So, what have you come here today to do? That is the question on my mind today. Or maybe we could ask it this way: Have you come here today to do anything? I mean the pronoun very intentionally. I try, always, to go out of my way to not say “you,” or when I do, I say, “you and me,” or “we” or “us.” But I mean you quite deliberately today. By you, I mean the lay faithful, that is the “non-ordained.” Have you come here today to do anything?

Maybe you’re just grateful you made it here and didn’t wreak along the way.

I think for many of us, as Catholics, we don’t really even know what we’re supposed to do or that we can do anything here.

The common experience in the confessional is hearing people, pretty routinely say, as they list all the things they repent of and want to ask God’s forgiveness for, is “I fail to be as attentive at mass as I should be.”

I think one of the reasons for that is that we don’t really know what we’re supposed to be doing here.

There’s some really rich texts from the Second Vatican Council, a meeting of all the bishops of the world that took place in the 60’s, about our work when we come together for mass. Let me read a couple of them really quick: “The Church earnestly desires that Christ's faithful,” that’s all of us, “when present at this mystery of faith,” talking about the mass, “should not be there as,” here’s the key line: “strangers or silent spectators.”

I think that’s exactly how many of us come to mass. That’s how I went to mass for years, that is to say, when I went to mass, that is, before I was ordained. I was there as a silent spectator, I was watching. I had an idea that something was happening but I didn’t really know exactly what was happening and I didn’t have any idea that I was supposed to be a part of it.

So, we should not be here, or more precisely, you should not be here as silent spectators. “On the contrary, through a good understanding of the rites and prayers they” that is you, “should take part in the sacred action conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration.

They should be instructed by God's word and be nourished at the table of the Lord's body; they should give thanks to God; offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also, together with him.”

Just a bit earlier on, it says this: “Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that full conscious and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy.” I think many of us, if we hear those words, maybe think, “okay, now we have more opportunities to serve as lectors or cantors, to serve as greeters or extraordinary ministers,” but that’s not what this means.

Mindful of the fact that Christians are, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people, and have a right and obligation by reason of their baptism.”

Speaking of when the mass is transformed to what it was before the Second Vatican Council, when it was exclusively in Latin, and now, the Church says, “in the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else.”

What in the world does that mean? So, let’s try to understand that a little better by talking about the feast we just celebrated last week that has implications in the season we celebrate now, because ordinary time does not mean plain or unremarkable time. Jesus does amazing and incredible things in this time like all times but ordinary time just means they’re ordinal, meaning, “numbered,” or counted, so to speak, from the first week which we began last week, all the way to week thirty-four. So, we are in the “Second Week of Ordinary Time.”

In the past, I’ve spoken a bit on what our baptism does for us. Today, I’d like to talk about what our baptism allows us to do.

So, when you were baptized, you were made a priest, prophet and king. Did you know you are a priest? I hope you do now.

Every single person here, all of us, are priests. Now, I’m a priest of a different kind. I am a priest to serve those who are made priests by baptism. The most fundamental priesthood is the priesthood of the baptized.

Before I was ordained a ministerial priest, I was already a priest by my baptism.

What do priests do? Wear funny clothes? In January, this is fairly comfortable, in July, not so much.

Now the main thing that priests do is offer sacrifice. The fundamental sacrifice you and I are called to make is the sacrifice of our lives as St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans; telling us to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God, which means simply that God gave me my life and I’m supposed to give it back to him. To be able to say every day to God, “Lord, what do you want me to do with my life? Use me! All my talents, all my time, all my treasure, all that I am, it’s yours. How do you want to use me?”

But as important as that is, that’s the most fundamental sacrifice we’re supposed to offer to God, there’s another way we’re supposed to offer sacrifice to God that I’m thinking of, one that has to do concretely with when we come together for mass.

Because each one of us is being asked to offer not only our lives back to God as a sacrifice; we’re being asked to offer sacrifice on behalf of others. Or we could say it more simply this way: did you know that you offer the sacrifice of the mass?

