Homily for November 9, 2008

Homily November 9, 2008
I'm wearing white today, and we had the different readings because we celebrate the anniversary of the dedication of the church of St. John Lateran in Rome. Why would we want to celebrate that?
Well, it's the first church in Christianity, and for many years it was the Vatican; it was the church of the Pope. What it really was, was a palace that the Emperor Constantine gave the church, and we moved up out of the catacombs and marched into the palace and became all grand and triumphant in the way we began to celebrate. There's a lot of history there that we can't judge or go into now, but anyway, that's why we celebrate that feast throughout the world.
The readings, the Gospel, gives us the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. And I think to frame that for you, I want to give you a significant piece of information. The temple was 40 acres of land. So we're not talking about a little church our size filled with money changers and sheep and oxen. We're talking about all of that activity being spread out over 40 acres, and it was all in service of the work of the temple.
People came to the temple to offer sacrifice, so of course, those who sold the oxen and the doves and the sheep were doing them a favor. And of course, you wouldn't want Roman coins going into the temple, so the money changers were doing you a favor. It was all in service of the temple worship. None of it was sacrilegious. But what is represented is somehow the judgment of God on the temple.
The other piece of information I think you need to have is when this Gospel was written, the temple had already been destroyed, and it was a major event in the life of the people. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke what Jesus did in cleansing the temple, that was the immediate cause of his being put to death because of the fear that a riot would breakout.
Now, what might all of that mean to us? And if I had a long period of time I would go into this at great length, but mercifully for you I won't. In the sixth century BC, the year 587, the people of Jerusalem were surround by the armies of Babylon, and the false prophets said, "God's temple is here, and it will never be destroyed because God is in our midst. Don't listen to these prophets like Jeremiah who warn that it will be destroyed."
So the people had a false sense of security, and the temple was destroyed. In the day of Jesus people would have said, "Look at this magnificent temple. It's the sign of God being present in our midst. It will stand forever." Well the Romans came and destroyed it all.
Over the years, as I have studied this, the way it has spoken to me, I grew up in grade school here with the phrase, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." And I thought the church is going to last forever because Jesus founded it. Well, when I read this, I say, well, you know, they thought that too, but because they were not faithful to God, at least as the Scriptures portray it, it was all destroyed.
So it makes me ask the frightening question, could we lose it all? What do you think? If you want to say no, well, they lost it all. It's a sobering thought, and it's a challenge to ever renew ourself and dedicate ourself to the work that we should be all about.
We have our stewardship intention Sunday today. Let me ask a sobering question. Is it unthinkable that Holy Cross church would close? Not at all. I don't see that on the immediate horizon, but it's very possible, if we don't keep it open ourselves. Nobody's going to pay for it for us, and I think, given all the reality, we have no right to expect anybody else to pay for it for us. It's ours to build, to maintain, and to grow. And anyway, that's, I think, a very sobering message of those readings today.
But we do that primarily  and this is where in my mind it's a happy thing that we have a baptism today, because it's important to realize, why do we do all this? For the children who will come after us, for the children in our midst, for the work of passing on our faith, for the work of spreading the good news of God's love and sharing it and bringing people in to communion with that love of God's.
So I'm going to invite you to stand and turn toward the back of church.

