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I would like to start our morning of reflection today with a word of gratitude. The most important thing that we do as a parish community is gathering around this altar for the celebration of the Eucharist. It is our moment to sit at the feet of the Lord and to simply adore Him. It’s our moment to worship the Living God and to have our hearts changed by an encounter with Him. But that would not be possible for our parish community without every single one of you. All of you are the lifeblood of the parish. We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you. So please know how much you are appreciated for what you do for the Lord, for our community, for helping to assist our brothers and sisters to encounter Jesus in the Eucharist. So thank you!

Our First Encounter with the Lord

To begin our first talk today, I actually want to do something that we kind of did at our priestly convocation a week or so ago. I want invite all of us to take a couple of minutes to sit in quiet and to simply remember, to remember when we first encountered the Lord. When did we know that the Lord loved us and cared about us? When did we know that He was real? When did we realize that He wanted to be in relationship with us?

I realize there’s a mix of different ages and backgrounds here this morning. For some of us, that memory might take a minute to come to mind. For others, we might be able to recall it immediately. Some of us may not have had that experience just yet. No matter where we’re at in our spiritual life, in our relationship with the Lord, I want to encourage all of us to just think about that for a minute or two. What did that encounter look like? Or what would you like that encounter to look like? Ultimately, we wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t encountered the Lord and been changed by Him. So I encourage us to simply remember that moment.

Give 2 minutes for personal reflection.

As the day goes on, I would encourage you to share that memory, that encounter with those around you. If you are here with your spouse or members of your family or a friend, please share it with each other at some point today. If you’re here by yourself, take that memory home and share it with someone – call a parent, a sibling, a best friend and tell them about that first encounter with the Lord. I think it’ll be a way to bring your families, your friendships even closer together and to maybe open a space for an even deeper encounter with the Lord.

God is the Greatest Storyteller

Everyone enjoys a good story – whether that’s a good book or a great movie. A story can be especially enjoyable and maybe even more poignant for us when we are able to relate to its characters or its plot. Often, we find ourselves drawn into the story by an interesting conflict and a joyful resolution. When that happens, it brings us to a feeling of joy within ourselves. It touches on our imaginations, our senses. Maybe it reminds us of something that we ourselves have experienced. Nevertheless, we find it to be quite entertaining and pleasurable.

As we reflected a couple of minutes ago, all of us have a story to tell. Each person in this church has a unique history with happy and sad moments, with great victories and moments of defeat. All of our stories led us to this particular moment in time. But do we realize that our stories are part of a larger story being told since the beginning of creation?

God our Father is the Great Storyteller, and since the creation of the world, He has been telling a story with big actors and a serious conflict. It’s a story about how He loves humanity, how He desires to be in relationship with humanity, how He longs to dwell with us forever. And the most remarkable thing about that story is that it includes every single one of us. 

Once upon a time…

Our story doesn’t begin at our birth; it began when God created the universe. We read in Genesis, in the Creation Narrative, that God creates humanity in His own image and likeness; He creates humanity with the capacity to give love and receive love. It’s a capacity that is implanted on every human heart.

But something goes drastically wrong – there is a major conflict in our human story, a conflict that presents itself pretty early on in that story. We know from the Garden of Eden that Satan tempts our first parents. It leads to Adam and Eve rejecting their relationship with God, instead desiring to be equal or greater than their Creator. They commit the first sin and their punishment is expulsion from the Garden; they’re kicked out of paradise. Ultimately, the punishment in its deepest sense is death. After that moment, there is no way for humanity to enjoy eternity with the Father.

That could’ve been the completion of the story – but we know that’s not how God wanted the story of the human person to end. He wasn’t about to let the story end in defeat. Instead, He announced a plan to redeem humanity and destroy sin and death forever.

