25th Week in OT 2018 - Tuesday - Family of Jesus (PSR Opening Mass)

Dear children, you probably don’t remember this, because most of you were just a few months old, but on the day that you were baptized, the day that you were made followers of Jesus, your parents made a very important promise to God. They made a sacred promise.

They promised God not simply to feed you, to house you, to clothe you, to care for you when you are sick. Their promise to God has to do with why you are here this evening. At your baptism, they promised God that they would educate you in the practice of the Christian faith, they promised God to bring you up to keep God’s commandments as Jesus teaches us, by loving God and our neighbor.
Dear children, that is why you attend PSR even after a long day at school, even when there might still be homework to do, even though there might be friends waiting to connect with you on social media. You are here to learn the faith, To learn about different aspects of our faith like the Sacraments, the Holy Scriptures, the lives of the Saints. And you learn to keep God’s commandments: Commandments like love God with your whole heart, keep Holy the Lord’s Day.

What you do here at PSR is very important, but of course it’s not the whole story, is it? Learning about the faith and about God’s commandments really takes place at home. You really learn to love God with your whole heart by praying to Him with your family, you learn about keeping holy the Sabbath Day, by coming to Church with your family every Sunday and on Holy Days. You learn about the Sacraments by receiving them along-side your family, reading the scriptures with your family, learning about the saints, with your family.

In the Gospel today, Jesus speaks a bit about family. As he was going through Galilee preaching and teaching the Gospel, doing the will of His Heavenly Father, his relatives came to retrieve him, to bring him home, they thought he was out of his mind, and his life was in danger. In his day, his was expected to obey his older relatives, his older brothers and sisters. But then he spoke about his disciples. He pointed to his disciples, and said here are my brothers and sisters and mother. My true family is made up of those who do the will of God, who believe, who seek to follow the commandments.

We are to love our families, but Jesus is saying our church family is of the greatest importance. It is more important to be a practicing member of the Church than to be a practicing member of a sports team, a political group, a social group, a group of video gamers.

We come to PSR and to church because we seek to be good members of the family of Jesus. And so we begin this PSR school year asking God’s blessing on our students and our teachers, and we pray, pray, pray, that the faith you learn about here, may spread and by practiced into your family homes, that every Catholic family home will be a place where the faith is practiced, prayer is valued, charity is modeled, and God’s commandments are followed, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.