Fr. Brian’s Homily – 25^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 8:00 am September 20, 2020

There is a difference between having a career and having a mission. We don’t talk about Jesus’ career so much, do we?  We don’t say Jesus had quite the career.  Not so much.  We do talk about his mission.  Jesus says, “when you see Me, you see the Father.”  Jesus’ mission was to reveal the face of God’s mercy; to reveal the love that the Father has for each one of us, his children.  This was His mission.  He was obedient unto death in accomplishing this mission.  Not so much a career, but a mission.

A career is something that we have.  I have my career, you have your career.  But a mission is something that belongs to the church.  Jesus extended His mission to the church when He said to Peter, “Follow Me.”  And so we, too, carry out Christ’s mission in the church, by dying and rising with Jesus constantly.  Another word for this we hear in the 2^nd reading today, when St. Paul says, “I’m magnifying Christ.”  In other words, I’m sort of small, I’m humble and I let Christ be magnified in me – when you come to church, you’re looking for Christ and you’ll settle for nothing less.  You’re looking for a demonstration of the gospel; you’re looking for the love of the Father to be revealed in the face of the priest, in the face of each other; you’re looking for that mission to be carried out in you and with each other.  St. Paul says, ‘Magnify.’  So, we are small, we are humble and Christ has room to rise in us and to reveal himself to each other. 

Of course, our Blessed Mother also uses this word ‘magnify’ when she – in the Magnificat we hear, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.”  Another translation is, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” 

St. Paul teaches how to carry out the mission of the church, not so much being about us, and our career, and our accolades, and our accomplishments, but about God.  If that’s who we long for; that’s why we come in here is to experience this mercy of God by looking into the faces of our neighbor who demonstrates that gospel mission.

One area where we see this mission playing out is in our Catholic schools.  Sometimes our schools can get a little off course – we think excellence in preparing our young people for their career is of the utmost importance.  Of course this is important.  But what makes our schools different is that we prepare our children for mission – to join the mission of the church.  To die and rise with Jesus; to magnify the Lord in their lives; to know how to be loved and how to love, and we trust that when they’re engaging in this gospel mission that that will satisfy and that then they will be successful in their work and whatever they do. 

My parents always told me, “if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.”  And when we are in love; when we’re living out the mission of the church, then we are satisfied.  So maybe we can say that our career serves our mission; our career is a platform from which we carry out our mission, which is the mission of the church, which is the one mission that we all share.
In our gospel today, we see that it’s never too late to join the mission.  Jesus is mad about you; He’s in love with you; He’s after you; He comes into the marketplace in the morning, at 9, at noon, at 3, at 5, I don’t remember the times, but all day He comes into the marketplace searching for you, looking for an encounter with you. Because when you experience the infinite love of God, you go out – you are ready to share that love; you are ready to go out on mission; you are ready to go into the vineyard to work, to bring about this communion of love, the point of the whole mission – to reveal the face of God’s mercy.

So God is after us. He’s hounding us.  The Hound of Heaven.  Remember that poem.  He’s the Hound of Heaven and He’s madly in love with us and He’s coming after us all the time.  We say in the Eucharistic Prayer – we’ll hear that today in Eucharistic Prayer number 3, “from the rising of the sun to its setting, may the name of the Lord be praised;” we offer a sacrifice to God with our life; we sing the song of who we are to God, morning, noon and night.  Because carrying out the mission of the church means being ourselves; being made in the image and likeness of God, and we proclaim the gospel with our very life.

This is carrying out the mission of the church.  Sometimes we think the mission of the church is something big, this big project, this big thing, no.  Our Blessed Mother shows us “to magnify the glory of the Lord” it can be very simple; doing small things with great love.  And then those who have the eyes to see and the ears to see will see that is the real deal.  This is a humble person that is magnifying the glory of the Lord.  There’s something about this person that’s transcendent, that’s radiant, and I want to be around that person; I want what that person has, I don’t have words for it yet, but I’m [sic] gonna follow them.  And now they’ve joined the mission, yes.  This is how it works.  You’re attracted to this beautiful mission of revealing the glory of God in the world, and we can join at any time.  And sometimes we join and then we leave, and then we come back.

We are helping our young people in our schools know how to be loved and how to love; how to encounter Jesus, the face of God’s mercy; how to be the face of God’s mercy in the world.  We, too, remember that instead of basing our lives on our career, that we have a bigger vision.  Instead of just one category, our career, our family, our faith; our mission is who we are and that is imbued in every aspect of our faith, morning, noon, and night. 

And if we fall away from the mission of the church, because we get out ahead of God, or if we’re sitting back and let Him go ahead of us – for what I have done and for what I have failed to do.  We come back, we receive the sacrament of confession; we get plugged back into the mission of the church and become radiant, magnifying the glory of the Lord, once again. 

In just a few minutes we’ll be receiving the eucharist.  This is the supreme work in the vineyard that we all participate in.  We bring all of the fruits of our careers, all of the work of human hands – fruit of the vine, work of hands.  We bring all of our work to the altar; our careers are at the service of the mission and then the supreme point of the mission happens with God’s own work in the vineyard, by transforming all of who we are into the Body of Christ.  And we share in His communion of love; encounter Jesus in the marketplace so that we might go back out into the vineyard, go forth we say at the end of Mass; go into the vineyard to carry out the mission of the church.