Homily for All Souls Day, November 2

Homily November 2, 2008
All Souls Day
When I read that Gospel and the words, “I will not reject anyone who comes to me,” I was reminded of a little boy I met ten years ago. I don't know what's happened to him since. I was doing a funeral at a funeral home, and I was all prepared with what I was going to do. But somebody came to me right before the funeral and pointed out this little boy, and they said, "He is very worried because his grandmother didn't go to church, and he is afraid that she won't go to heaven."
So I quickly readjusted my thoughts and I read this Gospel. And I just looked at him and I said, "Jesus said in the Gospel today  and listen to what he said 'I will not reject anyone who comes to me.' Do you believe that?"
Well, I want to just ask all of you that same question today. Hear again the words of Jesus. "Everyone whom the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me. Indeed, this is God's will, that I lose nothing that he has given me." Do you believe that? Amen. And I think it's always important that we frame things like grieving in that faith.
And now I want to give the homily I give every year on All Souls day. I begin with this same memory. It must be 26 or 27 years ago now, I remember going to a Hanukkah service at Temple Beth El Zedeck, and I noticed that during the course of the service, the Cantor or lector or whoever he was, said several times, "Will the mourners please rise," and then they would say a prayer over them.
That happened several times during the service, so I turned to Sandy Sasso, the Rabbi, and I said, "Sandy, who is a mourner?"
And she said, "Well, in our tradition we consider someone a mourner for a full year after the death of a loved one, and every year thereafter on the anniversary of that death."
I also noticed, by the way, they had names on the wall with lights next to those names, and some of those names would be lit. I thought, "What a beautiful tradition, and how different it is from us."
I was talking to somebody just a couple weeks week ago who felt guilty because she were still grieving, and who was saying to herself, "I know I ought to be over this."
Unfortunately sometimes people treat people that way. When someone dies everybody is around you and close to you, but as time goes on, people begin thinking, "Why don't they get over it?" And you know, underlying that is something of an attitude I think we have. Let me throw it out and see if you agree with me. We think of ourself as this self enclosed fortress like thing that's invaded by unwanted feelings, feelings like grief or anger or sadness or, well, you can go on. Does it fit? Do we think we've been invaded by these feelings and we try to get rid of them, or we try to push them away, or we throw up the walls to protect ourselves from them and keep them out?
What if these feelings are ladders that are thrown out for us to climb on our journey toward God? What if they represent important work that is to take place in our life? You know, in recovery circles people learn that anger and resentment and fear and guilt represent work that we have to do, and it's very honorable work. And I think grieving is the most important work that some of us do in our life, not only the grief of loved ones who have died, but there are many, many losses in our life that we have to grieve, and we can't bypass that process of grieving. We need to walk through it and be very gentle with ourself as we walk through it.
I want to close by doing what they did in the synagogue. Will the mourners please rise.
If you look around you, then, we have people in our midst who are doing very important work and who need our encouragement, our support, and our constant prayers, and who need from us the affirmation that what they're doing isn't just something to get over, but it's something very important to work through. Thank you, you can be seated now.
And as we usually do, I'm going to ask Jan to come up now, and we will read off those names of people who have died in the past year and ask someone from the family, as many as would like, to come and light a candle in their memory.
The names of people who died in the past year were read. Someone from the family came up and lit a candle in their memory.

Homily for October 26, 2008

October 26, 2008
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A
The readings today took me on a nostalgia trip back to the 60s and 70s. How many of you remember those days? Well, what I remember is, Wow! We discovered the commandment to love. And we said, "It's all about love, and so we don't need to worry about rules. And it's about love and people, and we don't need institutions." And so we set up a division. Do you remember those times? They were heady times.
Well, I want to revisit those today, because over the years when I ask myself, "Who are the people I've met who love God and our neighbor," they end up with deep connections to institutions and structures. Let me ask you, how many of you work in education? Would you stand? How many work in social work? How many work in some form of service that is supported by tax dollars? How many of you work in institutions or organizations that are supported by charitable giving? Okay. [More than half the congregation stood.]
So, let's put a face on institutions and tax dollars and contributions to charity. You see where I'm going? When I think of this, then I'm glad to pay my taxes, because I'm glad to be supporting teachers and social workers and police officers and firemen and all sorts of people. By the way, those of you who are sitting down, I don't mean to imply that just because you work for organizations that make money you're somehow less caring or less loving. So you can all sit down now.
We are approaching that time when we are being asked to give to the United Catholic Appeal and I wanted to put a face on that today. You're not being asked to give to the Archbishop or the archdiocese, but to people who embody love in action. To help put a face on what you're being asked to give to, I've asked Ruth Tinsley our principal  to share her perspective on what the United Catholic Appeal supports. [See comments by Ruth Tinsley]
Ruth Tinsley, October 26, 2008

