Faith -> My Homily for 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time C 2016

I think we are having more of a crisis of faith than just with our Church.  As I kid I remember Vietnam and Watergate and those don’t even seem so bad compared to today, but they seem to be the start of a cycle of us losing our trust and at times with good reason.

We have sports figures and celebrities paying more in taxes a day than a school teacher makes in a year.  I thought I had finally found a sports hero that was the good old american kid!  Helping kids and donating millions to charities until his wife starting after with a 9 iron.  Not even Tiger could be held up as a hero.

Look at our two candidates running for the highest office and again it is hard to have faith.  Without faith, what are we left with.  Our world needs faith.  We have the key to fix this, we just need to get out their and do it.

Mustard Seed

I remember a retreat as a kid and I was given a 3.5 card with a mustard seed on it.  Up to then I thought a Mustard seed must be huge because if we had faith the size of a mustard seed we could move a tree or in another Gospel mountains.  I looked at this card and thought my seed had fallen off.  Just the stain was left.  When I found out that was the seed and I couldn’t even make the top of my water glass ripple, I figured that I was in trouble.

The second part of the Gospel helps us to understand.  Today the disciples ask for faith and Jesus sort of just rebukes them.  Part of the message to day is that faith isn’t really something that can be increased by God.  The message for me of the second part of the Gospel is that have to work at our faith.  We have to work in the world we have to do what is right.

It isn’t always easy to do what is right but we have to for our faith.  It is easy to have faith in the church and to treat our neighbor well, what about the person that pushes in front of you with 25 items in the 15 or less line.  When a person stands there counting out loud the number of item as it is placed on the belt are they radiating God at that point?  Or when the person cuts you off in traffic, do you blurt out a prayer or something else.  That is where we truly start to build the kingdom.  Who do we deal with those that drive us crazy.  Do we help them to the kingdom, or just those that make it easy?

What do we do?

We have a great St. Vincent de Paul here, what else do we do for those in need.  How many clothes do we have that we have not worn or many not quite fit in any more?  That is working for our faith when we redirect things that we have in excess to those in true need.

What is our parish motto from St. Pius X?  To restore all things in Christ.  I watched our Festival seemingly appear.  That work obviously has been done many times before.  The festival brings us together in faith for what I think is a good cause, but again it has to go further.

We need to live so that in every moment of our lives there is no doubt that we are believers.  At those time that we don’t live the life or our actions are not proclaiming the gift of the resurrection, what do we need to do?  What do we need to become, to be that agent of change in a world so much in need of what we have to offer?