Homily for September 16, 2007 Feast of the Holy Cross

I'm going to try something new today -- rather than the mike around my ear -- to use this handheld to see if you can hear any better with this. So, please, let us know at the end of Mass whether this made any difference.
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Cross. And when the liturgy committee met and we talked about how we might celebrate this feast, we thought we would like to celebrate who we are as a people living under the sign of the cross. Two stories popped into my head at the beginning of Mass, that -- I don't know how they connect -- but, I want to share them with you.
My first year here, one day I invited the kindergarten teacher to bring the kids over so I could give them a tour of the church. Now, what follows will explain to you why you would never want to turn me loose in a grade school. But the kids were all standing here, and the teacher was lining them up to be very proper, and probably to impress me with how well behaved they were, and I looked at them and I said, "Well, why don't you just go around church and look at whatever you want to look at, and come back and ask me questions."
Well, they shot off in all different directions, and the kindergarten teacher was horrified. And anyway, we finally got them all back, and one of the kids said to me, "Sure are a lot of crosses in this church."
Well, look how many you can see. There are a lot: There are 14 on the stations; there's one on the wall; there's the Celtic cross on top there; there's the one in the gold. There are a lot here, aren't there? So I said to him, "Why do you think that is?"
And one of them finally said, "Well, because it's the Church of the Holy Cross."
And I said, "Yes."
And then I remembered also, when I was in grade school, we used to look forward to this feast, because if the pastor was in a good mood, after Mass he would give us all a free day. Well, those were the good old days. That's why I wanted to be a priest: I wanted that power. Well, we don't have it anymore today.
But what we wanted to do today is maybe solicit your memories of Holy Cross and your own encounter with it. And I want to begin by asking how long people have been here. I'll start with myself. I was baptized here in 1940. I went to grade school here. Mike was a classmate of mine. Mary Ann, what year did you graduate?
(Inaudible response.)
Fortyseven, so you're a few years ahead of us. Anybody here longer than that?
Fortysix, okay.
Okay, who came here in the 50's? Anybody? Okay.
How many came in the 60's? Your family was here long before that, but you were born in the 60's. Okay.
How many in the 70's? Okay.
How many in the 80's? A lot, then.
How many in the 90's. Okay. Joe, have you only been here since the 90's?
(Inaudible). Okay.
How many in the two thousands? Wow, okay.
So, now, think for a moment. What was the neighborhood like when you came?
(Inaudible.) I'll have to get closer to hear you. Yes? She thought the neighborhood was richer than the neighborhood she grew up in, because the houses had doorbells. Okay.
What are your other memories of what it was like?
"Father Jim Byrne had been working with ECI when I arrived in the early '80s, and so there was renewal happening. And it was a good situation for me, because there were nine women in the neighborhood at that time that met monthly -- and Gwen O'Connor was one of those women -- and so there are some enduring friendships as a result of that."
So you came in the 80's. That was a period of a lot of community organization on the Near East Side, a lot of church involvement in the neighborhood and in the community, and a lot of contributions of that.
What are some other memories you might have?
Well, if we move from the 80's to now, we're seeing a lot of rejuvenation in the neighborhood. I think of our own church renovation and a lot of improvements we've made here, as we think toward our future. A question is how we relate to that.
We've seen a lot of changes in the neighborhood composition, haven't we? When I was growing up, this was an Irish Catholic neighborhood. If you look in our church history, on Arsenal Street, practically every home was Catholic. Then we had an influx of people from Appalachia. When I was in grade school we would go home and we'd say, "Kentuckians moved in there." No offense to anybody from Kentucky. But there is always a neighborhood.
And then there was an influx of African American population. And now we're experiencing an influx of Hispanics in the neighborhood. Look around us in church. We see the absence of many of our neighbors here.
What are some of your fond, your memories of Holy Cross? I did this with the parish council the other night. Think of a time when you experienced Holy Cross at its best.
I want to give other people a chance to think, and then I'll call on Jose. Can you all think of a time? I'm going to call on your daughter first. Yes?
