This weekend I begin a new message series called “ALL IN—Becoming Faithful Disciples in Our World Today”. I will be preaching the entire series at the 5 PM Mass at Blessed Sacrament and at all the Masses I celebrate on the weekend. We will also post each homily on our website. Here is the breakdown of the series themes:
September 6/7 – MAINTAINING THE TOP PRIORITY
September 13/14 – APPOINTED FOR GREATNESS
September 20/21 – JUMPING INTO THE DEEP END
October 4/5 – THE PERFECT PLACE TO GROW
As one community of faith, our family of parishes seeks to be a place to form disciples who go “all in” loving Jesus, serving others and willing to share who we are and what we have to transform the world. Embrace the invitation to follow Jesus completely.
WHAT DOES “ALL IN” ACTUALLY MEAN?
I have often said that our Catholic faith never allows us to be comfortable or relaxed—it always challenges us to be more and do more for the sake of the Good News. We can never really sit back and say that we have done enough. There is always more and more that we can do to serve, share and inspire those around us with the love, light and joy of Christ!!
“All in” means everything we are and everything we have becomes focused and channeled not for our own personal comfort or gain, but for the sake of the Gospel which declares Christ the Lord of the world and our hearts. This is both a challenge and a grace that can transform our lives, our society and our world. This is not an easy undertaking and we need others to help us along the way. This is why our family of parishes is so important—it provides opportunities for us to grow, serve, love and become Christ himself in our world today. Our family of parishes compels us to live for the sake of others!
REQUIREMENTS OF BEING “ALL IN”
(1) CHRIST ABOVE ALL ELSE
The first requirement of being “all in” as a faithful disciple is to consciously and actively choose Jesus above everything else. In order to be a follower of the Lord, we must place things in perspective. This means we embrace ways to draw closer to the Lord and push away anything that distracts us or draws us away from Christ. This seems obvious when choosing good things versus bad things but is much more difficult when choosing between good things and the best things.
Placing the Lord first in our lives is a constant challenge and struggle—but at the same time very rewarding because we end up seeing things differently—with much more clarity. Placing Jesus first in our lives beckons us to ask the question—WHAT DOES GOD WANT ME TO DO TODAY?
(2) PRAYERFUL LISTENING
Keeping things in order and making room for Jesus in our lives is the first step—but followed closely by the need to spend time in prayerful listening. Of course we all need to pray and we all have our favourite prayers and devotions. These are all good things but in the midst of our prayer we all need silence so we can hear the voice of the Lord.
Most of you know that I tend to talk a lot but the best time of my day is when I stop and take time to listen to Jesus in the silence of my prayer. This is something that takes practice and a lot of patience to push away all our gadgets and distractions offering our hearts to Christ seeking His guidance, wisdom, healing and grace. If we are going to be “all in” we need to know where the Lord is calling us to dive in and share the Gospel.
(3) TRUST & LOVE
If we strive to place Christ first in our lives and prayerfully listen to His voice, we then slowly build a true relationship rooted in love and trust. The only way we are going to follow Jesus and live our lives as disciples is to trust Him and love Him above everything else. We need to realize that true peace and fulfillment can only take place when we offer our very hearts to the Lord. The best way we can live our lives is to follow Jesus becoming an instrument and sign of hope in a world that has drifted from God. When we trust Jesus we also seek to trust, love and serve others. May we all wrestle with this call to service and have the courage
