Christ the King! Maintenance to Mission!

  Christ the King! Maintenance to Mission!

Last weekend I briefly talked about Maintenance to Mission – Evangelization. Bishop Powers’ Pastoral letter on Evangelization, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” he recalls old days. He says, “I remember our parish back in its heyday. There were children everywhere and some of us had to stand out in the front lawn during Mass in the summer because the Church itself was stuffed full. The parish dinners, the Christmas concerts, Holy Days…everyone was there and there was so much energy!” Some of you remember those days. It is the Christendom period. Every Christian  family went to Church and The Christian culture permeated every area of each person and community life. Where are we now? What we need to do now? The Bishop’s letter is answering these questions. He asks us to move from Maintenance to Mission.

In October at the clergy workshop, diocesan staff introduced a couple of tools which we can use for planning and   develop an evangelization program. Our cluster chose the Appreciative inquiry process. During in-service our council members and evangelization team walked through the process. There are different steps in this process. The first step is: Define- what we want to explore as parish/cluster – Our Catholic identity – what it means to be a disciple of Christ-How do we share the Catholic identity with wider community, the list goes on. The second step is Discovery-means what are we already doing well? Here we discover our strength and celebrate – what are things that are not working or need modification. The third step is Dream-what do we want to look like as a parish in three or five years. Then we need to Design a road Map to Destiny- and finally Drumming – keeping the dream alive-re-evaluation and redesign our faith journey. So let us begin to discover our strength and keep it part of our prayer. Then slowly we can move to   further steps. I will be writing every week a few thoughts on this theme for your prayerful reflection. I can go on this process, but we will talk more in the future. Let us start thing, one point at a time: Define – what we want to explore as parish/cluster community? What it means to be a disciple of Christ? How do we live our Catholic identity? Let us pray over these thoughts. Let us pray for our evangelization team as they take a lead in this area.

This Sunday we celebrate Jesus Christ the King. German philosopher, Frederich Nietzche, said, “God is dead.” In 1966 Time Magazine published a cover story that asked, “Is God Dead?” Is it God dead or alive for you and me? Even in this day and age only a minority will say God is dead, but lots of us live like God is dead. Our God is alive, he is with us. We celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King- King of the Universe, which marks the end of the Liturgical year A, and next Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent begins the liturgical year B.

The the Gospel (Matthew 25:31-46) reading for this Solemnity is the conclusion of the discourse which portrays the final judgment. In this passage Jesus’ prophesy of the last judgement unfolds two historical levels. First, Jesus initially foretells the judgement of the Old Covenant. Ezekiel 34:17-22, Matthew 10:23 and 16:27 says about the shepherd  separating sheep. This involved his coming to Jerusalem as the Shepherd who separate the faithful sheep of Israel from the wicked one. The second, Jesus ultimately foretells the general judgement at the end time – at the Second Coming of Christ and general resurrection of all people before his throne to be blessed (25:34) or cursed (25:41) according to their deeds (John 5:25-29; Revelation 20:11-12).

At the end of the first reading, we read like this, “As for you, my sheep, says the Lord GOD, I will judge between one sheep and another, between rams and goats” (11:17). Matthew’s Gospel (25:32-33) says “All the nations will be    assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.”

There are corporal and spiritual works of mercy. When we celebrated the Year of Mercy, we reflected on these in   detail. On November 17th is the feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who is known of her corporal works of mercy. She is the patron saint of Catholic charities. Our deeds that provide for the physical or spiritual needs of others are called works of mercy. These works of mercy are an extension of the second commandment of love – love our neighbor. As we celebrate the Solemnity of the Christ the King, we reflect on the last judgement. It will be according to our corporal and spiritual works of Mercy. How do we help each other spiritually and physically? Works of Mercy is the Eucharistic life. Let us ask God to bless us so we can live the gift he shares with us – the Eucharist.