, young and old and everyone in the middle. Service is faith in action. Our service just adapts as we mature in years, and hopefully, in our faith.
Saint John asks, “How can you love the God you cannot see if you do not love the neighbor you can see?” (1 Jn 4:20). Good question. Loving our brothers and sisters is a beautiful way to love our God. And as Gram liked to say, love begins at home. Begin your good deeds at home, in your home life and also in our parish home. Loving our neighbor, serving our brothers and sisters right here in our parish, is a great way to begin to answer God’s call to be a servant. Remember what Jesus said, “I come among you as one who serves” (Lk 22:27).
So, one of the cores of Christian identity is service, or if you prefer, to be servants. “Humbly regard others as more important than yourself” (Phil 2:3) – as Paul tells the Philippians in our second reading. May we be Christians not merely in name, but in word and deed.
Next week begins our series YOLO (you only live once) where we probe more deeply how to be people dedicated to the Christian way of life.
God be with you!
Fr. Joel