How many of us know that each one of us, when we come to church, we are being asked to offer the sacrifice of the mass?

Remember that prayer I’ll say shorty, “Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.”

My sacrifice and yours. Together, we are to work together, to offer sacrifice to the Father.

Nobody here is a silent spectator, or should be. Nobody here has nothing to do.

The single most powerful prayer that there is, is the prayer that takes place when we come together here. The center of the prayer that we do here is what’s called the action that surrounds the Eucharistic prayer when we offer back to the Father the same sacrifice that Jesus offered on the cross, now in just an unbloody fashion.

You and I, together, are supposed to be collaborating and offering that to the Father.

One way to do this is to turn to your neighbor, the person sitting next to you when you come to mass, and ask them if there is anything you can pray for. They would ask you the same thing.

Now let’s not get too revealing. There are things that should not be said but you can simply say a special intention when it is something private. The purpose of this is to help us draw closer as a family and to help us understand what God is inviting us to do when we come to mass.

These pews, that is to say us, are filled with people who have massive intentions and needs today. People who are concerned about their marriage. People who are battling addictions. People who are battling depression. People who are concerned about a loved one. People who grieve the loss of a loved one.

Every human experience that you and I can have, we have here, that is what we walked into mass with.

If we walk in as silent spectators, we walk out and nothing is changed.

If we come together and we make a point to deliberately and intentionally offer together, to the Father, the sacrifice of the mass for the people right next to us, imagine what has the potential to take place here because there is no prayer that can compare with the prayer that is the mass.

A great time to do this is during the preparation of the altar, when the gifts of bread and wine are brought forward.

This is probably one of the most underappreciated moments of the mass, like, “why do we have to have a song, why do we have to bring the gifts up, why can’t they already be there by the altar? We could get out of here so much faster. Why are we just stretching this out!?”

Well as these gifts are being brought forward, these gifts represent your intentions, my intentions, the needs of everybody here so I encourage you today, to watch as the gifts are being brought forward. So you’re here today and you’ve got things on your mind; Loved ones, family members, your grandmother. And you want to pray so how do I pray for her?

So as the people bring up the bread the wine you picture them bringing up your grandmother. Then we place the bread and wine on the altar but we’re gonna place her on the altar too. We’re gonna ask the God who transforms the bread and the wine into the body and blood of his Son, we’re gonna ask him to pour out his Spirit on her and all of the intentions that you and I have here.

You might notice during the Santus, or Holy, Holy, Holy and during the Lamb of God, I look around slowly at the congregation before me.

I look at your faces, not to see if you’re singing or paying attention even, but to pray for you.

It is my role here as the ministerial priest to pray for you; To bring your intentions to the altar, your needs and desires, hopes and fears, to the altar to be transformed by the same God who transforms ordinary bread and wine.

Imagine what he can do with us. Imagine what will happen if we’re focused, prayerful, deliberate, mindful of the needs of each other in the pews so that we’re actively participating. Conscious of the fact that we present these gifts to the Father and these gifts that are bread and wine but these gifts stand for the needs for all of the people of this parish and we place them on the altar and we say, “Lord, help! Do something, send your Spirit.”

So, I encourage you. You don’t have to say anything, but be mindful of the fact there is someone next to you and maybe it’s not a family member.

As we’re about to bring the gifts up, mindful that the Lord knows what the needs are of that person, you make a very specific prayer. “Lord, whatever he or she needs today, do it. Hear their cries, give them grace, give them strength, give them peace, give them whatever they need.”

Then maybe we make a resolution that every time we come to mass to never again be a silent spectator because we know what we’re supposed to do when we come here.

Sunday Mass begins at 11 a.m. with the Sacrament of Reconciliation at 10:15 a.m.

Come pray with us at St. Michael Catholic Church located at 1004 W. Gentry in Henryetta.