Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Homily)
October 18, 2015 5:00 pm · Father Dan Vanyo
On Saturday I heard a statistic, I didn't get a chance to double check it, but let's run with it. Someone told me 23% of self-identified Catholics go to Mass regularly on Sundays. It's between 1 in 4 or 1 in 5. Where are the others? You are here, that's great, but where are the others? It brings up the important topic of evangelization. Spreading the Good News, we've heard that many times, but we also need to include the Catholics, apparently. This will continue to be something we will be talking about in the Homilies in the future. But let's go with today.
How do we evangelize the not just the non-Catholics, but the Catholics. 77% aren't regularly here, why? There's a bunch of reasons, but we'll get to that. What do we tell them? Well, Isaiah mentions the servant, foreshadowing Jesus, who will justify many and He will bear their guilt. In the letter to the Hebrews we heard about the great high priest, again, Jesus, passing though the heavens. What do we have to talk about? My goodness, I hope no one is out there asking that, I don't know what to say.
Start with what you know. Jesus died for us, rose from the dead. Suffered, died, rose from the dead, ascended into Heaven where He sits a the right hand of the Father, so that we could be in Heaven. You know that much. But more importantly the starting point is to listen. What's their story, what's their reason for not coming?
Sure there are a few of them that will say, "I am lazy, I don't prioritize Mass, I should, I know I should be coming, and I feel bad." So you kind of know. It's just a matter of they personally need to prioritize the Lord. But there's others that are going to have other reasons. What are they? Unless they've told you, don't assume that they're just are being lazy or they just don't have their priorities set. You need to hear their story, and that means to really have an opportunity to evangelize them you've got to listen to their story. Wouldn't you want the same treatment?
