During the Mass on Holy Trinity Sunday (14 June 2014)
+ Today is the 3rd anniversary of my first mass here at St. Joe’s. Has it really been three years?
+ Today is the 3rd anniversary of my first mass here at St. Joe’s. Has it really been three years?
My 3rd anniversary…. for many of you who thought I was 18 when I arrived, this means I’m finally 21
years old!
I remember my first days pretty well.
-- Fr. John threw me the keys and
said, “Good luck!” (He was going on vacation).
-- I remember my first 5pm homily –
I remember that, before I had even started, a man in the front row opened up
his bulletin and began to read it. (And that brought an end to bulletins before
Mass!)
-- I remember wondering whether I
would ever fill Father Nemeth’s shoes.
Despite the rocky start, as I look back on these past three
years, I have found it to be full of blessings. Just the sheer numbers of
things are amazing:
- 20 weddings and exactly 100
babies baptized; 1,550 Masses—which, if you go to Mass every Sunday, would
amount to 30-years worth!
- I can’t count the number of
confessions that I’ve heard, but it is in the thousands.
- And I’ve also realized I have
written over 300 pages of single-spaced, 12 point font, homilies. Yeah, we know, Father Gerber….
I don’t remember every blessing of my 1,097 days here, but I
remember how at the end of many of those days, I would fall asleep thanking God
for his many blessings.
- I thank God for that moment of
joy when I was on the playground field as the 4th grade cheered in
delight that a guy in a black dress would punt a soccer ball as high as the
tower.
- I thank God for that moment at
the Miriam dinner when 30 junior high girls saw the beauty of God’s calling,
and in that same moment, a few moms rediscovered the beauty of God’s grace;
- I thank God for that moment when
I laughed myself silly because my office staff was conspiring to put random
smiley faces in the bulletin, just to see if people were paying attention.
- I thank God for that moment when
a 5th grader came to me crying because she wanted so bad to come to
Sunday Mass, but her parents wouldn’t take her. She opened my heart and
strengthened my resolve.
- I thank God for that moment when
me and parishioner, who was not happy with one of my homilies and having come
to me to talk, began a friendship that continues to this day.
I like to think that, over the past 3 years, I have grown as
a priest. I know a lot of you take pride in the fact that “we broke father in.”
As I look back and see my growth, I realize I have learned
many lessons—many of which I have shared with you. Of all of these, there is
one more I wish to share. There’s a little back-story to it.
Way back in the Autumn of 2011, while you were trying to
break me in and praying that I’d grow, I also started to quietly pray at every
Mass for the growth of the parish. Then, on Holy Thursday of
the following year, during the consecration, and clear as day, God spoke to my
heart, saying: Are you willing to suffer?
For those who have heard my vocation story, you know that
this question is an important one to me. To hear it again—well, it got my
attention. There’s a lot to say about it, but I’ll simply say this: God was
reminding me that if you want conversion and growth, you are going to have to
suffer for it. This is because growing does not come without growing pains.
Growing in holiness will entail suffering for holiness.
Growing in love means suffering for love. Growing as a parish means suffering
for a parish.
Even the phrase “breaking a priest in” involves the painful
word: breaking.
The growing depends on
whether or not we are open to the suffering of the breaking—of whether or
not we see the suffering as a possible growing pain. And not only that, but
also whether or not we love.
When we love, we are
willing to suffer.
I mention this because, during the past three years, I know
that all of us have suffered one way or another—through physical ailments,
through grieving over a loss, through changes at the parish, through advancing
in the faith while others stay content where they are. In this suffering there
has been much breaking.
The question, then, is whether or not there is growing.
Growth only happens when we have the faith, hope, and love,
to embrace the breaking as the doorway to growth.
In other words, we
grow only when we count the Cross a blessing.
Let’s take this truth for a spin.
What if we count the Cross a blessing?—the scandalous,
rugged, painful cross? Doesn’t it mean that if we count even the Cross a
blessing, then we can find the blessing in anything? Even a horrible 20-minute
homily has a blessing in it: and that might be the blessing of growth in the
virtue of patience, or growth in more fervent prayer for your priest. How
marvelous!
When even the Cross is counted as a blessing, then any
suffering can be transformed into growing.
Thus, if we can see the great blessings that reside within
suffering, and that within it is the key to unlock a new springtime of growth
in our parish, then we will not only endure suffering—but we will actually consent to it. That is the key: We will choose to carry the cross.
“Are you willing to suffer for the parish?” Yes, Lord!
One of the blessings of this consent is a deeper communion
with God and with one another. How much gratitude I have and how much more
united I feel with those parishioners who I know have suffered for me and this
parish!—even when those same parishioners differ with me on some of the finer
points of parish life. Knowing that we were suffering for the same God and the
same parish united us.
Suffering has a way of doing that—not just because misery
loves company. Rather, it is because suffering for love bridges a gap. It
bridges brokenness. Suffering for love helps us to grow.
This is at the heart of today’s Solemnity. Today is the
solemnity of the Holy Trinity: a celebration of who God is: that, in his very
nature, He is an eternal communion of love.
This is related to and sums up everything I have said up to
this point. How so?
Because the Holy Trinity shows us, through Jesus Christ,
that entry into this communion comes by way of the Cross. “Follow me” Jesus
says—follow me into this communion. Take up your cross and suffer for love.
Grow!
Right now, there are many people in this parish—some who
aren’t able to be here today because they are sick at home—who are consenting
to the Cross and uniting their sufferings to Christ and winning for us the
graces that sustain this parish and will make this parish a better place. They
embody what it means to be united in one body, one body in Christ. They know
the value of suffering: they see that suffering can be the growing pains for communion.
That’s the last and greatest lesson that I can give to you.
I thank all of you who suffered for me, and who suffered me,
and who continue to suffer for my salvation. There are too many of you to name.
I hope I brought you closer to heaven. You broke me in—which is to say that you
brought me closer to God and to heaven. Should I make it there, I know that I
will spend my eternity praising God for you and for your sacrifices for me to
get me there. Let us be united always in our prayers and in our sufferings.
I leave you with a few verses from one of my favorite
movies, White Christmas.
*sing*
When I worry and I can’t sleep
I
count my blessings instead of sheep
and
I fall asleep counting my blessings.
If
you’re worried and you can’t sleep
just
count your blessings instead of sheep
and
you’ll fall asleep counting your blessings.
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