23rd Week in Ordinary Time 2021 (First School Mass) - Abundant Graces through Christ

Happy New School Year everybody. For our new students, I am Father Estabrook, the pastor of St. Ignatius. I’ve been pastor here since December of 2018. This may be the first time some of you have been inside the church building. So, I’d like to say a word about this magnificent edifice. 

In the early 1900s, Catholics who lived downtown were moving out of the city out to this area, which was a cornfield at the time. Looking northward from this property, you could see all the way to Lake Erie. In 1902 there were just about 250 Catholic families in this neighborhood. And so they planned and built a school and a church building, along Lorain ave. Over the next 20 years, that number of Catholics grew and grew and grew that they needed to build a new school building, the boulevard building, and they started construction on this building, modeling its architecture after some of the beautiful basilicas of Rome.

They wanted a church building that inspired people, that helped them to remember that they were connected to the Church in Rome, and were they could gather with their families week after week to worship God. They poured their love of God into building this place, and it still stands 100 years later. Everyone that contributed to the building of this place is dead, though their great great great grandchildren are still in this neighborhood. But they built this place to last, to endure the changing of times and seasons, in order to have a timeless place, where you could feel and kneel down in the presence of God.

In the first reading we hear two names, Paul and Timothy. Paul tells the story how he came to believe that Jesus was the Son of God who died for our sins. He didn’t initially believe this. In fact, he was a persecutor of Christians. He hated Christians. But he had a change of heart and change of believe when Jesus appeared to him, and since then, he’s been trying to spread belief in Jesus and build up the church. 

And he is writing to Timothy today because Timothy was the new bishop and pastor of a community of Christians, much like St. Ignatius. Paul wants Timothy to trust in the abundant graces that comes from following, believing in, and loving Jesus. When Christians are faithful to Jesus, when they work together, when they root out sins from their lives, when the make Jesus the most important part of their life, they can do amazing things. They can build churches like this, they can work miracles, they can endure with amazing strength all of life’s difficulties. And most importantly they will be granted life after death and live forever with God.

Paul wants Timothy to help his community truly believe this, truly live out the Christian faith, much as my bishop, Bishop Ed Malesic has sent me, here to this parish, to do the same, to help the Catholics of this place to be faithful, and to help others come to make Jesus the most important person in their lives.

That’s my prayer for all of you as we begin this school year, and that’s my prayer for you always, that you, like St. Paul, and so many Catholics throughout the centuries, may know the abundant graces that comes through faith in Christ, that you may come to do amazing things through him, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.