Is 44, Ps 63, Titus 3, Mt 28 April 23, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
“Make disciples of all nations.” That’s what we’re here for. That is the mission of Vermilion Catholic, a Legacy of Mt. Carmel. To make disciples. Jesus sends us to all nations and to all nations we will go. First, however, we begin with our own children, our own community. Elsewhere, Jesus even describes this mission as something that radiates outward: first Jerusalem, then the surrounding area of Judea and Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth. Well, Vermilion parish is our Jerusalem, Acadiana our Judea & Samaria, and from there? All the world.
So that’s what we aim to do, day-by-day, week-by-week, year-by-year… to make disciples in our own home. Notice that Jesus did not say “go baptize everyone,” but “go and make disciples.” Baptism is a necessary part of that mission and sometimes, like today, we get to fulfill that necessary part in a more direct and obvious way. Seven Baptisms, five Confirmations and 1st Communions. Truly, it’s a joyful day when we can celebrate the fruitfulness of this ministry, the success of our efforts to make disciples.
Not that that means we’re done, of course. To be a disciple means many things. Being a student is one of those things. Even as we teach you the finer points of chemistry, the breadth of language and expression, the practicalities of fitness, and the tangles of human history, we are still contributing to that mission given us by our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. For it was God who wrote the laws of the universe, gave human beings the capacity for speaking and thinking, and who presides still over the unfolding of history. Even when you’re not in a catechism lesson, you are learning about God and his creation.
It was a disciple of Jesus Christ who renovated our understanding of the stars, a disciple of Jesus Christ who founded the study of genetics, a disciple of Jesus Christ who helped discover calculus, a disciple of Jesus Christ who proposed the Big Bang Theory. Again and again, countless disciples of Jesus Christ have expanded the world of human knowledge, only a small portion of which any one of us will ever learn.
So yes, we mean it when we say the primary mission of this school, this community, is to make disciples even when the actual subject of “theology” is only one of the 7 or more classes taken on a given day. All truth comes from God and, if studied carefully enough, points back to God and days like today help us to see that fact and to remind us what matters most.
Isaiah the prophet proclaims God’s own message to us: “I will pour out my spirit upon your offspring,” comparing it to pouring out water on thirsty ground. In the psalm, we all cried out “my soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.” Paul’s letter to Titus uses that same language, rejoicing that the Holy Spirit has been “richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior… so that we might become heirs of eternal life.”
As the Holy Spirit is poured out upon these children in baptism and confirmation, as they are made heirs of eternal life, take note of the dryness of your own hearts. Take note of the many conflicting desires and ideas in your own life and dig down to recognize that one most important desire, that longing for God and his spirit like dry land in need of water. Make this a moment of recognizing the gift you’ve already received and of renewing your commitment to that great mission. “Make disciples of all nations.” Make disciples of yourselves first by soaking up the education and formation we offer. Make disciples of yourselves by looking for the great web of meaning that connects all your various subjects to the most central and important truths. God is real. God is good. You are his children and he has gone to great lengths to give you life, to give you the ability to know and love, to give you a whole universe to study and discover and experience, and ultimately, to give you the chance to share all truth and all life with him in heaven forever.
Indeed, he is already with us as you can see and hear and feel especially on days like this. Make disciples, therefore, first of yourselves and then of the whole world so you can be with him not only “until the end of the age,” but even in the eternal ages to come.