You Will be Like Stars that Shine Forever

Brothers and Sisters:

Saint Frances Cabrini was the tenth of eleven children and was born two months premature in 1850 in a small town outside of Milan.  Only four of the children survived.  Her parents were good Catholics and her father read to her the stories of the missionaries in China and for this reason she had a great desire to go there.  Mother Cabrini was very frail all her life and so the religious orders of nuns she applied to rejected her.  Not to be stopped by anyone she started her own order with six other sisters and began the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  When she went to see Pope Leo XIII he told her to go West, not East.  There were many Italian immigrants in the United States and they were suffering immensely.  So she went to New York and in thirty-five years she started sixty-seven institutions.

For a woman who was very afraid of water she crossed the Atlantic over thirty times.  Pope Pius XII said at her canonization in 1946 that although she was frail of health she was endowed with a singular strength to do the will of God, and nothing would impede her.

Surely Mother Cabrini who is buried in New York just north of the George Washington Bridge typifies what the prophet Daniel says about those who lead others to holiness: they will be bright stars that shine for all eternity.  Those who teach or serve in the parish or in the ministries of the Church are instructing many in uprightness, in holiness, and they help others get close to God.  Through God’s grace they make it easy for someone to return to the Church.

There are three women, among the many who serve at St. Joe’s, who help every day at the Noon Mass here in the parish.  They are advanced in age, and so happy to do this service for God and for our parish.  Of course, it is a help to the priests, but it is even a bigger help to them.  When you give of ourselves, you benefit, you grow in holiness.

Having my mother in hospice and even now in rehabilitation it is easy to look back on her life, as you and I will do one day, hopefully.  What will give us the greatest joy?  I think the people you helped: those who you physically brought into this world and those who you gave a small cup of water, those perhaps through your efforts you welcomed back to the Church.

So as we have been saying for the last two weeks please consider what you would like to do for your treasure and with your time and talents at St. Joe’s.  I invite you to make giving a priority, and make giving of your resources to St. Joe’s a priority.  Make a plan of how you will do this.  Money is a service and it should be at the service of God.  Money and our possessions are not our own; they belong to God and to others.

I dream of how different our parish would be when enthusiastic greeters of all ages will make it easy, and loveable for the unchurched to return to God.  This is the single thing we can do right away that would change our parish.  At St. Joe’s this weekend you will all be asked to make a commitment, to take the next step that will help you to be generous with God.

In our parish all our thinking and planning has to be in this direction: helping the unchurched to return.  In our two towns there are about twelve thousand people.  About half are Catholic, or less than half.  The average attendance at St. Joe’s is about eight hundred, not five or six thousand, so some four or five thousand are missing.  Scripture tells us that if one person returns to God through my efforts stars will shine for all eternity.  Think of how much it will help a person to experience the love that God has for him, and how that will change him or her!

We will ask you this weekend to take a step forward.  We have in our parish First Serve.  Try a ministry once and see if it fits you.  I think it will.  Give God an hour and let him surprise you.

My words will not pass away says Jesus.  This is true also for your words: the help you give to someone, the words of Christ you whisper in an ear or your presence in a ministry will never pass away.  Know that He is near.  He is coming and is looking for you.

 

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