Last weekend, I entitled my homily, “Share the Gift!” In it, I mentioned that salvation is purely a gift from our loving God. I also said the real issue in the gospel story was about fidelity and who we are as disciples of the Lord. In fact, it is not about who or how few will be saved, but about living the grace of salvation -that is, a willingness to share the gift of God’s loving work.

Last September, we launched our Parish Renewal Initiative. This initiative is helping me and the parish leadership know your thoughts and ideas on how to strengthen our parish community that was so disrupted by the pandemic. We prayed together and listened to each other. I invited all of you to participate in our call to Renew, Respond, and Re-engage. Many of you shared your thoughts, thank you!

Some of our parish ministries are back. We jump started our community building gatherings, mission trips, and other programs. Participation in our liturgies is slowly increasing. The parish office is in full swing. And, our school is in very good shape serving over 500 students.

Now I invite all of you to think about how you can help us re-engage the community into parish life and ministry. We need to keep the vibrancy that has always been the hallmark of our community. We need to foster this spirit of enthusiasm and keep it alive. To do this, we need your help.

The late Msgr. John Sandersfeld, the founding pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish, once said: “The gift we have been given, share it as a gift.” Msgr. John wants us to realize how blessed we are. God has given us a gift, not because we are good, but because God is good.  Hence, each of us, as faithful stewards of God’s grace, should take whatever gift we have received and use it to serve others.

In the next few weeks, you will hear me talk about how to respond to the gift we have been given – the gift of our community. How do we continue to enhance our parish? How can we better serve each other and those beyond our community? We will be showing videos where some of our fellow parishioners share reflections on their responses to the call in the ministry they serve.

I invite us all to seriously pray to help discern our gifts and talents. How are you being invited to use them for our community? St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians reminds us that there are many kinds of spiritual gifts, but those gifts are meant to be used for the building up of the Body of Christ.

I invite you also to join me once again to respond to God’s invitation to strengthen and deepen the life of our community. Like the people in the upper room on that very first Easter night, let the Risen Christ breathe the Spirit upon each one of us to give us the courage, wisdom, understanding, patience, and love to keep our parish vibrant so we can continue to proclaim the Kingdom of God.