Homily: July 24, 2023, Holy Family School Mass for faculty and staff.

 In two days, all our students will be back in school. They will be in the classrooms, in the fields, in the halls…everywhere. How do you feel about that?

Holy Mass, our celebration of the Eucharist, is the source and summit of Christian life. It is the source where we receive spiritual nourishment, enlightenment, love, mercy, and peace. It is the summit, the highest form of prayer, worship and thanksgiving to God, who first gave, who first loved.

We are now all gathered here, faculty members, staff, school board, foundation members, and friends to thank God and to seek His graces for this academic year.

We all need it, don’t we?

These days our first readings are taken from the book of Exodus. I picked these verses for our reflection today:

And they complained to Moses, “Were there no burial places in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die in the desert? Why did you do this to us? Why did you bring us out of Egypt? Did we not tell you this in Egypt when we said, 'Leave us alone. Let us serve the Egyptians'?”

My goodness! What an awful, ungrateful lot! Don’t you agree?

God had just delivered these people from slavery, something they had been pleading for hundreds of years, and He performed the most amazing acts to save them from their cruel slave masters but just a few hours later, they seemed to have forgotten everything and began to grumble and complain.

Does this sound familiar?

Yet God did not throw them back to the Egyptians. He told Moses to “Tell the children of Israel to go forward” and proceeded to perform an even more wondrous mighty act of parting the red sea!

God saves. He does not undo His plan of salvation. He doesn’t go back on His words or His works, even when we fail or fire Him.

More than 95% of our students in Holy Family come from immigrant families. Because of war, persecutions, military junta, inhumane living conditions, civil conflicts and grave danger in their home countries, they have come to this country with hopes of having shelter, food to eat, peace of mind and a better future. They are refugees, as the word implies, seeking refuge in a country they consider safer than their own. They want to start life anew.

Once I visited an Eritrean family – a single mother with six young children. What they now call home, is just a shelter smaller than our regular classroom. They have no furniture, only one mattress on the floor, to be shared by all seven. When I asked about the mattress, the simple response was, “It is ok.” They do everything on the floor – cooking, eating, studying, sleeping.

Are they sad with having close to nothing?

No. Not that I can see. They are content with everything they have now, even though very little from our perspective. Every time I see the children in church, they always have their beautiful smiles, looking bright and cheerful. Interestingly, in church, the grumpy people are not the immigrants. 

That visit made me think seriously about my own dissatisfactions and many grumbles to God. I must count my blessings.

All of us, in our own capacities in school, are serving these children and their families. Some of them still carry fear in their memories, anxiety in their hearts, worry in their minds. In reality, we are serving the people whom God has called forth and brought out of their Egypt, we are serving a noble cause, God’s plan of salvation.

We may think that we are teaching them many things, but we are also learning a lot from them. In my two years of ministry at St. Ambrose, I learned a lot from these families. 

Unlike the Israelites in today’s first reading, these immigrant families are grateful and thankful to this country for welcoming them. They want to give back in any way they can. They can’t give financially, and so they give their time, energy, talents, joy and love. To them, this is heaven. Do you feel you are in heaven too?

As educators, we want to tell them about the real world. As evangelizers, we want to tell them about the truth, God’s truth. Be careful and cautious how we help them navigate life.

We can either nurture their optimism and positivity about this new world, or we can dampen their spirits and kill their joy for living. We can appreciate and encourage their gratitude and thankfulness, or we can pass on vibes of hatred and anger leading them to complain and grumble, forgetting their blessings.

As a school, we have that power. As a Catholic school, we have that mission. Remember the words of our Lord, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." (Mt. 25:40).

I wish all of you a wonderful academic year ahead. A warm welcome to Paulette, our new principal. I will remember all of you in my prayers. Please remember me in yours too. Amen.