What Our Future Needs: Homily for the 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time

30^th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                   October 29, 2023
Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette

When I started here, we averaged between 400 and 450 people at Mass each weekend. Covid dropped us to around 250. The current average is near 300. On average, we have about 30 funerals a year. We have about a dozen baptisms and 5 weddings a year, but both of those numbers include people who no longer live here, but came for historical reasons. To put it simply, we are shrinking.

I say this so you understand why I often mention evangelization and why I spent the last two weeks on the importance of going to Mass every Sunday. I know it can be discouraging when someone tells you what you’re doing wrong or what you should do better. I’m sure hearing these numbers is discouraging in its own way. But here’s some hope.

Our collections now are actually higher than when we had more people. Participation at Mass is better, with more people singing and responding than before. We have several bible studies every week and seasonal small groups we didn’t use to have. We have annual retreats and parish missions we didn’t used to have. We spend thousands of dollars a year helping the elderly in our community pay important bills.

I’m not flattering you when I say that St. Paul’s letter today could apply to you: “you became a model for all the believers” and that you really do “serve the living and true God.” Statistics can tell us how many people have faith, but they can’t tell us how deep that faith is. And it is deep here. I’ve come to know some of you personally and had the pleasure of seeing your faith grow deeper and stronger.

Sure, I fuss at you from the pulpit sometimes – I’m supposed to make you feel guilty now and then. That’s part of calling you to ongoing conversion. But I also brag on you sometimes, telling friends about your perseverance, your kindness, your generosity, your patience with my faults. It’s not possible for everyone to hear those moments or to see the gentleness in confessions or private meetings. Sure, some people who left did so because of what I’ve said or done. I’ll work on that, but some people will leave no matter what I do.

But this isn’t about me. St. John’s is alive, even if we don’t have all the things that bigger, wealthier parishes have. So why the dire statistics? Because I want to keep St. John’s alive. Not just surviving, but growing and maturing. And it is possible. For all the shrinking of Jeanerette’s population, there are a lot of people in this city – of all ages – who don’t have much faith, if any. That’s not failure, it’s potential.

The era of Catholic Culture is over. The method of sustaining the Church simply by having babies and taking care of our own is no longer working. St. John’s… most churches really only have one option if they want to survive the next 3 generations: evangelization. Evangelization can’t be an extra thing we do sometimes. It has to become a top priority. It’s even in the name of our parish: John the Evangelist.

Notice I said “our” and “we.” Evangelization is not my job, it’s ours. St. Paul’s letter reminds the Thessalonians that “from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth” and that “in every place your faith in God has gone forth.” Evangelization isn’t just the work of the professional apostle, but of every member of the Church. Catholics in the US are somewhat infamous for not evangelizing. We tend to make fun of the people that evangelize. Be honest, how many of you have heard a joke – or cracked one yourself – about Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Pentecostals who go door-to-door? I definitely have.

Now, there are good reasons to be skeptical of those groups and their methods. I’m not saying we should all knock on doors every day. That’s just one potential tool to use. No, my point is that most of us don’t really evangelize at all. Part of the reason is that most of us don’t really believe it’s necessary. Maybe we were told about it once or twice, but it was never made a serious priority in our daily experience of the Church. Another reason we don’t try is that most of us weren’t taught how to evangelize. Or we were taught poorly. People love to quote St. Francis as saying “preach the gospel always, when necessary use words.” He never said that. St. Francis constantly used words to preach. Yes, example matters a lot, but don’t forget that Jesus is literally the Word of God. The word “preach” means using words. We should live the gospel above all, but we must also speak it.

Jesus’ answer about the greatest commandment is crucial here. To “love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” is the first commandment. That is living the gospel. Despite only being asked for one commandment, Jesus immediately adds a second because you can’t keep the first one by itself. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is part of the first, not an add-on.

Think about how you love yourself, how you love your own soul and salvation: you pray, read scripture, study the faith, go to confession and Mass. How often do you put yourself in a position to hear the gospel through these things? If you love others as you love yourself, what are you doing to help them hear the gospel like you hear it?

As with loving yourself, this takes time and discernment. The answer isn’t to stand on the corner shouting about Jesus. Start with relationships you already have. Pick 2 or 3 people who aren’t living the gospel but who you can have a conversation with. Pray for their conversion daily. Once or twice a month, make a deliberate effort to talk with them: coffee, lunch, a phone call. In that conversation, ask questions about what matters to them and what they believe. Really listen to them. Then, using your words, invite them to the next step. If they’re invested in beauty or service, point them to where those things are found in the Church. If they’re suffering, share with them some aspect of what we know about redemptive suffering. If they’re curious, share something we believe.

Whatever motivates them, try to connect that to some part of Catholic life in whatever increments you think they can handle, but be deliberate about drawing them a little bit closer. This will require effort. You’ll need to pray a lot, keep reaching out, and probably teach yourself more about the Gospel. You’ll have to be patient but persistent. You’ll need to keep the focus on loving them as a person without reducing them to a project. If you deliberately invest in, genuinely love 1, 2, or 3 people this way over the period of 2 or 3 years, 1 or more of them will probably have a conversion. Then they become part of your Catholic circle and you can look for a new person to put on the to-be-loved-and-evangelized list. See if you can think of a name or two right now whom you could love in this way. I’ll put some resources to help with all this in the bulletin next week and link them to the online copy of this homily.

If half of our 300 try this and only half those have any success only half the time, that’s still like 35 potential converts in a year. Even a fraction of that could make a huge difference over the course of 5 or 10 years because the new members start to bring even more people in. And all along the way, those who are making disciples grow in their own faith. “To love God and our neighbor.” If you remember, that was the “mission statement” I offered at my very first weekend homily here as a new pastor. We’ve been doing that. we’re doing it now. But we’re never done, are we? Love is never static. I know you love God. I know you love your neighbors. I just want you to love them more and have more of them to love. With God’s grace, I know you can do that too.