Sunday November 14, 2010 Fr. Tat

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

When I came in here some people looking at me and say, “Are you a visiting priest.” “Yes. I don’t come here to replace Fr. Thomas Pham.”

But I am coming here, a visiting priest with a mission. “So are you coming here to beg for money?” “No. I don’t come here to beg for money.” I come here to beg for people. That’s my job. My job is to come and travel and to beg for, not money, people. People because I’m a vocation guy and talking about vocations.

So I don’t know. Today the gospel that you and I just proclaimed is a very destructive gospel. And I said it is the good news. Why?

So today I prepare a menu for you. A menu with the name of a dish that I’d like to cook for you, I call POP. I have to stand here. I don’t like walking around because you can’t see me, so I hope you see me. So the menu today is POP. And of course when you hear pop you are relating to this, (holds up a can of Dr. Pepper), pop, right? But I don’t talk about this drink alone. I’m talking about the verb, pop. Pop if you look in the dictionary is to go, to enter, to burst and today I talked to Andrew at the back of the church and he said, “To come out.” I like that. Andrew thank you very much for your definition of pop. To come out.

And today God, Jesus invites each one of us to come out. To come out of our own comfort zone, to come out of our own fears and sufferings and all of the discrimination and biases and whatever you call that. Come out because God is waiting for us.

Why do I have to say that? Today I’d like to introduce you to three words, this, the ingredients of POP. Pray, Outreach, and Perseverance.

Today the gospel is giving us a lot of signs. A lot of signs that we need to be able to see and listen. But without prayer I don’t see how anybody can recognize the signs. You know what we have a lot of earthquakes going in, Haiti, Chile, China. Famine everywhere. You talk about persecutions, everywhere. You talk about poverty, everywhere. You talk about war, yes we are in war right now. We are tired about war right now to the point we don’t even talk about it.

I live in New York City. Terrorism, everywhere. I take the subway every day and I don’t know when it’s in trouble. We live in fear of terrorism and others. Maybe we just ignore it. Why? Because we don’t want to listen and see. And to me for it today, pray—help us to listen and to recognize the signs of the times.

So that’s the first ingredient of POP. To listen, to pray.

The second one today is outreach. A lot of us, we believe, we like to make sure that our family and ourselves have life insurance. Make sure that we cover all the insurance on our house. I’m from New Orleans, not originally, my family is from New Orleans. We have to buy insurance, flood insurance because you never know. Because even the water on the roof or over the house you still have some money back. But we like to think that way. Today when we talk about destruction we like to protect our own. Our own world. Our own security. Our own property. How many of us listen to this and be able to look out and be able to see and believe other people are out there suffering all over the world. And God invites each one of us to reach out. My brothers and sisters to reach out and come out of our own security, fears and even out own sufferings. That’s the second ingredient of POP. To come out.

The third one, which is a very important one is perseverance. We come here because we believe in God, the One who has more power than we do. The one who promises so much that even a hair on our head will not be destroyed. We believe it.

And today God invites us to not give up. Keep going My son and daughter. Keep protecting yourself. Keep reaching out to others. Keep praying. Keep depending on Me because with that perseverance your life will be secure.

So that is the gospel.

I’d like to share a little bit about the Redemptorists, because I am a Redemptorist. The Redemptorists, talking about perseverance, that’s our fourth vow besides poverty, obedience and chastity. When we vow our final vows we have to take the oath and vow of perseverance. It means that we have to stick together forever. No matter how Fr. Thomas, how bad he is but I still have to stick with him. No matter how bad he preaches, but I still have to hear. No matter how good it is I have to be proud of my brothers, we have to be proud of each other. So that’s the fourth vow, perseverance.

We talk about prayer and outreach, that’s our charisma. You know our founder, St. Alphonsus, the name of the church, he is the doctor of prayer and he says that if we don’t pray no salvation promised. So pray all the time for salvation. So we are the apostolic outreach community. We are the apostolic community. We pray and we persevere in prayer.

I am talking about vocations. If you fulfill these three qualities that I just mentioned you’re ready to go to seminary today. If you are a man, a woman of prayer you’re ready to go. If you care for others you are ready to go. Don’t wait. If you are so perseverant in what you’re doing every day you also qualify.

A lot of you young people say, “I’m not worthy.” I’m not worthy either my friend. And so each one of us train and call and nourish every day to be a prayerful person, to be a caring person, to be a perseverant person.

So I am a vocation person here begging you, if you grandma and grandpa keep doing what you’re doing. If you younger ones, if you listen to me today and the word of God today please respond. Because we need so much and so many more priests, deacons, religious, spiritual leaders and even living saints in our church today. We’ve been here for 50 years but not a lot of vocations from this parish. I’d like to come back here, maybe be stationed here even more with you, to get more vocations. I encourage my brothers here to continue to remind you that God loves you so much and the people of God, especially the most abandoned need you even more.

So may God be with you and you continue to know more about my recipe of POP, how to cook POP please stop by after Mass or call the parish and call me. Web site is “redemptoristvocation.com” and we will help you to become more prayerful, more caring and more persevering in life.

Thank you and God bless.