Last Sunday at the end of Pentecost Masses, Deacon David carried out the Easter Candle to signify that the Easter Season had come to an end. While the Church will be celebrating two important feasts, Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi, in the next two weeks, we are officially in the Season of Ordinary Time.
While to our Catholic Mindset Ordinary Time might not seem as important a season as Easter, Lent or Advent, Ordinary Time is anything but “humdrum” time. Pentecost is often considered the feast marking the birth of the Church and Ordinary Time is that season when the Church is set to grow. It is the time for evangelization and reflection on the Church’s mission work.
Appropriately, Pope Francis launched that effort in his homily for Pentecost Mass and in his remarks at the usual praying of the Regina Coeli at Noon in St. Peter’s Square. Francis’ Pentecost homily set the tone for our work of evangelization during this season of Ordinary Time. In his remarks, he pointed out that to be an evangelizing Church we need to be a unified Church. But he stressed that unity does not mean uniformity.
Francis cautioned that we need to avoid two temptations with regards to how we consider Church unity. He said the first temptation was to seek diversity without unity. He said that happens when groups of the right or the left become too rigid in their positions. He reminded us that we need to be, “brothers and sisters in the one Spirit” on the side of Jesus and humble and grateful children of the Church”.
Unity without diversity is the second temptation that confronts the Church. Francis explained that outlook as, “Here, unity becomes uniformity, where everyone has to do everything together and in the same way, always thinking alike. Unity ends up becoming homogeneity and no longer freedom.” Francis said, “So the prayer we make to the Holy Spirit is for the grace to receive his unity, a glance that, leaving personal preferences aside, embrace and loves his Church, our Church.”
Finally, Francis reminded his listeners that offering God’s forgiveness is at the core of the Church’s evangelization efforts. He said, “Forgiveness sets our hearts free and enables us to start afresh. Forgiveness gives hope; without forgiveness, the Church is not built up.”
What Francis says is so true. It was the offer of forgiveness that was at the core of Jesus’ message. He transformed the world when he offered forgiveness to the Woman at the Well, Tax Collectors, and even Peter when he professed his love of Jesus after he had denied Jesus during the Passion. Our world is still hungry for the message of God’s forgiveness that Jesus spent his public ministry preaching. Forgiveness and the unity of all humankind need to be at the core of our evangelization message.
As I prepare to leave St. Patrick’s parish, I’m thinking of the legacy that I hopefully leave behind. I hope it is one of a stronger desire for St. Patrick’s parishioners to embrace a greater spirit of evangelization. I hope that I am remembered as a pastor who helped give a greater sense of unity to the parish and was an instrument of God’s forgiveness. I hope that same desire to share the Good News of Jesus Christ has grown in your heart too.