Good morning, everyone.
Putting a face on what you're being asked to do is one of my favorite parts. The Mother Theodore Catholic Academies, of which Holy Cross School is one, receive a major portion of the money that's raised by the annual appeal. In the document "On the Threshold of the Third Millennium," Pope John Paul II said that the school is at the heart of the Church. And with so many of our schools struggling to survive, it makes you wonder sometimes if maybe the Church needs some heart surgery.
And that's part of what this appeal helps. It helps children like Lana, who was three when I first met her. And she was in school one day in a threeyearold class, and she was learning to pray for the first time. And as teachers do with little ones, the teacher's making grand gestures, "In the name of the Father, and the Son," and Lana wiggled and wiggled and had her hand up, and she needed the attention. But the teacher is teaching the children how to make the sign of the cross, so the teacher continues, "In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen." And Lana is wiggling and wiggling and wiggling because she needs that teacher's attention. There is a problem.
So finally, Miss Allen looks at Lana and she says, "Lana, just what is it?"
And Lana says, "My father's name is Ryan, not Holy Spirit Amen." This is just one beautiful child that I've been able to work with because of the Academies.
Many of our children in the Academies are not Catholic, but evangelization has always been part of our job. And when kids come to any of our schools, every day they get to hear about God; they get to hear about the reason that we are here; they get to learn about morals; they get to sing about God; and they get to learn how to interact the way God wants us to interact. That doesn't mean they can't learn that other places, but they can't talk about God in the open in other places.
This year I have a student from Russia who's joined Holy Cross School and, again, had never been in a Catholic church. But because we are able to exist, we are able to give this child a wonderful education in a Catholic setting. And every day there's something new that we have to let this child know, something different about the way he has practiced things, or something different in beliefs, not that one is right or that one is wrong, but we are able to serve this child. We are able to strengthen this child's heart.
The schools are at the heart of the Church, and if we want our churches to continue to be strong, it is very important that we continue to support our schools. It's not easy, especially in these times when  well, actually gas prices are down this week, so we're looking a little bit better  but when gas prices are crazy, when our jobs are unsure.
The longer a child is in a Catholic school, the greater their chance of going to college is. That is statistically proven. Also, the longer they're in a Catholic school, the better their chances of being a lifelong Catholic. Again, that doesn't mean that other children will not continue to be lifelong Catholics or that their faith is not strong. But when we can touch the lives of children who are not Catholic and who are Catholic every day and help to strengthen their belief in God and improve their education and improve their tomorrow, then we are making the heart of the Church stronger, and we're making a better tomorrow for each of the children.
I could give you stories of hundreds of children that I have gotten to work with, all of which have touched me differently, and children who I've lost along the way because, for one reason or another, their parents could not continue to support them  and we've been creative in how we can try keep them in our schools  and those we haven't lost touch with, just because they're no longer in our schools. So when you think about whether or not to give, think about the children and think about the heart of the Church.

Homil for October 19, 2008

Homily October 19, 2008
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A


Once when I was at another parish and we had a particularly argumentative meeting about the budget, I was saying to one of the priests who lived with us, the next morning, "You know, Alcoholics Anonymous has a tradition that we ought never finance, endorse, or lend the AA name to any outside enterprise or related activity, lest questions of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. Wouldn't it been nice if the church operated that way?"
And, without batting an eye, he quipped back, "Well, if it did, AA wouldn't have a place to meet."
Well, we're coming into that time of the year when we are asked to talk about stewardship and about the archdiocesan appeal. And to tell you the truth, I don't want to do it. And every time I'm called to talk about money, I just somehow feel that I'm taking away from the Gospel. But then I remember from the Gospel today, we do live in two worlds, don't we? We live in a real world where we have bills to pay  all of us do, and I know money is tight for all of us, but we live in this material world  and we live in a spiritual world. And it's tempting to put a wall between them and see them as two separate things. But if we do that, we wouldn't have a place to meet, and we wouldn't have a place to come together on Sunday. So I ask your indulgence as we begin a period of talking about that.
And I've asked John Peterson today (John is chairman of our finance committee) I've asked him just to share with us the basic facts of our parish finances. John has put together a preparation, and I think Dan and Walt will help him pass it out. I really invite your curiosity about this. We welcome questions and observations and comments.

[John gave financial presentation. See John Peterson Financial Presentation]

Financial presentation by John Peterson:

