Do We Know What We Have as Catholics? - 23rd Sunday in OT

Do we know what we have as Catholics? We have what the world desperately needs--a Savior and a parish family. We are not simply an assembly of individuals. We are the body of Christ. God has called us into a sacred community. He has called us to be His own family. We may not be articulate theologians but we can be a friend to one another and to the world outside. That is our task. That is the ministry to which Christ has called us--to be a caring community. To reach out arms of sympathy and support to those who are in distress. To rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep.  Faith is not so much believing this thing or that about God as it is hearing a voice which says, ‘Come unto Me.’ We hear the voice and then we start to go without really knowing what to believe either about the voice or about ourselves. And yet we go. Faith at this point is standing in the darkness, and a hand is there, and we take it. We take the hand of God and then we reach out in the darkness and we take hold of the hand of a neighbor. That is who we are and what we are about. “Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love . . .”