Homecoming messages touch on relationships, shared identity, forgiveness, role models
SCROLL THE ARROWS to see more photos.
The joy of Homecoming Week stems from good relationships and a shared identity.
It is a time to recognize and be recognized.
“I think that’s honestly what all of our hearts desire: to be known and to know, to be in relationship with another,” Father Paul Clark, chaplain of Helias Catholic High School, pointed out during a Homecoming Week Mass at the school.
The priest noted that relationships give people an identity.
“And because of that identity, because of who I am, there flows action and mission out of that,” he said in his homily.
In that day’s Gospel reading (Luke 8:19-21), Jesus said people would know who are in relationship with him by how they hear his words and put them into action.
“Their identity — his mother, his sister, his brother — it’s gonna’ be known and seen by the mission that they live,” said Fr. Clark.
The priest reiterated that people’s identity comes from a relationship, which helps determine how they act.
“However, most of the time, we flip that,” he noted. “We think what we do and how we act actually gives us our identity.
“That is not the case,” he said. “Who we are flows out of a relationship and a legacy, and because of that, our actions are known.”
Fr. Clark proposed that that’s an ideal message for Homecoming Week.
“Alumni and people from all over who are associated with the legacy of our school are celebrating this week,” he said.
“Because, wherever they are, they are known as Crusaders, they are known as members of the Helias Catholic High School community,” he said. “Who they are to the people around them flows from this identity that comes from a relationship with the legacy of this school.”
But they are not only members of the Helias Catholic High School community.
“We are sons and daughters of a God who desires a relationship with us — a relationship that gives us that identity as beloved sons and daughters, and then our actions flow from that,” Fr. Clark stated.
“This God says he comes that we might have life and have it abundantly,” he said. “And if that’s not the action or experience that I’m having — if I’m not feeling an abundance of life — then maybe this week is a really good time to ask, ‘Am I saying yes to the legacy that I’m a part of?’”
Because of the result of that relationship and that identity is an abundance of life, “then my heart should be full!”
A lack of such abundance should prompt one to ask, “Is there part of this relationship that I’m saying no to?”
“Forgive them”
At the Homecoming Mass for Fr. Tolton Regional Catholic High School in Columbia, Father Michael Coleman, chaplain, spoke of an essential element of maintaining good relationships: forgiveness.
Namely, the one who forgives can be like Jesus, who forgave his executioners even as he was being put to death on the cross.
“If our Lord can do that, we can try to work at forgiving those around us, no matter how hard that may be,” said Fr. Coleman.
Forgiving people who have made a mistake or even caused great harm also brings grace to the person doing the forgiving and lightens the burden on his or her own heart and mind.
“For our school, as we celebrate our Homecoming this week, we are helped to remember that this is only an image and a foretaste of the true homecoming we hope to experience one day in God’s Kingdom!” the priest stated.
What’s in a name?
Fr. Clark noted that Helias Catholic’s namesake, Jesuit Father Ferdinand Helias, died 150 years ago this summer.
“And so, as we celebrate and honor and give thanksgiving for this man’s life, his yes, the actions that flowed from an identity that he knew and received from a relationship with God, it’s a chance for us to acknowledge the beautiful relationship and identity and mission that we serve,” he said.
Fr. Helias founded missions that became seven parishes, and visited and ministered in many other communities where parishes were eventually established.
“We recognize how much he did for this community, the founding of churches, the charity, the ways he lived out his calling, the missionary zeal he brought to his everyday work,” said Fr. Clark.
He noted that Fr. Helias died on his way to ring the noonday bell in old St. Francis Xavier Church in Taos, summoning the faithful to pray the “Angelus” — a daily prayer that honors Our Lady for saying “yes” to being the mother of the Savior.
Therefore, in Fr. Helias’s honor, everyone at the Mass prayed together the “Angelus.”
After Mass, teachers and administrators handed out prayer cards with the prayer printed on it, so the students could continue praying it.
“One hundred fifty years later, let us complete what Fr. Helias desired for us,” said Fr. Clark. “The mission that he was living out from his identity that he received in being in relationship with the God of the Universe, the God of Life.”
Sheryl Partise, director of strategic communications for Fr. Tolton Regional Catholic High School, contributed to this report.
