Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Homily)
February 13, 2022 5:30 pm · Sergio Muñoz Fita
As many of you may know, last Sunday I announced at the 11 o'clock Mass and 1 o'clock Mass my decision to return to Spain this summer, thus concluding the ministry that 10 years ago brought me to this country, which has become so dear to me. It is very likely that most of you listening to me have already read my words from last weekend, so I will not repeat everything that I already said. It was a very long homily.
In any case, I just would like to repeat the beginning of that homily, in which I asked everyone for forgiveness for my failures, my mistakes and my shortcomings as the pastor of St. Anne. I would also like to thank everyone today because I have never felt so loved by so many in my priestly ministry as I have here.
Along these lines, I would like to sincerely thank you for all the love you have shown me these days, which I clearly do not deserve. Since the day of the announcement, I have received more messages, requests and invitations than I can manage. In the next few days, I hope to share with everyone some information about me, the little I know about my future and the way I will try to live until the day of my departure. With this, I will answer the questions that so many good people have asked me these past few days.
I understand that my primary obligation, until I leave, is to try to live in faithfulness to the Lord, to care for the sacramental life of St. Anne, and to prepare for the transition to the new leadership that will come when I leave. I also must arrange personal matters, paperwork, prepare for the move, and so on. I don't know if I will have time for everything, and I beg you in advance for your patience, if I can't do everything I would like to do.
I believe that the Word of God this Sunday helps us in this new stage of transition that we are living at St. Anne. Today, the Lord speaks to us of trust and hope. Christian hope is, above all, a hope in God. We know well that we, human beings, fail; that many promises are not fulfilled, that often things do not turn out as we had planned or had been told. When we set our hearts on men, we are often disappointed. As the prophet Jeremiah said in the first reading: “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings (…) He is like a barren bush in the desert.”
Only the trust we place in the Lord always ends well. “Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.” It is a hope in eternal happiness as a reward for those who are poor in spirit, for those who hunger for justice, for those who weep for the love of Christ, for those who are hated for their fidelity to the Gospel. It is the hope that springs from the Resurrection of Christ, as Saint Paul told us in the second reading. It seemed that everything had ended on Calvary and yet, three days later, the Lord, who is light, dispelled the darkness of sin and death that weighed for so long on humankind.
I would like to invite all of you to have hope, and to place it not in us, frail human beings, but in God. We all know that this parish belongs to Jesus Christ and that is an encouraging thought. The bishop who appears in the Footprints documentary we made seven years ago on the Camino de Santiago, the bishop of San Sebastian, has as his episcopal motto these three words in Latin: “in Te confido. In you I trust.” These are the words with which we address the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We say: Sacred Heart of Jesus, in You I trust. In his preaching, this bishop encourages above all trust in the Heart of Jesus, and he has a very funny but very profound phrase: "God exists and he's not you. Relax!" It is true: fortunately, you are not God. Fortunately, the Lord is at the helm of the ship, and He knows how to guide His disciples to the right port. Therefore, instead of feeling anxious, we must relax. We must trust, and in that trust, we must live seeking and doing His Will with peace.
It is a message I wish to tell you, now that I am leaving: trust in the Lord. All will be well if we remain united to Him. It is a message, I confess, that I too need to hear. I too must abandon myself to God, even more, from now on. I am leaving St. Anne, which has been for me a paradise in recent years, and I throw myself into the unknown with only the parachute of trust in the Lord. He will make me land wherever the winds of Providence want to take me.
For me, St. Anne is not a place where I have lived and served for the past ten years. St. Anne has been my life for an entire decade. Pulling up roots from here to go I don't know where, forces me to walk away from people and places I love dearly, and put my trust totally in the Lord and surrender to him unconditionally. As St. Therese of the Child Jesus said, if we look too much to the future, we will become restless. But, if we put our trust in the Lord and focus on the little step we must take now, without looking much further ahead, we will be like a tree planted by the water, and we will bear fruit for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
Dear brothers and sisters, dear family of St. Anne, I owe you more than my words can express today. I place you in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and I pray that your future here will be wonderful, that the new pastor will be a priest after the Heart of God, and that you will be filled with blessings in this life and in the life to come.