28th Sunday Parishes for and with God

Earlier this week, The Snows Women Auxiliary and I talked about “Parish”. I gave a broad brush history of what the canons say about Parish; and how parishes worked and existed in our American history.  Many parishes in the Eastern and MidWest, especially in the major cities, formed around specific ethnic communities: Irish, Polish, Italian, German, etc. During the heavy European immigration era of the 1800’s and early 1900’s, parishes helped the immigrants find community and support one another given the Anti-Catholic sentiment in this country. Yet there would also be the reality of an Irish Catholic Church on one side of the street, and a Polish Catholic Church on the other, and they would seldom interact.

Even consider our own parish of Our Lady of the Snows. Formed on what used to be toward the edge of Reno and among Italian immigrants and their first generation of children.  

Community was important (and still is); protecting that community was important, and in some sense the idea of community became almost too important. The purpose of parish may have gotten lost.

Jesus encountered a community in the gospel. Those 10 persons had come together because they all suffered a skin condition and the larger community had exiled them.  This community calls out to him; clearly they know of him, and the mercy they want is what they think he owes them. It is what he has given before to others and they want the same: they want healing.  Note that Jesus does not approach, nor touch, nor even simply say “You are healed.” He only tells them to go to the Temple and present themselves to the priests, as the Law dictates. It is along the way they become healed.  And healed of their affliction, that little community now begins to dissolve. What was holding them together no longer mattered. Then we also need to realize that the Samaritan would know that he would not be welcome at the Temple; he is an outsider, he does not belong to that community.

But the Samaritan does understand that God has done something marvelous through Jesus, and he does not need to go to Temple to glorify God. He returns to Jesus to give him thanks for bringing him to God.  Remember in John’s Gospel and Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman. He tells her that the distinction between Jew and Samaritan, whether True worship happens on one mountain or another, will disappear; God will be worshiped in Spirit and Truth. Here is Luke’s version.

This Samaritan did not need to go to Jerusalem nor his people’s holy mountain to praise God.

Parish community is wonderful; but community itself is not the goal of the parish. Community is but a means to an end. Our goal, or goals, as Parish is to Worship God, grow as disciples of Jesus, and then go glorifying God by sharing our experiences of God with others. Worship, grow as disciples, mission--this is the nature of Parish.

We come together as those disciples, we share our experiences of how God has healed, how God has liberated us; and in doing so we grow together, and full of that Spirit we go out and we share in that joy. We give thanks to Jesus for drawing us closer to God.

Parish life in our country, in our own diocese is meant to be all that.

We must never, ever lose our sense of mission. We must never fall into that dark hole thinking we must only be about ourselves and protect what we have sort of like a country club; that will lead us to death. We can look to those parishes in the East, how many have closed down because they only looked in at themselves, and forgot their mission.

We are about God and God’s plan. We are about being loyal to God’s great plan to unite heaven and earth, to unify us with God; to unify us together as God’s Children.

Our great doxology, the great summation, the high point of the mass makes that clear…to you almighty Father, all Glory and honor are yours…

Look around at what is going on here… this parish is no longer about the “old southwest” and filled with Italian surnames…people come here from north of Spanish Springs, from Fernley, and as far south as Washoe Valley; because in this community they are finding something more. We have English speakers, Tagalog Speakers, Spanish Speakers, French too, and a few others we may not be aware of.  We welcome and invite: we strive to provide to this community varied ways in which to encounter Christ, to be led to a deeper relationship with God, to experience that Liberation and share it.

It can be challenging, change always brings tensions. People’s own idea of what Parish means can become hard to let go of; we can wax nostalgic for the “Good old days” and try to preserve that. I get that; but there is something greater here.

Our life as Catholics connects to this.

We remember God in our Eucharist; we give thanks to God in Christ, for reforming this own community; for offering us the liberation healing we need; and we let it save us too; and share it.  We remember for what and whom we are called for...

And this will be the true strength of our community.