I’d like to wish all the Father’s and Grandfather’s, including our spiritual father, Father Steve, a blessed and happy Father’s Day.
Your love and support to your families is a blessing.
We give thanks to the Lord in gratitude for you.
This year we are celebrating our 25th anniversary as a parish.
We have some major events planned to commemorate this milestone.
A few of them are Mass with the Archbishop in August, an outdoor Mass in October near the Feast of St. Francis, and a dinner dance.
Our parish started out very small, a bit like the mustard seed in the parable in today’s Gospel.
The seed was first planted in 1993 when Archbishop Daniel Buechlein approved our new parish.
The first Mass was a gathering of a few dozen people in the backyard of the Austgen family home.
The seed began to sprout and grow with a handful of families who worshiped together in the Center Grove Middle school gym.
Our church and parish offices were completed in 1997 and the parish continued its steady growth.
Our school ministry was started in 2006 with just 34 students in the two classrooms of the original church building.
Our facility was expanded twice, in 2007 and 2010, to accommodate the needs of our school ministry and religious education.
In 2011 we opened our Harvest Food pantry and in 2014 built a stand-alone building to serve growing demand for assistance.
In 2015 we added the Early Childhood Education center to provide for needs for care for young children of our growing parish.
The columbarium was opened in 2015 as a final resting place for parish members who have passed to be with our Lord.
Today we now have over 550 children in our school ministry, over 800 children in our Sunday religious education and youth ministry, over 1600 families in our parish.
That’s a huge growth from what started with just a few families over 25 years ago.
Our parish is much like the mustard seed that started out small, and then grew into the largest of plants with large branches for the many birds of the air to rest in its shade.
How is this all possible?
Through our faith in our Lord Jesus, and the Church he gave us.
Jesus came to bring about the Kingdom of God.
His parables give us insight on how the Kingdom comes about.
Jesus ushered in this Kingdom by becoming man and living among us.
He showed us how to bring the Kingdom about, through self-sacrificial love.
We are now in Ordinary time and many of the Gospel stories we hear about during this time are about making God’s Kingdom present by loving God and neighbor.
Christ began the work.
It’s now our job as the Body of Christ, His hands and feet, to carry out his mission.
How do we accomplish this mission?
We don’t do it on our own.
It’s all dependent on God.
He provides the seed of faith.
He also makes possible the soil to grow through our family and Church.
Today’s parable gives us some insight.
The seed sown represents God’s work in us through our faith.
It starts out small with the seed of faith being planted in us at baptism.
Most of us were baptized as infants, and given that gift of faith through our parents.
That faith is then nurtured through our families and faith community creating the soil for the seed to grow.
Their modeling of the faith in our daily lives provides the rich soil we need to grow.
The sacraments of initiation, first communion and confirmation, gives us the grace to grow in our faith.
The Word of God we study and hear at Mass, strengthens our faith so we learn to be disciples of Jesus and spread the Kingdom of God.
As we grow in our faith, we begin to branch out and serve others by showing our love of neighbor.
It may start through small acts of kindness among our families & faith community.
It may be as simple as a little child bringing in a can of soup for our food pantry.
But it can then grow into a family bringing a bag of groceries.
This grows into hundreds of families donating their food and time to serve the hundreds of families at our food pantry each year.
All of this made possible from the gift of faith from Jesus and establishing his Church to help us love God and our neighbor.
Something very small, an infant being baptized,
like a mustard seed, turns into something large,
a whole community of faith,
feeding hundreds of families every year,
like the mustard plant with large branches for many birds to dwell in.
(Pause)
As we continue with our Mass, may the Eucharist we receive,
provide the grace to help us grow in our faith,
to help make the God’s Kingdom present through each of us,
as members of the Body of Christ.