That plan was revealed over several centuries and thousands of years. God showed just how much He wanted to walk with humanity by the number of covenants that He established with us, by the number of Prophets He sent to call us back into right relationship with Him. Every action that God takes builds the story of our redemption and points to the one Person who will make that redemption possible – Jesus Christ.

If we look at the story of Jesus, the story of this great love affair between God and humanity, we begin to see that so many of the people in that story aren’t perfect – some are far from perfect, actually. In the Genealogy of Jesus that we read in the Gospel of Matthew, we find many individuals who are sinful and flawed. It shows us that God uses ordinary people to prepare the way for Christ and to help tell the story of salvation.

Even the line that Jesus is traced back to runs through David, a ruler that did an incredible amount of good but also committed a number of great sins and turned away from God many times. David was very human and very flawed, yet God made him a great character in the story of salvation. The Father had chosen David to be the patriarch of the line that brings Jesus into the world, the hereditary line that brough us the very Savior.

God secures the end of our story when Jesus, His very Son, gives Himself over to death on our behalf. By offering His life as a sacrifice, Jesus frees us from the chains of sin and death and offers life back to humanity. The end of our story is now life in Christ.

Our Story

God called everyday people to be a part of the story of salvation – He always has and He always will. Look at the disciples that Jesus surrounded Himself with – an unlikely band of men and women who had rough pasts. And yet, look what they were able to accomplish for the Lord. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit guided the Church to continue the story of salvation. Though Christ won the battle over sin and death, the Church needed to continue drawing people into that victory through the sacraments, through its teaching, through its proclamation of the Gospel.

We read about the extraordinary early days of the Church in the Acts of the Apostles, how so many people encountered Christ in a powerful way and went on to share their story with others. The witness of the early Church was so powerful that it grew exponentially (Acts 4:4). More and more people were coming to know Jesus and the sacrifice He made for us because of the witness of these everyday people. The same needs to happen today.

Unfortunately, our Christian culture has changed a lot since the time of the early Church. Christians used to be unable to share the story of how God worked powerfully in their lives with others because of the real possibility of being persecuted for sharing that story. Today, though, things are slightly different.

Now, we often feel like it is inappropriate to share our faith with others. There is even a sense of being afraid to share our stories because we don’t want to offend people who might think differently than us. That needs to change. When we keep our story silent, when we don’t share how Jesus has changed our lives, we also silence a powerful tool that Christ can use to draw people closer to Him. Just as God is telling the big story of salvation, God is telling a story in and through our lives and it must be shared.

When we share the story of what Jesus has done in our hearts, we give “testimony” to Him, we give witness to how He continues to act in the hearts of people today. It is a personal proof of who Christ is and why we can rightly call Him our Lord and Savior.

The Good God Has Done

Every person has a story. Sometimes, we forget that God is doing great things and has done great things in our lives and in the lives of other. So often, we take our own stories for granted. We don’t cherish them as much as we should.

Imagine. What would the Church look like if we were as on fire and passionate for others to know Christ as the early disciples? What if we knew our story, how to share it, and when to share it in a way that would point others to Jesus in a powerful way?

Today, as we gather for this morning of reflection, may we remember our story. This morning is about the story God is telling through Christ, and the ways that God is working that story in our lives. It is about recognizing the many ways that God’s grace is present in our story and understanding how much Christ loves us.

And that begins with reflection. That’s why I invited us to remember our first encounter with the Lord. We should always think about the big picture of our life and the many ways that Christ has been a part of it. We need to think about the person that we were before Christ, that moment when we powerfully encountered Him, and how that encounter has impacted us in a beautiful and positive way. Because it is that encounter that has led us here.

More to Come…

As we go on break, I encourage us to continue to remember that first encounter with the Lord; continue to thank God for that moment. Ask Him for a reawakening of the wonder and awe around that encounter. That wonder and awe will help us to embrace discipleship and to go out and share our story with those around us. That will be the topic of our next talk.

Photo Credit: Aaron Burden. Used under Unsplash license.