"I remember the first time I realized that church was more than a Sunday thing for me. It was when I was very young. The sun was streaming through the greenhouse windows, which was right off our kitchen. And my mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and it was so warm, and then we hear the church bells tolling. And we stopped what we were doing -- I think we were baking cookies, because we did that a lot -- and we said prayers when we heard the church bells tolling. And it brought church to me in the middle of the week, and that was very profound for a young girl."
The bells -- the angelus -- they're still rung every day at noon, and the women at the women's prison tell me that they hear those bells over there, and that they think at times of Holy Cross and the people who come there, for Bible study, myself for Mass, and they think that there are a group of people here who care about them.
"I guess the Werles are the only ones that have voices today. But, I remember during the 70's there was a lot of liturgical renewal, and Father Byrne's ability to bring in people to the Christmas celebrations, and to include everything, like dance. And during the procession for Christmas, they had an actual woman with a baby come forward. And people came from all over the city to come back for Christmas Mass, like they still do, but even in greater numbers. And so you could see the connection between the old families and the new families, and the life that the church had given generations of people. And we're still doing it. That was just a good thought and a good feeling, that we're here with a lot of other people."
Any other memories people would have? Yes?
"One of my fondest memories is in '96 when my son and I both were baptized here together at Holy Cross."
Okay. Any others to share? Yes?
"Coming from a Protestant background, I remember the very first time I came here with Mom and Dad McGuire. And Sister Paulette was reading the part of Christ, which I thought, 'Oh, my gosh!' I had never expected that in a Catholic church. But you can just feel -- and in fact, everywhere I go, when people, especially my Protestant friends, are -- I don't know if I want to say 'be bolder' -- but, you know, sometimes they don't understand me becoming a Catholic, which -- this is where God wanted me. And I always tell them, 'You know, there is no church anywhere like Holy Cross. It doesn't matter whether you're homeless, or you're a doctor or a lawyer, you walk through the door and you feel the love.' And that is what church is about; that is what God is about; that is what Christ is about, is the love. And there is no place like Holy Cross for the love."
Thank you. Mary Ann?
"I remember when there used to be Masses starting at 5:15 a.m., and going 'til noon. And most of the times there was a crowd at every Mass. We walked, too. We didn't drive our cars. We didn't have to park in the schoolyard."
Thank you. I remember getting up at 4:30 in the morning to come over and serve those 5:15 Masses. That's when the pews went all the way up to the communion rail. There were -- the composition was quite different.
I want to share with you -- and I'll close with this -- when you look at the bulletin, you'll see our mission statement: Holy Cross parish is people offering worship connected to people's lives and proclaiming that everyone is worthy to be here."
I want to share with you the first meeting I ever went to at Holy Cross when I was pastor. And I -- well, it's the second meeting. The first one was a search committee for hiring a new principal -- and I had just moved into my office, which was in that room right there in those days, and I noticed the light were on. So I went to turn out the lights, and there were about 15 people in my office having a meeting, unbeknownst to me. And it was a meeting of the then liturgy committee.
And the first question they had was, "We want to know what the role of the liturgy committee is. We know what downtown says it is. What do you say it is." Well, they'd obviously been having a disagreement about something; I forget what it was.
So I met with them the next day and I said, "Why don't we talk about what we value in worship and in liturgy, rather than different roles."
So we had a meeting of some people with a facilitator, and we asked, "What is it that you value in our being together on Sunday and in our worship?" And two things came out.
One was a sense of connection to other things in life: A sense of connection to the neighborhood, a connection to the food pantry, connection to the prison, and connected to people's brokenness in life. And the other was the sense that everybody is worthy to be here -- a very consciously seeking to be that.
And I offer that to you as a reflection on the cross. What does that symbol mean to us? I can't explain how Jesus saved us by dying on the cross. I've read some very good explanations and very bad ones. The bad ones were that God was mad at us and had to be appeased by the death of His Son, and I don't believe that at all. The better ones I've read are that Jesus took upon Himself all of the things that weigh us down and achieved freedom over them. But what is constant is believing that that symbol of the cross means God's overwhelming love for all of us, and our ability to share that love and to live in its freedom.
And that's what we celebrate today, when we celebrate this Feast of the Holy Cross. And I'll close with just a question: What would your life be like if you knew that you were unconditionally loved, no matter what? If you really, really believed that? Well, live the way you would live if you really knew that to be true.