Last week was our annual elections and I was very impressed by the strong slate of candidates that was presented. Speaking strictly for myself, making decisions about the at-large candidates was the toughest it has been in many years.

In his report on the meeting, John Lucic gives a comprehensive list of the people who were elected to the various Council positions, as well as those who are continuing. In this space, I would like to single out the people who were not elected and thank them on behalf of the Community for agreeing to run: Teresa Andreane, Caroline Kramer, Ron McComas, and Stephanie Pritts and Bill Schubmehl. It takes a measure of courage to put oneself forward and it is always at least a little disappointing to not get the votes necessary to serve. I hope all will consider running again in the future.

Thanks also go to Peggy Connell for chairing the committee that came up with this fine slate of nominees,. aAnd to Peter Toomey who enlivened the proceedings considerably as he emceed the introduction of the at-large candidates. Finally the Community owes Paul Kunkel a big debt of gratitude for the many hours of hard work he gave to the Council presidency the last two years. Paul put together the 13-page Annual Report handed out at the meeting.

Here are two interesting tidbits from the report you may have missed:

• Bruce Wacker, our outgoing Treasurer, reported that committee expenses have gone down significantly since 1985, when they were $22,000 annually. They are $18,200 in the 1996-1997 budget.
• Community membership increased 9% in the last year to 530 members, according to John Gilmor and Bill McLaughlin, membership co-chairs.

Also in the report was the CSM Pastoral Plan for 1997-1998, which was approved at the meeting. The plan is reprinted in this issue of Communio.

There were several other points worth noting from the meeting. There is a meeting today in the Rectory after the 11 a.m. liturgy to discuss coordination of efforts for the SomaliSomalian refugee family the Community is sponsoring. The family is expected to arrive in June. Kay Vine urged all to start participating in the St. Colman Credit Union, which that the Community hais joinednow part of. For information on the Somalian family or the credit union, contact Kay at 521-5836.

Next weekend, Edwina Gateley will visit us, giving a talk on Friday evening May 2 and a one-day retreat on Saturday, May 3. Edwina, who has mostly recently worked in Chicago with the homeless and women involved in prostitution, comes highly recommended as a dynamic speaker. Call Jane Smith, who chairs the Spiritual Development Committee, for more information, 226-8531.

Finally this issue, we have the opportunity to reprint the text of Jack Jezreel’s homily from March 16. For those who missed it, be sure to check out his inspirational message.

Thankfully, from my viewpoint, we are approaching the warm weather period when we publish Communio less frequently. Our next issue is May 18, with a May 11 deadline. We plan to report publication dates for the next few months in that issue. We will go back to our every-other-week schedule on Labor Day.

My brothers and sisters of St. Malachi, good morning. As some of you know, I have been in Cleveland this weekend to facilitate a workshop on how to empower parishes to be engaged with human need and social justice. For the last year, I have spent a good bit of time on the road —-- more than the average farmer anyway —-- speaking on this subject. aAnd this is the first time really that I get to preach to the choir. Fr. Tony, in anticipation of my being with you this morning, sent me a good bit of literature about St. Malachi. aAnd I have to say that it was an occasion for hope and encouragement for me. This is what parishes ought to be about everywhere.

I admit that St. Malachi reminds me in many ways of the parish at which I worked for the last eight years, which was also a non-territorial parish with a very active community. The temptation all this week has been to prepare a homily that I would have liked to have given at the parish I worked at. And, basically, I gave in to temptation. Which really amounts to this: I am going to assume that as North Americans, that as people of relative privilege, that as a Catholic Christian Community with a reputation and history of trying to address human need and suffering, that there are some commonalties between you and the people I have known well in Louisville. I have also assumed that you would prefer to be provoked rather than anesthetized, so be warned.

Our readings today address a topic that is so rich and so interesting that it is just a privilege to speak of them this morning. I would like to frame my remarks about the readings around the notions of "vision" and "virtue" and the relationship between the two. That is, how do vision and virtue work and how are they dependent on each other. By "vision," I mean simply: what great idea is moving us to action,? wWhat are we living for and looking forward to.? By "virtue," I mean: a quality of life both individual and communal that allows for courageous and even heroic choices. To have virtue is to describe a kind of character of self that is born of goodness.

