Turn Up The Flame Homily Part 2

by Fr. Michael A. Van Sloun

THE SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT, Year A

Gen 12:1-4; Ps 33:4-5,18-20,22; 2 Tim 1:8-10; Mt 17:1-9

HOW TO PREPARE FOR THE PLEDGE FOR THE TURN UP THE FLAME SPIRITUAL CAMPAIGN

Saturday, February 16, 2008, 5:00 and 6:30 p.m. Masses
Sunday, February 17, 2008, 8:00, 9:30 and 11:15 a.m., 6:00 p.m.

 

Christ, be our light!
Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness.
Christ, be our light!
Shine in your church gathered today.
(Farrell, B., “Christ, Be our Light,” No. 512,
Gather Comprehensive II, Chicago, IL: GIA Publications, 2004).

 

Christ is our light! (Jn 1:4,5,9; 8:12; 12:46).
Christ is the flame of our faith (2 Tim 1:6).
Christ, and his flame, dwells within each and every one of us
(1 Cor 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16).
Now is the time to Turn Up the Flame!

 

For those of you who may not have been here last weekend,
I announced our new Turn Up the Flame spiritual campaign.
It is patterned on a capital campaign.
It will go for three years, and it involves making a pledge.
It is my hope that we will put even more energy into this campaign
than we have put into past fund drives,
because the most important thing is not the church building
but the faith of the people in the building.

 

If you have missed theTurn Up the Flame information, it is available in several places:
in last week’s parish bulletin (there are extra copies on the tables at the exits),
in my letter to you which should have arrived at your home this week,
and on our parish web site, which I would urge you to visit.

Jesus, in the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids (Mt 25:1-13),
made it very clear that it is absolutely essential for us to “trim our lamps” Mt 25:7):
to cut away all of the char, soot, ash, carbon,
to cut away our evil thoughts, our evil deeds, our sins and wrongdoing,
so our lights will shine more brightly before others (Mt 5:16).

 

Our human nature is fallen; it’s a mess (Gen 3).
Jesus knew it, and – Bobby Knight knows it.
Back when I was coaching high school basketball,
I went to a coaching clinic at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.
No matter what you may think of Bobby Knight,
his Hoosier teams played great defense,
and I wanted my Crosier Seminary basketball teams to play great defense.
So I hung on Bobby Knight’s every word, waiting for his pearls of wisdom.
In a question-answer session, a coach raised his hand, and asked Coach Knight,
“What do you see as you most important job as coach?”
I thought to myself, “That’s a great question!”
so I leaned forward to listen carefully.
Here’s the bleeped version, Knight speaking:
“It is my job to kick Mother Nature in the rear!”
(That’s not exactly what he said, but you can figure it out).
So Coach Knight, Sid’s personal friend, went on:
“Super athletes come to IU.
They are physically talented, very skilled, highly motivated.
And let me tell you, as good as they are, has many times when they are lazy,
and they don’t work hard, they don’t work up to their potential,
and it is my job to challenge them, to push them,
to not let them get away with a half-hearted effort, to help them be great.”

 

And what Bobby Knight said about his basketball players
is what the prophets say about our spiritual life.
All of us have tons of talent,
but we do not work up to our spiritual potential.

 

Time and time again over history,
people have started out well, and then slip.
Adam and Eve started out in perfect union with God in the Garden of Eden,
and then they took the apple (Gen 3:6).
After the flood, God made a wonderful covenant with Noah (Gen 9:1-17),
after which his descendants built the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-4).
After God liberated the Hebrew people from cruel slavery in Egypt (Ex 13:17 ff),
they made a molten calf in the desert (Ex 32:1-6).

 

History shows us over and over again that people often start well with God,
but then they let things slip.
You and me, we let things slip, we fall into laxity.
Spiritually, we do not work as hard as we could,
and we do not work up to our spiritual potential.
The Turn Up the Flame campaign is intended to address spiritual slippage.
We need to give a better, stronger effort to our spiritual lives.

 

My friends, this is no small deal!
This is a matter of spiritual life or death!
The light of our flames ought to shine more brightly than they do!

 

Bishop Sheen has very interesting take on this in his book, The Priest is Not His Own.
There is a reason why people are not more excited about being Catholic;
a reason why Mass attendance is dropping;
a reason there are so few converts to Catholicism;
a reason that our young people are not very excited about their faith.
The reason is that your and my light as Catholics shines about as brightly as other people
(Sheen, F. J., The Priest is Not His Own, 56, 64).
We really don’t stand out very much.
There is a terrible indictment against us.
Here’s the problem:
your and my light shines about as brightly as Catholics who don’t go to church very often;
and our lights shine about as brightly as people of other faiths,
about as brightly as Lutherans, about as brightly as Methodists.
In fact, our lights shine about as brightly as many people who don’t go to church at all.
What would ever make a person who isn’t a Christian,
or who isn’t a Catholic,
or who doesn’t go to church,
want to be a Christian, or want to be a Catholic, or want to be a church-goer,
if our lights do not shine more brightly than other peoples’?
There is no selling point, nothing to evangelize, if we look and act like everyone else.

 

My friends,
we need to Turn Up the Flame!
Our lights ought to shine much more brightly before others!

Bishop Sheen has a very troubling story in his book.
He knew about two gentlemen who were very good friends,
both lawyers, both long-time partners in the same law firm:
one was an active, practicing Catholic,
the other didn’t practice much of anything.
Their friendship went on for a long time, twenty years.
The one who didn’t have much for faith became very ill,
was hospitalized, and on his deathbed, with only a short time to live.
The Catholic man went to the hospital, and pulled up a chair next to the bed,
and he finally mustered the courage to broach the big question,
“Now that you are nearing your end, how about coming into the Church?”
The dying man raised his eyebrows,
“If your faith meant so little to you during the twenty years that you have know me,
it cannot make that much difference now” (Sheen, F. J., The Priest is Not His Own, 63).

