God is Moving in Our Community

This homily centers on three key movements of the Christian life drawn from the readings:

1. God is moving in our community.
Jesus didn’t just act powerfully 2,000 years ago—He is still active today. We encounter Him through prayer, relationships, Mass, hospitality, and parish ministries. The invitation is simple but bold: recognize and share how Christ is at work in your life right now—even if the answer is “I haven’t experienced that yet.”

2. We were ransomed by the Blood of the Lamb.
Using the ancient image of the sacrificial lamb, the homily explains how Jesus fulfills what was only symbolic in the Old Testament. He takes on our sins, dies in our place, and gives us new life. Through Baptism and the Eucharist, we are washed and nourished by His sacrifice. This is not abstract—it’s deeply personal: He did this out of love for you.

3. Jesus accompanies us in our doubts.
Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, people are in different places spiritually—on fire, lukewarm, indifferent, or questioning. Wherever we are, Jesus walks with us. He meets us in our conversations, our doubts, and our searching. Spaces like Alpha exist to make room for that encounter.

Bottom line:
God is active. You are redeemed. And Jesus walks with you—exactly where you are.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Good morning. Before I begin my homily today, just want to share one uh announcement with you that at the end of this month, we are going to be starting a new initiative here at St. Joseph, which was requested to us by the diocese. And this initiative is a monthly uh 24-hour adoration, uh, praying for an increase in vocations to priesthood, to religious life, and to married life. Now, uh, for those of us who may not know what adoration is, adoration is when we place Jesus in the Eucharist there on the altar, and we just spend time with him in prayer. Him talking to us, us talking to him, just like two people who who love each other spend time with each other. Um, how many people here are our spouses here? Husbands and wives? Okay, all right. And you guys spend quality time with each other, right? No, you don't spend quality time. Hopefully you spend some quality time with each other. When you love somebody, you spend time with them, right? Quality time with the person. And that's what adoration is. We spend time with the one that we love. We spend time with Jesus. And so that's a new initiative that we're starting at the end of this month. If you've never tried it before, I would like to invite you to consider spending some time with Jesus, praying for this uh special need. And so that's the uh announcement for today. Okay, now to the homily. For the homily today, I'm gonna make three points. I'm gonna make one point for each uh reading of the scripture that we heard today, and these are the three points I'm gonna put on the screen. Um, these are the three points I'm gonna make today. First, God is moving in our community. Second, we were ransomed by the blood of the Lamb of Jesus Christ. And third, Jesus accompanies us in our doubts. Do you ever have sometimes doubts and questions in your heart? Sometimes? Okay. Jesus accompanies us in our doubts. Let's go to that first point and we're gonna go to our first reading. God is moving in our community, and we're gonna look at the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. Could I invite you, if we could read this scripture passage together? Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs, which God worked through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. Jesus did mighty things, wondrous deeds and signs during his time on earth over 2,000 years ago, and he does the same for us today. Now, if I were to ask you, could you name one way that you have encountered God or you've encountered Jesus Christ in your life? I imagine that many of you would be able to give some sort of an answer to that, right? You would say, Maybe I encounter him in my daily prayer. Maybe I encounter him uh when I come to mass through the hospitality, preaching, music, prayers. Maybe you encounter him in the donuts and coffee after mass. I don't know. Um maybe you've encountered Jesus or Christ or God through our alpha experience that we've been doing. By the way, by now we've run our second course and we've uh have a total of almost 500 people now that have gone through our alpha course. And if our math is correct, and and if 2,500 people come to Mass here at St. Joseph on Sundays, that means if my math is correct, one-fifth of our community has had an experience, 20% has gone through alpha, and many people have experienced an encounter with Jesus through that experience. Maybe some of you came this past Friday to our healing mass, and the church was packed. And and we started at 6:30 with praise and worship. We we we had mass at 7 and we prayed with people. I didn't get out of here until close to 11 p.m. that night. Praying with every single person here, and and the stories and testimonies of healings and people being touched by Christ, reconciliation and families, spiritual, emotional, physical healing, change of life. The stories are already pouring in of how people were healed at that healing mass we had on Friday. God is active in our community today. What Jesus did over 2,000 years ago is not just something in history, it's he's alive and active today. So here's what I'm gonna ask you to do. I'm gonna ask you to do something, maybe something new for you, or something maybe slightly uncomfortable. I don't want to challenge you to do this right now, okay? I'm gonna ask you to maybe turn to somebody next to you and do just do this one thing. Maybe share one way that you have encountered God, you have encountered Jesus in your life. Maybe again, it's through prayer, through mass, or whatever it is. And if you're coming to Mass today and you're like, you know, I haven't had an experience or an encounter with God, you you're welcome to say that too. But maybe just share one thing how you've encountered Jesus, how you've encountered God in your life, or how he's encountered you. Maybe take a moment, turn to somebody, just share one thing, one way you've encountered God and Christ in your life. Good. Let's try to bring it back once you're ready. By the way, at Alpha, this is