Pastor’s Corner for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, by Fr. Bruce Botha SJ

 

At the 9.30 am mass on Sunday we welcome new members into our community though the sacrament of baptism. Baptism is a sacrament of initiation, it initiates a person into the community we call church, makes them sons or daughters of God, part of the Body of Christ. However, sacraments aren’t magic. They won’t do what we say they do unless we do our part.

The most basic part of “doing our part” is to simply show up. Showing up means you have taken your role as parents, godparents, as baptised members of the community seriously, because to be part of the body means coming to be part of that body. While during COVID virtual masses were an important part of connecting to the wider community of the Church, the body of Christ is both spiritual AND physical. We need to look in each other’s eyes, we need to feel the solid reality of hands and bread.

Apart from just showing up we are called to remember the promises we made to be good examples to our children and by extension, all the children of our community. Children learn by imitation, both how to be be virtuous, loving and kind, and the opposite. Each of us bears the responsibility to keep the flame of faith burning bright in those around us, to nurture it through our love, our care, our devotion.

Next month we celebrate mission month, the call for each one of us to become missionary disciples of Christ. The first step to being a missionary Church is start within, with our own conversion, by showing up, by trying to live good lives. That’s when we can begin to live our identity as those baptised and sent into the world to bring and be the Good News.