Is this okay? Can everybody hear? I'm going to give Walt and Dan a minute to pass the handouts out to everybody here. I hope I made enough. I wasn't sure. I was trying to cut back in expenses  no pun intended there.
Okay, as Fr. Larry said, my name is John Peterson, and I'm on the parish council. I help out with the finance committee. And what I wanted to try to do here in the next five minutes  and I promise I'm going make this brief, and I'm going to get through it pretty quickly  what I wanted to do was just to try to give you all a very high level view of where our money comes from, how we spend it, and the current financial conditions of Holy Cross Parish.
So, if you all have the handout now, if you just kind of flip over to page two. Let me just start by saying that Holy Cross has a fiscal year that runs from July 1 through June 30, so right now we are three months into our fiscal year. We basically just completed our first quarter. And for this fiscal year, the 20082009 fiscal year, the finance committee submitted a balanced budget of $380,000 for our parish. So what that basically is saying is, that's what we think it's going to cost this year to run the parish, $380,000 to make everything go. Okay? So we hope to bring in, in revenues, $380,000 and we're going to spend pretty much everything that we bring in.
If you flip over to page three of that handout, as far as revenues are concerned, we have seven major categories in which Holy Cross generates revenue, and there you can see those seven categories right there. It starts and leads off with Sunday collections and runs through fees and interest, investments, so on and so forth. If you flip to page four, what you're going to see is a pie chart that basically shows how much is budgeted for each of those individual seven categories. And as you can see, again, we hope to bring in $380,000. We think that's what it's going to cost to run the parish this year. And $171,000, or 46 percent of that $380,000, is going to come from Sunday collections. So this year, for the 20082009 fiscal year, we hope to collect or bring in from Sunday collections $171,000, and I think that's a very key number for us as a parish. So that's kind of from a revenue side.
I wanted to try to give you a little bit more detail, so if you turn over to page five, you see we have seven categories, but then we have individual subcategories relative to each of those seven main revenue buckets. So, for instance, if you're wondering when we say fees, what are we talking about, well, we have sacramental fees, we have religious education fees, we have adult faith formation fees, so on and so forth. So that gives you a little bit more of the specifics behind the revenue that we bring in to Holy Cross.
So let's turn to page six, then, and talk about the expenses that we have. At Holy Cross, on our income statement we broke down our expenses into 14 main categories. They lead off with salaries, assessments, property and facilities, so on and so forth. So you can see on page six the 14 categories in which Holy Cross spends its money.
If you flip to page seven, again you'll see another chart, a breakdown of how we plan on spending that $380,000. So our lead categories are, again, assessments, property and facility and salaries. Seventyfive percent of our total expenses go to those three buckets. And just in case you're wondering, if you're looking in the $97,000 or $98,000 that we pay out to our salaried employees here at Holy Cross and you're thinking that's a lot, it's not. They do a heck of a lot of work for us and are probably underpaid, if anything.
On page eight, if you take a look at that again, what I wanted to try to do there was give you a little bit more detail behind our individual expenses, more detail behind those 14 categories. So again, here are the subcategories. When we talk about assessments, for instance, we have a cathedraticum expense, a property assessment, we have to contribute to the arch for the Criterion, so on and so forth. So again, more of a breakdown on expenses.
Flipping to page nine  and we're almost through here  so what have we talked about so far? That's kind of our budget. What I'd like to do right now, then, on page nine is turn to our income statement and look at a very high level, our cash flow that has come in over the last four years. So if you go back to 20042005, we actually brought in $22,000 more in revenue than we spent that year. In 20052006, we brought in $27,0000 more in revenue than we spent. In the 0607 fiscal year, we brought in $89,000 more in revenue than we spent.
Now all that sounds great. The one thing that I'd like you understand about 0607 and that $89,000 is, that money was money that was coming in and was pledged to our legacy of mission campaign and our church renovation campaign. So people were going above and beyond for those two campaigns, and that's where a lot of that money came from. Then if you look at the fiscal year that we just finished, 0708, we actually spent more, $87,000 more, than we brought in. Well, what were we doing there? All the money that was pledged and earmarked through our legacy of mission campaign was then spent the following year on the things that you all wanted it to be spent on. We put in new bathrooms, new kitchen facilities in the Kelley Gym, we've worked on our windows, we paid for a new boiler, so on and so forth.
If you flip over to page ten, the detail behind those big numbers you just saw on page nine are kind of laid out. I'm not going to go into these in any great detail here, but that's kind of the bottom line of where those big numbers came from.
Now, we're going to keep moving. Second to the last page, page 11, that kind of brings us to our balance sheet. We've talked about our budget, a little bit on our income statement, the cash flow, the money that's been coming in and going out. Now let's take a look at our balance sheet and talk about what we're really worth as a parish.
