Fr. Leo's Benevolent Blog!

[As always, you can see the whole Mass here, or just the homily here. ]

Good Shepherd Sunday, 2021,

     The Fourth Sunday of Easter is known as “Good Shepherd Sunday” since the readings in each cycle have Jesus describing himself as the Good Shepherd. It is also a time when we focus on the special ministry of pastors in the Church. In fact, the word for shepherd in Latin is “pastor.” 

Of course, you know the description of the perfect pastor? Here is a chain letter/email that’s been going around for some time:

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The Perfect Pastor

     The Perfect Pastor preaches exactly 10 minutes. He condemns sin roundly, but never hurts anyone’s feelings. He works from 8 a.m. until midnight, and is also the church janitor.

     The Perfect Pastor makes $40 a week, wears good clothes, drives a good car, buys good books, and donates $30 a week to the church. He is 29 years old and has 40 years’ worth of experience. Above all, he is handsome.

     The Perfect Pastor has a burning desire to work with teenagers, and he spends most of his time with the senior citizens. He smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his church. He makes 15 home visits a day and is always in his office to be handy when needed.

     The Perfect Pastor always has time for parish meetings and all of its committees, never missing the meeting of any church organization. And he is always busy evangelizing the unchurched.

     The Perfect Pastor is always in the neighboring parish!

     If your pastor does not measure up, simply send this notice to six other churches that are tired of their pastor too. Then bundle up your pastor and send him to the church at the top of your list. If everyone cooperates, in one week you will receive 1,643 pastors. One of them should be perfect.

     Have faith in this letter. One church broke the chain and got its’ old pastor back in less than three months.

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Christ is the Good Shepherd, but how does this ministry of Shepherd play out in the life of the Church? While the Archbishop is the chief shepherd of the Archdiocese, each parish within the Archdiocese is entrusted to a priest as its proper pastor. (Can. 515 §1). He exercises the pastoral care of the community entrusted to him…so that for the community he may carry out the offices of teaching, sanctifying and ruling (administration) with the cooperation of other priests or deacons and with the assistance of the lay members of Christ’s faithful…” (See Can. 519.)

Okay, great.  But what does a pastor actually do? 

As the staff and the various committees in the parish will tell you, every staff position, every ministry gets a job description. In the biz, we call it the “Position Description and Expected Results Statement.” 

So where is the pastor’s job description?  It’s quite Canons 528-530.

Can. 528 §1 The parish priest has the obligation of ensuring that the word of God is proclaimed in its entirety to those living in the parish. He is therefore to see to it that the lay members of Christ‘s faithful are instructed in the truths of faith, especially by means of the homily on Sundays and holydays of obligation and by catechetical formation. He is to foster works which promote the spirit of the Gospel, including its relevance to social justice. He is to have a special care for the Catholic education of children and young people. With the collaboration of the faithful, he is to make every effort to bring the gospel message to those also who have given up religious practice or who do not profess the true faith.

§2 The parish priest is to take care that the blessed Eucharist is the center of the parish assembly of the faithful. He is to strive to ensure that the faithful are nourished by the devout celebration of the sacraments, and in particular that they frequently approach the sacraments of the blessed Eucharist and penance. He is to strive to lead them to prayer, including prayer in their families, and to take a live and active part in the sacred liturgy. Under the authority of the diocesan Bishop, the parish priest must direct this liturgy in his own parish, and he is bound to be on guard against abuses.

Can. 529 §1 So that he may fulfil his office of pastor diligently, the parish priest is to strive to know the faithful entrusted to his care. He is therefore to visit their families, sharing in their cares and anxieties and, in a special way, their sorrows, comforting them in the Lord. If in certain matters they are found wanting, he is prudently to correct them. He is to help the sick and especially the dying in great charity, solicitiously restoring them with the sacraments and commending their souls to God. He is to be especially diligent in seeking out the poor, the suffering, the lonely, those who are exiled from their homeland, and those burdened with special difficulties. He is to strive also to ensure that spouses and parents are sustained in the fulfilment of their proper duties, and to foster the growth of christian life in the family.