 

And we are very often reserved like this fellow.
Our words are not bold.
Our actions are not bold.
We are sheepish about our faith.
And our lights shine about as brightly as other people.
It’s time for us to kick Mother Nature in the behind!
It is time for us to step up and be great with our faith!
It is time to Turn Up the Flame!

 

What I am proposing to you is much more difficult than a regular capital campaign.
In a fund drive, we might want to hang on to our money,
but once the decision is made,
it really doesn’t take that much time to write the check or put the cash in the envelop.
What I am proposing here requires time and effort; it is a change in lifestyle,
and we are all creatures of habit and change in hard.

 

I’ve already heard people say, “This pledge sheet is easy, I’m already doing this stuff.”
That misses the point entirely!
If we are going to Turn Up the Flame,
there has to be a qualitative difference, we have to do things better;
or a quantitative difference, we need to add new things.

 

If your pledge is only what you are currently doing,
the height or brightness of the flame will not change.

 

Counselors have a saying:
“If nothing changes, nothing changes.”
If we keep doing things that same old way that we have always done them in the past,
we will get the same results.
If we want the flame to burn brighter,
we have to do things better, or differently, or add new things.

 

So when it comes to your pledge sheet, please, no “same-old, same-old.”
The pledge sheet is about improving or adding to what you are currently doing.
It is pure silliness to think that one hour a week for Mass
on Saturday or Sunday is all that God wants.
It takes more than that to make the flame a lot brighter.

 

The categories on the pledge sheet are very carefully chosen.

 

The first section of the pledge sheet are all about prayer:
Mass, private prayer, the sacraments, retreats.
Our faith is a relationship with God, a relationship with Jesus Christ.
We cannot love someone that we don’t know.
And if we do love someone, we want our relationship to grow,
so we work hard at communication.
A love-relationship can always grow deeper and richer.
So for God, when it comes to prayer, we can always pray better.

 

A while ago I saw a billboard by a church:
“If you are too busy to pray, you are too busy.”

 

Prayer is the top priority, except that taking out time to pray every day
is much more demanding than writing a check for a fund drive,
which makes our spiritual revival much more challenging than a capital campaign.

 

The second column on the pledge sheet is about learning about our faith.
The third column is practical ways to live our faith well,
particularly in our families.

 

Please, give these pledge sheets your utmost attention.
If you don’t have copies already,
there are adult, youth, and children’s forms,
and they are available on the tables at the exists.

 

Please, pray over your decision: “What will help my flame burn brighter?”
Kids, fill out your own.
Teens, same thing, please fill out your own.
Husbands and wives, your partner may have many ideas about what you need to do,
but please, you choose for yourself.
Yet couples and families can discuss things you might like to do together.
The key thing is that it is a personal commitment.
Keep the top sheet for yourself,
and be ready to bring the lower sheet to church with you
next weekend for Commitment Sunday.

 

I am hoping and dreaming for a huge response: 6000 pledge sheets returned.
This would be four times more responses than any campaign we have ever had.
There are over 13,000 people in our parish.
Slightly over half of our parishioners worship regularly, about 7000 a week.
We have really little kids, babies, one’s and two’s,
and no response is expected from them.
We have the old and infirm who can’t respond.
But for the able-bodied people who worship regularly,
we’re aiming for a 90%-plus response rate.
This is a fantastic goal; let’s work together to achieve it.

 

Like the elections, the early returns are already in, and the results are mixed,
some good, some a bit disappointing.

 

I have a couple great things to share with you.

 

This week I was chatting with a nurse from Mercy Hospital.
There are a number of St. Stephen’s parishioner nurses on her unit,
they were talking about Turn Up the Flame at work,
and they shared their excitement about this opportunity,
and they all said they are planning to pledge.

 

I heard about a seventh grade boy who attends a public middle school.
Last Sunday after mass he took three wrist bands home.
The next day he took the wrist bands with him to school:
he wore one and gave the other two to his buddies.
The teacher promptly took them away, saying, “If you don’t pass them out to everybody,
you three don’t get to wear yours.”
So after school the youngster came straight to church and picked up fifteen more,
and he took them back to school the next day,
explained the spiritual purpose of our campaign,
and he gave them to all of his classmates who wore them the rest of the day.
When you have a seventh grade boy spreading the good news to his public school class,
this is evangelization at its finest.
His light shined more brightly than the others, and so can ours!

 

There have been disappointing early results too.
We have NOT gotten off to a quick start.
Daily Mass attendance last week was the about same.
Eucharist adoration, confessions, Bible study – all about the same.
Singing at Mass, responses at Mass, people arriving late, people leaving early,
all about the same.

 

Our Turn Up the Flame campaign is not about “same-old, same-old.”
If nothing changes, nothing changes.
If we want better results, we have to change the way we doing things.
We need to kick Mother Nature in the rear,
we need to reduce our spiritual laziness and increase our effort.

 

This campaign will not cost you a nickel,
but it will cost your time,
and it could save your life.

 

Please, trim your lamps (Mt 25:7)!
Please, Turn Up your Flame!
Jesus wants our lights to shine more than others,
so they will see our increasing faith and experience our good deeds
and give glory to God (Mt 5:16)!

 

Christ, be our light!
Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness.
Christ, be our light!
Shine in your church gathered today.
(Farrell, B., “Christ, Be our Light,” No. 512,
Gather Comprehensive, Chicago, IL: GIA Publications, 2004).