what we do. You know, we we have a great meal together, we watch a little movie about the faith, and we talk about the faith together. Sometimes it's the first time people actually talk about their faith, which is amazing. Sometimes we privatize and say, My faith is just private, I don't talk about it, but we're meant to share our faith. That's what Christianity, that's what Catholicism is all about. It's meant to be shared and spoken about. So the first thing, God is alive and active and moving in our community. That's the first point. Let's go to our second point today. We were ransomed by the blood of the Lamb. Who is the Lamb? Jesus Christ is the sacrificial lamb. Let's read our second reading from the Word of God. This comes from the first letter of Saint Peter. Let's read together. You were ransomed from your feudal conduct handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless, unblemished lamb. Now, for those of us here who may be new to the Catholic faith, or maybe you're unfamiliar with the image of the lamb, I'm going to explain it to you very briefly, okay? In ancient Israel, the priest representing the people would place the sins of the people onto a lamb or a goat or a sheep, and two things could happen. Number one, that sheep could be banished into the wilderness, and that was a way of saying, okay, just as this lamb or goat is being banished into the wilderness, so may my sins be so far away from me as well. That could be one way. Second thing that they would do is they would, what do you think they would do with the lamb? They would sacrifice the lamb, right? And it was a way of saying, what's happening to this lamb or goat or sheep really should be happening to me because of my sins, but the lamb or sheep or goat is taking my place. It's taking my place of my sins. By the way, this is where we get the term scapegoat from. The goat or the sheep or the lamb takes my place. That's what happened in ancient Israel. Then the priest would take the blood of the lamb or goat and sprinkle it on the people, and then afterwards, they would have a barbecue. They would eat of the lamb or the sheep or the goat. Now, what was accomplished in symbol in ancient Israel is accomplished in reality with Jesus. Jesus is the sacrificial lamb, the lamb of God, the one who takes our sins onto himself, he is sacrificed, he's banished, his blood is poured out on the cross. And in the sacrament of baptism, just like the priests sprinkled the blood on the people, the sacrament of baptism, the blood of Jesus washes us clean. And just like in ancient Israel, they ate of the lamb now. You guys are very smart, right? Okay. Where and when do we eat of the lamb? In the Eucharist. What was accomplished in ancient Israel in symbol is accomplished for us now in reality, in baptism, in the Eucharist. Jesus, the sacrificial lamb, sacrificed, banished, poured out his blood for us and for our sins. That was a little Bible lesson for you. Did you know? Did you know about that? The connection between the Lamb and ancient Israel, the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. If you did it, now you know. Okay. We were ransomed by the blood of the Lamb. How might that change our lives knowing what Jesus did for us? That's a second point. Okay. Let's go to our last point here today. Jesus accompanies us in our doubts. How many people here have ever experienced doubts or questions in your faith before? Totally normal. That's normal. Just like the two disciples on the road to a maze who were debating and with each other and counseling each other. Let's look at a scripture passage from the Gospel of Luke. Let's read this together. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. They were debating. They had doubts. They had questions, they had concerns. If you've ever had that before, you have a friend and these disciples. Now, some of you here are on fire for your faith. You know, you're you're just, yeah, like you, right? You're on fire for your faith. You're you're all in. You've been Catholic for years, maybe even decades. Uh for some of us, maybe we're kind of we're not on fire for our faith, but we're kind of we consider ourselves good Catholics. You know, we follow the commandments, we come to Mass, and we would say, I'm a I'm a good Catholic, you know. And maybe for some of us here today, someone dragged you to Mass today. You know, they pulled you by the ear or something. Or maybe you had to drag yourself out of bed to come to Mass today. And maybe you feel like I'm just I'm just checking the box, I'm just getting it done and fulfilled my obligation. We're all on a spectrum in this congregation. Some are on fire, some are kind of in the middle. I'm a good Catholic, and some like somebody drag me here today. If I don't want to be here, I don't even want to be listening to you. Stop. Okay. No matter where we are on our faith journey, Jesus accompanies us there. If you have doubts and you have questions, you're here. Good. We're glad you're here. Ask your questions, ask your doubts. That's what we're here for. That's why Jesus is here. That's why we're doing Alpha. By the way, on Alpha, we have that whole spectrum. We have those who are on fire for their faith, and we also have people who are not even Catholic that are at Alpha. I thought it was kind of funny. Somebody shared a story. Person came to Alpha on the first week said, I'm not Catholic. I'm here, I'm not Catholic. And then by the second week, uh shared at their table, I think I'm Catholic. And Alpha's become a place to explore those questions and engage. Ask the questions, ask the doubts, explore it. It's okay to have doubts. It's okay to have questions, ask them. That's what we're here for. Okay, alright, to conclude, I'm gonna bring this homily to a close. First, Jesus is active and alive in our community, and you've just shared with one another how you've experienced him active and alive in your lives. Second point, we were ransomed by the blood of who? The Lamb, who is Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb who was banished, sacrificed, his blood poured out for us, just like in ancient Israel. And finally, Jesus accompanies us in our doubts. If you have questions, it's okay. Ask them. That's what we're here for. That's what Jesus is here for. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.