25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Previous Year: 2017
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/a-generational-duty/
Transcript
The time was spring 2009. I was at college in the Boston area, and the Archdiocese of Boston was holding an annual Eucharistic Congress. If I remember correctly, this might have even been the first annual Eucharistic Congress. It was a grand event. We did it in the north end of Boston where all the fancy Italian restaurants are, and as we processed through the streets with the Eucharist, people with mouths half-full of spaghetti would poke out of these windows. Like, what are these Catholics doing? It was awesome. It was in-your-face Catholicism. It’s kind of my favorite thing. Well, at this Eucharistic conference, there was a talk for young adults, and it was hugely impactful on me. It was one of those talks that that pushed me into priesthood. The talk was given by Mother Assumpta Long, and she’s probably 55 years my senior. She was speaking to these young adults and she was saying, the Lord must deeply love you and your generation. Why? Well, because this was 2009—and things have gotten even crazier since then—but in 2009, she said, look, right now the world is looking at those things which are good and wonderful and condemning them as evil and looking at things that are evil and valuing them as good. This world is upside down, but it’s a sign of the Lord’s love for you. Because where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.
This phrase from Saint Paul assures us that the Lord loves us when Christianity is hard, when we face difficulties in preaching the Gospel or persecution—indeed that’s when the Lord’s grace overwhelms. She was making the point that this generation of people will be given more grace than any generation before us since the Reformation–and depending on how things go—maybe even since the early Church. We should expect to see more saints. We should expect to see more miracles. We should expect to see God preserve us, but quite possibly expect to see more martyrs. These are the graces that will overpour for us, and how blessed we are to live in a time where we might witness the power of God in such a comprehensive way. We are truly blessed to live in difficult times. And Mother Assumpta turned all of this into a talk that again had such an impact on me. She said take those graces, those overabundant graces, those graces not seen for centuries—take those graces and sanctify your generation.
Now I give you this as a way to understand our Gospel. In our Gospel, there is a bitterness from those workers who work the whole day. They say, we had to work in the heat of the day the whole day long. Shouldn’t we be treated better? Well, the promise given to everybody in this parable, that daily wage, is the parable for eternal life. All of us are promised the same eternal life with God. It is tempting to think if we all get the same reward, why do I have to be the one to live through persecutions? Couldn’t I live through the times where everybody just agrees that Christianity is true, and we’re all just trying to live that Christianity out as best as we can? Why couldn’t I be given those times?
I assure you as a man ordained in 2017, that resentment can build. It’s very easy for priests of my era to have that resentment. Why do I have to be a priest in an era where everybody outside the walls of the church considers us filthy and dirty and unsafe? Why do I have to be a pastor when my whole job is just to manage decline? I was looking at mass numbers the other day for our parish, and if I read them correctly, I think around 2004, we had 2,000 people at Mass each weekend. Today, 20 years later, we only have 1,000 people at Mass each weekend. Why do I have to be the priest to manage that kind of decline? Where success for me is only losing a couple dozen people in a year rather than hundreds. Why do I have to be the priest who has less people and therefore less money? Where our expenses are ballooning with insurance and buildings and everything else and the money doesn’t go as far as it used to. Like, why can’t I be the guy who has an overabundance of resources to hire new staff and have new programs? It’s easy to get into that mind space. Many of you have been living long enough that you know what it looked like in the 70s. This was the center of people’s social lives. Everybody sent their kids to the school, and therefore everybody’s social life was the school and the parish. There were events in the gym. I hear regularly about how exciting it was. We held wrestling tournaments for the city of Bellingham to pay off our gym. Like, how can we pull that stuff off? We can’t do that today. We don’t have the people. We don’t have the resources. But when I have that mindset, I go back to Mother Assumpta. How blessed are we to live now where we have to rely not on our own resources, but on the grace of God? How blessed am I that I can’t find success unless the Lord Himself does the work? How blessed are we that we will see the Lord working in our midst?
We have a generational duty. It doesn’t do us any good to say, Oh, wouldn’t it have been nice had I lived in a different time? Or wouldn’t it be nice to be in the future where these things are different? This is our time. God does not have grandchildren. Every generation is newly evangelized—ideally by their parents in the home—but also, we, the remnant, have to go into the street and preach the Gospel. Our generational duty is the same as every generation, which is to pass on the Gospel. But our generational duty is harder than every previous generation that we’ve known about—again since maybe the French Revolution and then universally since the Reformation. However, by embracing that duty, we will find sanctification. Our path to sanctity, to sainthood is not the same as previous generations. Our path to sainthood is the task that is in front of us. And it’s no use saying, Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if I could be a saint in a different way? You are the people who are here today. I am the man in this office today, and therefore it is our duty to preach the Gospel in these times.