§2 The parish priest is to recognise and promote the specific role which the lay members of Christ‘s faithful have in the mission of the Church, fostering their associations which have religious purposes. He is to cooperate with his proper Bishop and with the presbyterium of the diocese. Moreover, he is to endeavour to ensure that the faithful are concerned for the community of the parish, that they feel themselves to be members both of the diocese and of the universal Church, and that they take part in and sustain works which promote this community.

Can. 530 The functions especially entrusted to the parish priest are as follows:

1° the administration of baptism;

2° the administration of the sacrament of confirmation to those in danger of death, in accordance with can. 883, n. 3;

3° the administration of Viaticum and of the anointing of the sick, without prejudice to can. 1003 §§2 and 3, and the imparting of the apostolic blessing;

4° the assistance at marriages and the nuptial blessing;

5° the conducting of funerals;

6° the blessing of the baptismal font at paschal time, the conduct of processions outside the church, and the giving of solemn blessings outside the church;

7° the more solemn celebration of the Eucharist on Sundays and holydays of obligation.

       Does this sound like the description of the Perfect Pastor I read to you at the beginning of the homily?  More to the point, is it even possible for one man to do everything described in Canons 528-530?  The answer of course, is no.  He is not expected to do all this himself.  But he does have the sacred responsibility of seeing that all these things are being done by those members of the faithful who have been invited, trained, supported and thanked as they engage in their respective liturgical, catechetical and evangelical ministries in the parish.  

       Having been a pastor for many many years, I find the ministry of pastor is best exercised in a manner similar to that of the conductor of a great symphony orchestra. Everyone has their part to play, but there is need for one to guide the life of the parish so that everything happens harmoniously and in the way intended by Christ, the Good Shepherd. It’s the difference between being in charge and being responsible. There are many people who are in charge of the various ministries in the parish, but in the end, it is the pastor who is responsible to make sure that it all happens in the best possible way. This can’t be someone without any skin in the game.  He has to lay down his life for the flock. The stakes are no less than the salvation of every soul in 99504.

     Being a pastor is what we often call a “vocation within a vocation.”  Not all priests are pastors, but all pastors are priests. One of the reasons has a lot to do with our understanding of Christ, the Good Shepherd. While Christ is ultimately THE Good Shepherd, he has entrusted the proclamation of the Gospel to us, the Church.  The ministry of shepherd finds its tangible expression at the parish level in the ministry of the pastor, who by virtue of his ordination acts in the very person of Christ, literally as alter Christus, “another Christ.” As you can see from the job description, it is no small thing to be a pastor. He has a lot he has to keep track of in the community entrusted to his care.

       But in the end, it is not so much what we DO as a parish, as who we ARE as the People of God, the parish family of St. Patrick’s. We are a community of disciples, a family of faith.

       There is a reason they call us “Father” and not just ‘pastor’. This is a vocation, not a job. It is a calling, not a task.  Configured to Christ at the level of his very being, like Christ, the Pastor shows the parish family what is possible for them and leads them there,

       sometimes exhorting them from the front and sometimes encouraging and prodding them from behind.  Always walking with them on the journey of faith, sharing their joys, their sorrows, their tragedies and their triumphs. 

       There is no greater challenge.  There is no higher calling. There is no greater way of imitating Christ, the Good Shepherd.

       So, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, let us take a moment to thank God for those pastors we have had throughout our lives, the good ones and the ones who struggled, who with whatever resources God gave them for their ministry, faithfully served the people entrusted to their care and helped us find our way to Christ.

Greetings, Church fans! The gist of the homily is below. If you want to see the whole Mass, go the St. Pat’s Facebook Page here. If you just want to see the homily, go to our YouTube page here. Blessings!

    The cleansing of the Temple is a very good example of Jesus the Prophet. Like Isaiah and his two smoking firebrands (Is 7:4) or Ezekiel digging a hole through the city wall, (Ez 8:8) Jesus is doing exactly the kind of dramatic act that prophets had always done. Since Twitter and Instagram were not around yet, it was how they got the peoples’ attention. 

       Pastors do the same thing sometimes. At present, I am cleansings the office cupboards. I’m not sure why we need 46 (Count em! Yes, 46!) different boxes and Ziploc bags of tea, 8 jars of coffee, and 23 coffee mugs, not to mention several pounds of condiments and spices. I also found a large variety appliances of dubious purpose.        Clutter creeps up on us and we sometimes don’t realize it until we are staring at a mountain of extraneous encrustations.     

