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In this homily for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Fr. Chas reflects on the Wedding Feast of the Lamb and how every Holy Mass offers a real participation in the eternal celebration of heaven. He also presents the annual State of the Parish, highlighting our blessings, upcoming sanctuary improvements, and the new 6-3-1 stewardship model as we prepare for 2027. Discover how our parish continues its mission of bringing Christ to Jackson County and beyond.
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All right, so in today’s first reading, God inspires Isaiah to prophesy about the kingdom of God that is to come. And on that final day, the prophet Isaiah says that God will destroy the veil that veils all people. What’s that veil? The veil of our brokenness and sin that distorts our spiritual vision to be able to see the truth of things and the distortion of being able to see God, right? Have you ever wondered why folks who seem intelligent enough can’t see reality as it truly is, who might deny logic, reason, common sense as it relates to the big moral questions, right? That’s the veil of brokenness and sin, all right, that refusal to see as God sees.
So Isaiah also uses this image of a dark web that is woven over all the nations. It’s like a web that a spider weaves over the victims that the spider has caught to devour, right? By Jesus’ offering of himself, however, Christ destroys that web and liberates humanity from Satan’s web. As Isaiah states, he will destroy death forever.
He will destroy death forever. And how about this beautiful reality of God’s kingdom that Isaiah mentions? The Lord will wipe away the tears of every face. Your tears, my tears, the tears of injustice cried out, right? He will wipe away all those tears, so let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us.
And then the best part is yet to come. Isaiah says that the Lord will provide a feast of rich food and choice wines, and he emphasizes that it’s a feast of juicy rich foods and pure choice wines, the best of the best. And so Isaiah is describing what our parish patron, St. John the Evangelist, also describes in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, as the wedding feast of the Lamb, which is the subject of our upper part of our mural here, our apse mural.
Jesus Christ, the bridegroom, represented there by the Lamb, and we, his bride, the church, represented by those 24 saints that you helped select. And this mural is called the Cosmological Vision of Holy Mass because what we do here at every Mass is a real but temporal participation in that eternal reality of the wedding feast of the Lamb until we too are part of that eternity, right? This is our RSVP, if you will. For that eternal wedding feast of the Lamb.
And in today’s gospel, Jesus uses the same analogy of a wedding feast to which everyone gets invited, right? Everyone! In fact, Jesus goes out of his way that it’s the bad and the good alike that are invited. No one is excluded from receiving that invitation, which means Jesus personally invites you and me to that wedding banquet. Now notice, however, Jesus does give a serious warning, not only to those who persecuted his messengers that announced that invitation of the wedding feast, but also to all who would ignore or refuse the invitation out of indifference or gave excuses of being too busy, right? And he emphasizes that we must all be properly clothed, too, with the wedding garment on that final day.
And St. Paul reminds us what exactly that wedding garment is. It’s none other than Christ himself, right? Which is exactly what the sacramental life of the church does to us. It clothes us with Christ.
That’s the reason why I wear vestments, because it’s Christ ministering. It’s not Chaz, it’s Christ ministering to us at Mass. In other words, no wedding crashers will be let in, just the ones that the bridegroom knows and the ones who have taken the time to know the bridegroom by sacramentally living out now at Mass, the union that we will have with him for all eternity, all right? And that comes about with every person that comes up for communion, body, blood, soul, and divinity, you’re clothed with Christ, you’re in union with Christ.
So, brothers and sisters, what we celebrate at every holy Mass is an anticipation and real participation in that eternal destiny. And at every Mass, the angels and the saints join us, and we join them in the reality that is more real than the present reality we experience in this world. Why is that? Well, because what we experience in this dimension of space and time is passing.
But what we anticipate and now participate in a temporal fashion through Mass, in the wedding feast of the Lamb, is eternal. It is the one reality that perdures forever. And so, the only way that the holy Mass is not the most incredible thing we experience on this side of reality is because we’re not beholding these sacred mysteries with the eyes of faith, to recognize in the Eucharist God’s pledge and promise to fulfill the for us, all that Isaiah describes in this prophecy.
And is, in fact, a taste of that heavenly reality, here and now, for Christ’s body and blood is the purest and choicest of all food and drink. But that veil of brokenness and dark web of sin can obscure our vision to see these hidden mysteries that are present at every Mass, by which divinity and humanity are spousally united in Jesus Christ. Fostering your intimate union with God by activating the power of the Holy Spirit in your life, that’s the central theme of the upcoming parish mission that begins next Sunday evening.
So, some of you have asked, you know, how come my faith doesn’t feel alive or life-changing as I’ve noticed it in some others. Well, part of that is activating the power, the life of the Holy Spirit in you. And that’s Father Patrick Gagnon’s specialty, by the way.
So, please clear whatever you’ve got going on on Sunday evening, Monday evening, and Tuesday evening so that you don’t miss Father Patrick Gagnon. Your attendance tells me, too, as your pastor, that you want more of the best formation coming right here in our backyard to Jackson, and that bringing some of the best teachers of the faith is worth the hard work of getting them here instead of having to go to Ann Arbor or Lansing, right? So, hope to see you there on the evenings of October 18, 19, and 20 for a holy triduum of sorts, right? Now, that allows me to take the rest of this homily time for something we’ve normally done around March, and that is the annual State of the Parish homily, because we normally determine our personal budgets based on the calendar year and not on the parish’s fiscal year that begins in July. We’re now making our annual pledges to the parish to begin in January instead of July.
So, that’s why we are now doing the State of the Parish around this time of year to help you prepare for your planned giving for 2027. And as your pastor, I’m just so proud of how we take care of our parish, both our church and our school, keeping up the long 170-year tradition of St. John as the Mother Church of Jackson. This has been quite a year for us, right, beginning with the unveiling of Macklin’s masterpiece on the evening of December 24, when Bishop Boyer came right here and blessed our new apse mural, wrapping up the jubilee year with that.