The balance sheet represents our financial position at a specific point in time. It defines your assets and claims against those assets, i.e. your liabilities. So basically the balance sheet says, here's our assets less our liabilities and it equals what our net worth is. Now, the last balance sheet that I was able to take a look at was the August balance sheet. And at that point what it said about Holy Cross is that we had $90,000 in assets, we had $61,000 in liabilities, which means that we have an equity of about $30,000.
Our assets are in the form of cash. That is basically in our Holy Cross checking account and our various savings accounts. Our liability comes from deferred income. That's income that we have earmarked for specific projects. And we owe $20,000 in debt to the arch. They keep asking about it, every year, wanting to know when we're going to pay that down. So we've been slowly whittling that down over the years. But that's kind of what it looks like from a balance sheet perspective.
Now that $30,000. It may look good, but I think what I would have to say in going to the next page  just some take home points, and I'm going to skip right to the bottom line here  from a balance sheet perspective, we're solvent. We're not in debt. We're solvent, but it's tight. We bring in at Holy Cross basically just enough in revenue each month to kind of cover our expenses, and we get by. God seems to provide. But when we have an instance like we did last year when the boiler goes, or pick your next property and facility nightmare, we're going to be in a tight way, because again, we do bring in just enough to get by each month, and so far it works for us.
That said, what I think we need to do as a parish is, we need to stay focused on our Sunday collections. As I said earlier, this year we have a goal of bringing in $171,000 in Sunday collections, and I think we need to meet that goal. We're doing okay so far against it, not quite there, but we need to meet that goal of hitting the $171,000 or improving.
We've been doing very good in fundraising. In 2004 we had gross revenues on fundraising of $16,000, and then this last fiscal year we had gross revenues in fundraising of almost $50,000. So our fundraising group has been doing tremendous work, Mary Berry and  I won't go into all the names because I'll miss somebody  but we've done a nice job over the years in raising money. But a lot of that money that we raise, instead of going toward special projects, has to go back into keeping the church running. And it would be nice if we could hit our collection goals, our Sunday collections goals, so that that fundraising income that we bring in can be used for church improvements and future projects that we'd like to see the church carry forward and basically improve the church.
I think you're probably going to see us probably reduce our capital expenditures coming up here in the next couple of years, just because of the overall funding come in.
And I guess the last thing I'd like to say is we're all a part of this. This is our church. We're not talking about equal giving, we're talking about equal sacrifice. Everybody needs to do their part and do the best they can, and I'm sure that we all do. But keep your eyes focused on Sunday collections. That $171,000 goal for us is key. And I think if we make that, we'll get through this next fiscal year in decent shape.
Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, John. I just want to add, if you look over there you'll see where we've had plaster repair. So one of those unexpected things last year was leaks through the mortar. Dan Herbertz has done a wonderful job of staying on top of that project, and we've completed the repairs, and I've written the check, and we're able to do it. Dan is holding off on signing off on it till he gets a little more work squeezed out of the contractor, and we're very appreciative of that. But we had $34,000 of unanticipated expenses to repair mortar leaks around there, and that pretty much exhausted money that we had for capital improvement.
I think what I want to close with is just that question, what does belong to God? Now, I have to confess, there are some things I often don't pray about. When I go shopping, if I go to the mall, I know I should but I don't pray before I go to the mall, because if I see something I want, I want to buy it. And I only want to ask will it fit on my charge card or can I afford it. I don't ask God, "Do you think I should buy this?" And do you know why I don't ask? I'm not sure I want to know the answer.
Well, I say that jokingly, but think for a moment of your life and the things that you pray about. And then think of the things that you don't pray about and that you never pray about. And that's even more curious. The things I pray about are obvious. The things that I don't pray about are maybe the things that I really need to look at, because that might be where I'm not really wanting to hear what God has to say to me.
Well, I won't ask you to raise your hand. How many of you have ever prayed about parish finances? How many of you have ever prayed about what you can give? I know some have. But, all I want to do is ask you to pray and think about it. And at the same time, I know John threw a lot of information out at you. Believe me, I've been here 12 years, and I still don't understand our finance statements completely. But then when I look them over, I have access to the bookkeeper and I can say, "What's in this category?" She can give me a printout of every item in there.
So all that information is available and none of it's secret, so look it over. And if you have questions, please know that we welcome them and we don't see them as an inconvenience, but they really will help us understand more what kind of questions people might have and how to present things to you.