Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 13, 2022 – Malachi 3:19-20A; 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12; Luke 21:5-19

You know that I don’t like to talk about money, but that’s not a personal feeling of mine. The fact is that the time for the Homily should not be commandeered to talk about money.  So, I always hope that when I have to, the scripture readings will help me, and today they did.  There’s three terrific lines in today’s Gospel that make a lot of sense for our situation. “Troubles will come.” “But it is not yet the end.” And “I will give you words and a wisdom.” 

So, if you were to compare the life of a parish to the life of a human being, I would say that our Parish is in late middle age.  That’s where we are right now, late middle age.  How did we get there?  Well, it all started back in 2008 with the bank collapse.  A lot of people in our area were seasonal parishioners.  They had a home here and a home someplace else. And they discovered that, finally, they could not afford to maintain both places, to pay two sets of taxes and everything else, and they stopped coming. 

Then in 2012, there was another downturn here.  Actually, we never recovered completely in Sullivan County from the first downturn.  But also in 2012, a thing happened that you would not know about.  The Cardinal called me and told me it was time for me to move on. And, after a series of conversations and letters back and forth, he decided he would make one exception to Diocese Policy.  He would leave myself and one other pastor where we are for another six-year term.  And then, at the end of that six years, I was so close to retirement age that, according to Archdiocesan Policy, I could not be transferred.  And so, I wound up being here much longer than most pastors. 

If a new pastor had come here in 2012, he would still have two or three more years in his term of office.  But I have twenty months.  Twenty months to be your Pastor.  After that the way forward is not clear.  The Diocese has several models in place for what happens when they can no longer assign a pastor to a parish.  We have no priests left, it’s as simple as that.   When I was ordained, I was told that I would not be a pastor until I was in my sixties.  Now priests are being made pastors two or three years after ordination because there’s nobody left. 

And so, our task is to provide the Archdiocese with the largest number of possible ways to go forward.  In order to do that, the first thing we need is to be a very strong community.  Our Parish is a very loyal community, a very strong community.  But strong passively, rather than actively.  Whatever we ask you to do, you do.  Whenever we ask you to come to something, you come. But you rarely, if ever, are proactive. Although I hate that word, it’s a good word. You rarely, if ever, are proactive in the life of the Parish.  And so, we need to have a strong Parish Council and a strong Finance Council. And those people who have joined organizations, need to be committed to those organizations to the point where they come to every meeting unless they are ill.  And those people who volunteer to minister in the Parish, really need to minister, not just when it is convenient, but whenever it’s your turn. 

Another barometer of the health of the Parish is the health of its physical plant.  We have a beautiful Parish plant here, but our buildings are getting older.  I had a company come in this past summer and assess the quality of our rooves - or roofs, depending on where in New York State you come from.  And they said all three of them need to be replaced, which didn’t surprise me, because they weren’t new when I came.  The cost of replacing all three roofs will be close to $200,000.  We simply don’t have that money.   Our parking lot is being taking over by mother nature.  We simply do not have the $100,000 that it would take to redo the back parking lot.  We just don’t have it.  Last year, the chimney on the rectory fell down, and so I had that chimney replaced this summer.  I have not yet been able to pay the nice company that did that the money we owe them.  I hope to be able to do that after Christmas.  And the double door refrigerator in the kitchen back there died last week.  To get a replacement refrigerator that was a used refrigerator costs us $2,200.  And I asked the Ave Maria Guild to give me the money because the Parish simply did not have the money. 

However, we have over $50,000 in one savings account and close to $20,000 in another savings account.  The problem is that the big savings account was taken out to get the highest amount of interest possible at the time.  The deal was, you get big interest if you leave $50,000 in the account all the time.  The minute it goes down to $49,999, you lose all your interest. And so, in order to preserve the interest, I try to keep that account over $50,000.  To pay for the chimney would mean going down below $50,000. 

The other account is what we call restricted funds.  It means that people gave money for something. They said this money is to buy oil, this money is to buy this.  We cannot use that money for anything else except that purpose.  So, it just sits there and sits there and sits there until that particular purpose comes up.   So, it’s good money, but it’s money that’s locked. 

And finally, the real barometer, the final line of the health of a parish, is its worship life. And our worship life has been diminishing, continually.  Covid was probably the last straw.  In 2015, I was in the hospital for a long while.  I think a lot of people got tired, got tired of my not being here.  Father Matthias and Deacon Ed did a wonderful job keeping our services going, keeping our parish life going.  A lot of people, I just think, felt this doesn’t look good, and they walked away.  Then Covid came and no one could come to Mass.  And you know, Mass going is the heart of Catholic life but, from a psychological point of view, it’s a habit.  It’s a habit you get into.  If you get out of the habit, it’s hard to start the habit again.  And a lot of people just got out of the habit of going to Mass and so they don’t come anymore.

So, one of your tasks, as the people who do come, is, if you have a Catholic neighbor that you’re friendly with, or Catholic relatives that you’re friendly with, and you think you can risk it, it’s time to have a conversation about how come they don’t come anymore.  Maybe the answer might surprise you.  It might have to do with me.  Maybe there are people who don’t like me or gotten tired of me or bored with me.  Or it may have to do with the Catholic Church in general.  Or it may have to do with things that we can’t even imagine.  Things going on in their community, or their home, or their lives. But something has to happen to bring people back to Mass. 

I am sure all of you got my letter.  My apology for the four typo’s that were in it.  But nonetheless, I am sure you got the letter.  If you didn’t get the letter, it’s because you don’t have envelopes.  So, we printed the letter on the back page of this week’s bulletin too.  I’m not going to go into all the specifics.  I went into all the statistics in my letter, explaining how we got to where we are.  I’m just going to get to the bottom line as quickly as I can.  

What I need you to do: This is mid-November. We have two Sundays left, next Sunday and the Sunday after.  On one of those two Sundays, just one of those two Sundays, I want you to double the amount of money you ordinarily give in the collection.  Then, starting in December, I am asking people who can, to give $5 more a week in your envelope.  If you can’t do that then I am asking you to give at least $15 a month more, spread out in $2 and $3 and $4, however you want to do it. 

That won’t make us rich. That will allow us to pay our bills on time.  How have we been doing it up to this time?  Because I am on active retirement, I get a salary from the Parish, a pension from the Archdiocese, an allowance for my house, and Social Security.  And so, for months at a time, I wasn’t cashing my salary checks. Which means that there was always $7,000 or $8,000 in a locked box someplace in checks written out to me that I wasn’t cashing, which meant I always had $7,000 or $8,000 more to spend than the checkbook said I had.  That was an easy way to do things, but not a financially sound way to do them.  What we need to do is bring our income up to a level where we can pay our bills without relying on a gimmick like that.  Sound as it was, it’s not good fiscal policy.  And so, I really need you to give a lot of thought to the value you place on our Parish and translate a little bit of that value into what goes into the basket. 

The last thing we need to do is to pray for our Parish and for Catholic life in general. So let us confess our faith now in what we believe and in whom we believe.  Let us stand and pray.