What a way to mark that holy year of 2025, as artist Joseph Macklin worked the entire year to complete this work that has garnered national attention from several media outlets and publications. By the way, many of y’all were so excited and impressed with the work of sacred art that as Joseph was completing this, a number of you were giving donations specifically for the apse mural. And those additional donations, along with those not even from our parish who simply wanted to support good sacred art, ended up paying for the entire cost of the work, right? In other words, because a number of you were so inspired to give over and above your normal 10% tithe contribution and donate more directly and specifically to this work, Macklin’s masterpiece was completely covered by incremental donations that would not have been there were you not so inspired by what was happening here.
So thank you. And that frees us up to go forward with the next phase of our sanctuary beautification, the plans for which began back in 2022 with the architect Bill Heyer, if you remember him. So the next phase involves the flooring of this sanctuary area.
We’ll be replacing the carpet in the sanctuary proper, which is this area with the three steps that elevate the front part of the church, that has the altar of sacrifice, the high altar that houses the blessed sacrament, and the two side chapels of Joseph and Mary here. The members of our finance council and pastoral council have approved those plans, and that proposal for the new sanctuary flooring has now been sent to the diocese for their approval. I also want to recognize Michael Philpott, our director of parish operations, for once again spearheading these projects and keeping things moving along.
He’s just done such a great job. It’s a blessing to have him. Thank you, too, for the donations you’ve been giving to our capital fund.
That’s the 4% part of the 5-4-1 model of stewardship. For those who are new to St. John, 5-4-1 is our recommended way of dividing your 10% tithe donation, in which you pledge to donate 5% of your gross income to our Sunday offertory, 4% to our income to our capital fund, and then 1% of your income to the DSA, the Diocesan Services Appeal that benefits many different works of mercy to help people in need in our region of Michigan. So speaking of that, we do have a slight shift in that model of stewardship due to some diocesan policies that restrict the use of our funds.
So instead of a 5-4-1 split, we now invite you to make a 6-3-1 split of your 10% tithe. So there is no increase in the percentage, but we encourage you to give 6% to the Sunday offertory, 3% to the capital fund, and 1% to the DSA, as usual. So why this slight shift? Well, the biggest reason is because the diocese clarified that parishes are free to use Sunday offertory funds for whatever the parishes need to use those funds.
The capital fund, however, is restricted for use to just that, our capital projects. In other words, we don’t have the flexibility to spend capital funds on parish operations should we need to, but we do have the flexibility of using Sunday offertory funds that allow us to spend more funds on capital projects if we want. So please, as that offering, the firstfruits offering of your labor to the building up of the kingdom of God, we now invite you to give the first 6% of your income to our regular Sunday offertory, 3% to the capital fund, and the same 1% to DSA.
To sum up in one word, why? Flexibility. Right? The flexibility for our parish and not the diocese to be able to use our Sunday offertory as we best see fit. As you probably know from your own household, the cost of operations have gone up and so we need to allocate more funds to our operations to continue to live out the mission to evangelize Jackson County and beyond.
To announce that wedding invitation to everybody, right? And not to mention how underpaid our staff is. So, to that end, you will find the pledge cards for the 2027 giving at the end of your pews. So those sitting at the end of the pews, please offer them to the folks in the middle of the pews so that everybody can take a look at those.
That looks like this, whereas I did have a sample up here. Can you hand me one of those? Right there. So it looks like this, this one.
And it has the new 631 estimates, if you’re wondering, for ease of figuring out your tithe. And then if you could fill that out and put that in an envelope, that’d be great. By November 1st, if you would, which is, of course, All Saints Day.
Remember that song? Oh, when the saints go marching in. Oh, when the saints go marching in. Oh, how I want you to be in that number that have turned their pledges in by November 1st.
So, also, on your way out after Mass today, please be sure to pick up the State of the Parish edition of the Bulletin. The Bulletin saves me from going over lots of important top-line information. There’s my pastor’s letter there, our mission and core values page, our current rally cry, and all our parish life opportunities to grow in faith and relationship with God.
There’s a whole page on our St. John’s School with a beautiful picture of all our wonderful, wonderful teachers in there. Reports on the parish finances, right? Where we get the percentages of our income and then where our expenses go, right? And then also a page on current and future capital projects and a frequently asked questions page on our 631 model of stewardship. So, you can see how, you know, awesome of a job Shane Slough and our parish staff does with communications.
Pick that up on your way out. The work of the kingdom of God is being accomplished here in Jackson County because of you and your support, right? You may have heard how there’s this renewed interest, and we’re starting to see it too here as well, among young adults of our society in Christ and his church. They’re tired of all the division and the discouragement in our society and in our world and, you know, especially in the virtual world that so many of them live in, right? And they’re saying that there has to be something out there that corresponds to the good, the truth, and the beauty for which my heart longs and yearns.
And that search online to which they’re exposed to all kinds of horrible stuff, right? But even amidst all that horrible stuff, Catholic apostolates have put material out there that does proclaim the truth and is leading them to explore what Catholicism has to offer. But that search online, get this, eventually needs to become incarnational from the virtual to the personal for the message of that gospel to actually transform their lives as opposed to remain an idea in their head. And it’s in the life of the parish, the sacramental life of the church, that that idea becomes a reality in which they actually encounter the person of Jesus Christ who gives himself to us in the sacraments.
And so may the Mother Church of Jackson have open doors, and may each of us have open arms to welcome new and fellow sinners who desire to become saints.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)