14th Sunday OT 2016
“Come Fly With Me”
Fr. Jeff Nicolas (St. Bernadette)
This week I looked up the top ten fears of human beings and discovered that five of the ten have to do with following Jesus… #10 (a fear of commitment), #8 (a fear of rejection), #7 (a fear of failure), #5 (a fear of intimacy), and #2 (a fear of public speaking).
Over the past couple of weeks we have been hearing story after story of Jesus calling folk to follow him, and today he sends out 72 to witness to his impending presence; imagine the fear those 72 had to overcome. It would be nice if each of us could quietly follow Jesus shuffling along behind him in the shadows, but truth be told there is no following Jesus without being sent by him to witness. Discipleship is what we are each called to, but discipleship doesn’t “just happen”, we each must intend it to happen.
This week as Church we have celebrated some great witnesses of our faith: Wednesday we celebrated Peter and Paul who proclaimed the faith till their martyrdom in Rome, Friday we celebrated Junipero Serra who brought the faith to California. Great saints have been great witnesses, and each of us are not necessarily called to such lofty proclamations (such as going to Oxmoor Mall and preaching to everyone at the Food Court!) Yet each of us is called by God to witness to our faith in the relationships unique to our lives.
For instance, if you are married do you pray with one another? I mean do you sit or kneel together in the privacy of your home and offer up prayer to God, out loud and from your heart? This is a form of spousal witnessing to the faith.
If you are a parent do you witness to your faith in a way that will help your children embrace it? Parents are the dominant influence of passing on the faith to their children. The single most powerful force in a child’s religious formation is the spiritual personality of parent(s). Households that have conversations about religion, where parents explicitly transmit the faith, where parents outwardly manifest moments of profound parental conversion, where substantial (and not merely ritualistic) religious spiritual processing takes place in moments of individual or familial crisis, and where parents take personal responsibility for the faith of their kids, these are the households that have the best chance of effectively passing on our Catholic faith to the next generation. This is a form of parental witnessing to the faith.
No matter your circumstances in life, to be a full disciple of Jesus requires some form of witness. The maturation of our faith demands it!
It can seem daunting, I know, but notice one little detail of our Gospel today… Jesus doesn’t leave you to do it alone. On that occasion he sent his witnesses out two by two. Today he gives us our parish. You are not alone. The purpose of our parish is to create disciples for Jesus Christ. I met this week with our strategic planners who are creating with our Pastoral Council, staff, and committee leaders a wonderful strategy for advancing the creation of disciples for Jesus Christ here at St. Bernadette. The purpose of a parish at its core is to shepherd everyone into an intentional discipleship with Jesus Christ… a personal relationship with Jesus that will bear the good fruit of each of us washing the feet of one another. This is a passion of mine that I bring to our table. Each of you, however, must from your own place of freedom choose to take the leap of faith necessary to overcome any cliffs of fear this witnessing may surface in your heart. Witnessing the faith in our relationships can be scary, I know. But I hope, in time, along with other wonderful spiritual leaders of our parish, to inspire you to jump!
Know what the #1 fear of human beings is on our list? FLYING. Take the leap of faith with me and discover the wings God will provide!