Now, I give you all of this as context and inspiration and encouragement, because today is the day that every priest in the Archdiocese is tasked with announcing the families for Partners in the Gospel. This generational disaffiliation from religion is best addressed through devotion, through penance, through prayer, through small group prayer and evangelization. But we also need to do the human thing and make sure our bureaucracy, our institution responds to the signs of the times. We can see that our resources are dwindling. We know that we are playing with fewer cards in our deck than previous generations. In order to address that and make sure we take the strength that we still have and use it most effectively, the Archdiocese is combining all of our parishes. We currently have 136 parishes. By the end of this, we’re going to have about 57 parishes. In so doing, we combine the resources that remain so that we can have a more dynamic experience and so that we can use those resources more effectively. Almost every parish in the diocese has a buddy or two or sometimes three. There are very rare exceptions. One of them is the San Juan Islands, where it is impossible to get to on the ferry system right now. It is absolutely impossible for them to come to the mainland or for us to go to them. It doesn’t make sense to pair them with anybody because they can barely take care of their own islands. But beyond that, every other parish in the archdiocese, again, with very few exceptions, is being paired up. I have been on what’s called the Presbyteral Council, that’s the Archbishop’s Senate, for a year now as the representative from this area of the Archdiocese, the Northern Deanery. So, I’ve seen the sausage get made. I have been part of every draft that has been made so far giving recommendations to the Archbishop and his staff so that we can come up with the best pairings possible. And now it is time for you to provide your feedback on these drafts.
Currently, right now, as the draft is being presented, Assumption Parish will be paired with Sacred Heart in Fairhaven and with the Western Washington University Newman Center (what’s now called Viking Catholic). In North Whatcom County, all that remains will be paired together—so Blaine, Ferndale, Lummi, Lynden and Deming will all become one family. At the end of three years, these families will become one parish. A parish is an administrative unit; a church is a worship site. When we say one parish, we mean one pastor with associate priests, one pastoral council, one finance council, one parish staff, likely in one location. And as best as we can, we will combine programs, even if we have multiple worship sites. So, what the diocese is suggesting is that on July 1st, 2024, Assumption, Sacred Heart and the Newman Center will all be under the same administrative apparatus. Then, over the course of three years, we do the hard work of combining our administration, so that by July 2027, we have the benefits of shared resources, shared staff, shared people, and shared volunteers.
It is going to be hard. It is going to be difficult for these communities that have been separate for 100 years and who often define themselves over and against each other. Oh, I used to be at Sacred Heart, but then I came to Assumption because…; oh, I used to be at Assumption, but then I went to Sacred Heart because… We sought based on what we wanted, and now we’re being asked to come together. Nobody says it’s going to be easy. But again, this is our task. This is the time that God has given us, and we have to embrace that task because it is truly our generational duty and how we will find sanctification.
The immediate next steps: Over the next three weeks, we really do need your input. Again, as a member of the Presbyteral Council, I can tell you I have a lot of doubts about the draft that we created. We have done our best, but there are some hard questions that we have to answer. Particularly in Whatcom County, I don’t know if the North County family is viable or not. I need to hear from them to see if they can make it work, or if there is another plan we need to consider. And I need to hear from you, the people of Assumption—what you think is going to go well and poorly in this process and whether you can divide things up better than I have done. I need to know what’s going to work because it is your duty to carry it out. If you think that you can have a good conversation with Sacred Heart for three years, praise God. I need to hear that. If you think you can’t, well, we’re going to do it anyway, but maybe we need to have a broader conversation, right? Who can you pair with? Who is the person that we might be able to have a conversation with? If it’s not Sacred Heart, then who? Who can we pair with? We need your input so that we know that this process is starting on the right foot. But to me, even more importantly than that, I need your input because I need you to be part of this process for the next three years. This is not just the job of the pastor, just of the priests or just of the staff. All of us have a duty to preach the Gospel and much of the time that duty is carried out in our parishes. You are the parish. You are the stable community of the people of God here in Bellingham, and you have to be part of the decisions that help us preach the Gospel more effectively. After communion I’ll give you more of the practical details, but for now, so you can think about it, there are three dates in English to take your input—this Tuesday, September 26th after the Mass at 5:30; next Tuesday, October 3rd after the Mass at 5:30; and this coming Saturday, September 30th after the 5 pm Mass. It would be very helpful to have as many people as possible at those sessions so that we can see we are in this together as a community, we can see that we are planning together and that we are taking upon ourselves this generational duty. My friends, like I said, this is how the Lord wishes to bless us. He loves us so much because He has given us such an important task. You only give important jobs to those that you love. This is our job. And by His grace, His overflowing grace—the greatest graces that we’re going to see in multiple generations—by His grace, we will come through this with the power of Christ and His Gospel. I am as anxious as everybody is. There is a lot of work to be done, but at the end of the day, I am also excited. I feel blessed that the Lord would call us to such a task. I am ready to receive that task and the graces that come with it, and I hope you are too.
Fr. Moore 