By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily Sept. 10, 2022, at All Saints Church in Sunrise, during a Mass where he installed Father Yamil Miranda as pastor.
I’ve come today to All Saints to officially install Father Yamil Miranda as your pastor. Now he’s been here awhile already; but when I assign a priest to head a parish for the first time, I name him “administrator,” then, after a while, if he doesn’t mess up too much, I give him the more official title “pastor.” It basically means you get to keep him for a while longer. He has the same responsibilities, the same obligations, and the same salary.
Today’s Gospel reading gives us the “lost and found” parables – the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. The point of each parable is that God wants the lost to be found. This is Good News. God’s grace is always greater, it is always more powerful than our disgrace. That’s what we mean when we sing that old hymn, Amazing Grace: once I was lost, now I’m found.
Perhaps the parable that is the most familiar to us is the last one about the lost son. Here, on display, for us all, is the depth and the breadth of God’s love, his mercy, for each one of us.
In the parable, the younger son asks for his share of his inheritance. In doing so, this young man is treating his father as if he were already dead. He wants what is coming to him now — instead of waiting until after his father dies. Like, how cold is that?
Today, we live in a world in which God has been exiled, pushed aside — as it were — to the margins of our lives. Perhaps we don’t hear many people saying that God is dead although at one time, not too long ago, it was fashionable in many circles to say so. But today, we live — or many of us live — as if he didn’t matter which is tantamount to the same thing. And what happens to us when we live our lives, when we organize our society as if God doesn’t matter finds it’s parallel to what happened to the younger son who wasted his inheritance in a life of dissipation.
From that “inhospitable place” which was the pigs’ sty where the younger son ended up, he finally comes to his senses, he becomes "homesick" — and makes his return to his Father’s house. Despite his depravity, he retains the memory of his Father’s goodness.
But, as we saw in the parable, the reality of the Father’s goodness far exceeded what the son remembered of that goodness. Even before he gets to the Father’s house, his Father rushes out to greet him and he smothers him with kisses and embraces. The Father whom he had treated as if he were already dead rejoices that the son who “was dead has come back to life, who was lost has now been found.”
Who among us can say that we too have not been surprised by God’s goodness? Of course, sometimes, we are hard pressed to understand the ways in which God surprises us. The younger son who expected no more than to be treated as a hired hand by his Father is surprised at his Father’s magnanimity; but so is the elder son surprised — and none too pleased by his Father’s generous forgiveness of his wayward brother. I am sure that not a few of us can readily identify with the anger of the elder son. After all, the Father in killing the fattened calf and giving his young son a new robe and ring is spending what would be by rights the elder son’s inheritance. The Pharisees are not the only ones who might take offense at Jesus’ teachings.
But God’s ways are not our ways — and God’s generosity cannot be measured by human standards. The economy of God’s grace is not a zero-sum game — God’s forgiveness given freely to me doesn’t mean that there will be less for you. St. Theresa of Lisieux, the Little Flower, understood this very well. In her “Story of a Soul,” she writes: “What joy to remember that our Lord is just — that he makes allowances for all our shortcomings and knows full well how weak we are. What have I to fear then? Surely the God of infinite justice who pardons the prodigal son with such mercy will be just with me ‘who am always with Him’.”
Today we all know of those who give God the cold shoulder, or who are angry with God, or for any number of reasons choose to live in alienation and distance from God — like that lost sheep of the first parable. They continue to stand “on the outs” with God. They live in a world that is cynical, bitter, and seemingly without hope; but you and I have a message to share, a powerful message that their cynicism, their bitterness, their hopelessness is only symptomatic of a deeper “homesickness” — a “homesickness” that can be easily cured by a “coming to one’s senses” and returning to the Father’s house.
But those who are still out there in that “inhospitable place,” which is in that world in which God doesn’t matter, need to hear the Good News that God still loves them anyway, that he hasn’t forgotten them, that he is waiting for them to begin again by coming to him here at the Eucharistic banquet.
Seeking out the lost is something very much needed today. The Pew research Center on Religious and Public Life reports that one fifth of the U.S. public — and one third of adults under the age of 30 — are religiously unaffiliated. They are called “none’s”, that’s n-o-n-e-s not n-u-n-s. We can wring our hands — but the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin should teach us that sinners must be sought out and not just mourned.
We must strive to make our parishes, our communities, our families "oases of mercy” — in this way we can seek out and bring in the “lost sheep” — and we can make sure that no one in our parish feels like a lost coin — fallen in between the cracks, out of sight and ignored.
Today, I will install Father Miranda as your new pastor — and a big part of his job will be help you, parishioners of All Saints Parish, to make this parish community a true oasis of “mercy.”
Religious leadership is about leading others to Christ. It cannot be reduced to “smiles and styles.” The authority of a pastor is not about leading others to himself but to the Lord. He is not to point to himself but to point always to Christ. Like the good shepherd, your pastor should pursue the lost sheep; like the conscientious homemaker sweeps under the table to find the lost coin, your pastor should be attentive that no one “slips through the cracks” and feels like a lost coin; and he must like the loving father go the extra mile to embrace the lost and wayward among the parishioners. God pursues us with passion until he finds us, and that passion translated into ministry is called “pastoral charity.”
Father will serve you well. And he will do so not by calling attention to himself but by calling attention to the Lord; he will do so not by seeking his own interests but by putting first God’s will and his people’s good and well-being; he will do so not by trying to please everyone — for one who tries to do that usually ends up pleasing no one; rather, he will do so by trying to please the Lord in all things.
To paraphrase the great St. Augustine: “With you he is a Christian, a Catholic; for you he is a leader, a pastor of souls.” I ask you to pray for him, to give him your support, your love — and, since I am your archbishop, I ask the same for me — prayers, support, and love.
Father Yamil, love your people with a shepherd’s heart and feed them, lead them to Christ and teach them gently — by word and example.