       Jesus saw this happening in the Temple of Jerusalem and took action. So too for us, Lent is a good time to identify the clutter in our lives, how it blocks our path to Christ, and then to get rid of it in no less dramatic fashion. One way of doing so, is to think in terms of “Three Temples.” 

       The first temple mentioned in today’s gospel passage is the Temple of Jerusalem. For the people of Jesus day, this was the dwelling place of God and proof of his abiding presence with his people. It was where true worship was offered to God, and a sign of God’s protection over his chosen people. It was also big business. Endless streams of pilgrims would come, especially in the holy seasons. Obviously, they would need to obtain the necessary animals for sacrifice. This used to happen in the surrounding neighborhood, but as we see, it found its way onto the Temple grounds and even in parts of the Temple itself. Since one could not use Roman coins within the Temple precincts to make the purchase, one needed to change Roman coins for Temple script. Of course, the money changers would charge a nice little commission for their service. This also was big business. This is what really ticked Jesus off.  By driving them all out, he makes the point in no uncertain terms that they have profaned the Temple and all it stands for.  Jesus is very much the prophet calling the people to true worship in the manner of the expected Messiah.

       But then we learn of another Temple, the temple of his own body. This makes a lot of sense once we understand that all previous sacrifices ever offered under the Law of Moses, whether they were to establish covenants, to forgive sins, to remember or to give thanks, were fulfilled and perfected in the one perfect sacrifice of Christ on the cross.  In a very real sense, once he offered himself on the Cross, all previous sacrifices became superfluous.  Our eucharistic sacrifice here today is a propitiary sacrifice by which we participate in the one, perfect sacrifice of Christ.

       Finally, there is a third temple we need to be aware of. Namely, every one of us who is part of the Mystical Body of Christ. As St. Paul reminds us, “Do you not know that your body is a temple* of the holy Spirit within you…) 1 Cor 6:19)         We would do well to play the prophet with ourselves this Lent.  What are those worldly things that crept into our lives that get between us and our relationship with God and others? Lent is a great time to take stock, to make changes and to cleanse the temples of our lives. 

Greetings, Church fans! Below is the text of the homily. As always, you can pick up the whole Mass on the livestream on our Facebook page or just the homily on our YouTube Channel.

I was struck by something the Holy Father said recently:

“Lent is not a time for useless sermons, but for recognizing that our lowly ashes are loved by God.  It is a time of grace; a time for letting God gaze upon us with love and in this way change our lives.” 

Actually, it was the great social commentator, George Burns, who said,

“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.”

He may have had Jesus’ first sermon in mind when he said this. It’s a pretty short message in three parts:

       1. “This is the time of fulfillment.

       2. The kingdom of God is at hand.

       3. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

       This three part structure has pretty much been the norm for homiletics ever since. You may recall that the Holy Father always tries to leave us with “three words” in any of his addresses or sermons. So let’s look at each of these briefly.

       1.  It is a heady thing to realize that we are, in fact, living in the time of fulfillment. There are two aspects to what Jesus was talking about. First, Christ proclaims and the Church affirms that all Old Testament prophecies are fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Second, all previous sacrifices, whether to establish covenants, to forgive sins, to remember or to give thanks, were fulfilled in the one perfect sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. This truly is the time of fulfillment.

       2. Precisely because this is the time of fulfillment, the Kingdom is at hand, both temporally and practically. Too often we look for God in the exotic and mysterious. But to be Catholic is to believe that through the sacraments, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, there is no part of our life, even our worst parts, to which God is not present.

       3. The gospel or “Good News” is that because of his sacrifice on the Cross and because that is so immediately accessible to us in the sacraments, the price for our sins has been paid. The only possible (and necessary) response is gratitude. Belief in the forgiveness of sins leads us to turn away from those very sins and live in the fullness of grace with Christ and each other. 

       This Lent, may we live as people of fulfillment who embrace the Kingdom and return to grace.  

Let us recognize that our lowly ashes are loved by God.  Let us allow God gaze upon us with love and in this way change our lives. 

       1. “This is the time of fulfillment.

       2. The kingdom of God is at hand.

       3. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”