The ministry of Jesus, which echoes the ministry of the prophets and Jeremiah, is a ministry dedicated to a vision. This vision is often discussed by Jesus as the "Reign of God" or "Kingdom of God." It is a vision of what God is up to, what God is about, what God desires and cares about. And to paraphrase the teachings of Jesus about the Reign of God, God is about compassion and community. God is about forming a people whose lives are given substance and direction by the experience of loving and being loved. Everything else is a nuance on the theme;. gGenerosity, patience, humility, justice, simplicity, joy, sacrifice, forgiveness, and mercy are the variations or the rainbow or spectrum of colors that we call love. What God longs for is a world bubbling over with the wine of compassion and the celebration of life and love.

And Catholic Social Teaching would suggest that when the vision of the reign of God encounters family, it means affection and intimacy, the nurture of children to be generous and compassionate. It means commitment and responsibility and many joys and pleasures and heartache. When the reign of God encounters neighborhood, it means hospitality, neighborliness, respect and attention to elders, responsibility toward children not your own. It means, in Louisville, helping your neighbor scrub the muddy floor left by flooding rivers. When the reign of God encounters economics, it means good work, conscientious work, fair compensation, a check on greed, devotion to employees, a scrutiny of how products are manufactured and derived. When the reign of God encounters politics, it means participation by all, giving voice to the most vulnerable, it means the common good, it means human dignity and at least basic needs met for all human beings.

This is, I think, the vision we believe in. This is the God we worship. This is the stuff of Jesus’ ministry and call. Now, it’s critical as a faith community that we come clean about our vision. Because vision is everything. If we don’t get vision right, everything else collapses on itself and we end up with parishes devoted to fish fries and bingo and buildings. If we don’t get vision right, liturgy, ethics, prayer, conversion all get shortchanged. If we don’t get vision right, our lives and our families are reduced to collecting stuff and watching TV If we don’t get vision right, a lot of people starve. And anyone who has read the Old Testament account of the chosen people, or who has studied early Church History or the Church of the Middle Ages, or who has lived through Vatican II realizes the problem of holding tightly to the authentic vision.

Now let me be blunt here. It cannot be said of most Catholic adults, including most of us here today, that we were formed in a tradition of God’s compassion and justice. It cannot be said of most of the parishes in which we were raised that a concern for the vulnerable and impoverished was anything other than a peripheral, optional concern. It cannot be said that many of us were raised with a working knowledge of the vocabulary of justice. For this, no one is to be scapegoated. Nevertheless, I think that we the Catholic Church must admit where we have been,. aAdmit that we have held tightly to a lesser vision. aAnd recover our tradition by uncovering the great vision again.

Because what is at stake for all of us is our lives. What is at stake is virtue. If we can name what God is up to honestly and earnestly, we have at least the foundation for what we would hope and aspire to become. The idea that we are "images of God" names the fact that what God is about is what we are to be about. When we read in Jeremiah that God’s covenant will be written on our hearts, it is to affirm that to be "ourselves" is not to be unique, it is to be like God. To be ourselves, to know our own hearts, means we will desire what God desires, we will feel what God feels. And to be in covenant with God is to be like God, to be about the work of a God of compassion and justice and community. It means to love generously, it means to be drawn into the midst of the wounded and broken, it means to celebrate unity and life. It means the abundant life of God is our life.

Again, it is time for us to come clean, to take a gut check and ask, "Is the greatest desire of my life to become a person who is dedicated to the mandates of love? Is the greatest desire of my life to heal the broken, to befriend the homeless, to care for the vulnerable? Or am I mostly interested in my career? Is the greatest desire of my life to forgive those who have hurt me, to become more generous and less attached, to break barriers of prejudice and racism?, oOr do I mostly just think about my stock portfolio? Is the greatest desire of my life to make sure that hungry people eat and war is ended and children everywhere are given a chance to live a decent life? Or do I aspire to vacations and health clubs?"

And our children, what would we vision for our children? Would we wish for our children that their love would become so expansive, so deep and so wide that their love would allow them to sacrifice wealth and prestige and privilege and even their lives in the name of their care for the world’s wounded and broken?

My sisters and brothers, our Gospel today is the story of one of Jesus’ gut checks. He is fully aware that his work with the poor, his call to repentance of the Pharisees and Sadducees, his challenge to Roman oppression, his violations of the norms and customs that diminished women, would mean his execution at the hands of both the political and religious leaders. And he pauses. The Gospel records his words: "Now my soul is troubled." And, then, it is as if he collects himself and reconfirms his earlier remark: "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit."

Jesus recognizes that only commitment tested by hardship, or suffering, or even death is authentic, is transformative. The willingness to suffer for love speaks of how deeply we are committed to it. The willingness to suffer for love not only reveals our soul, our truest self, but has the power to change all that it touches.

Children are changed when they recognize —-- sometimes not until they are adults —-- the sacrifices of their parents. Spouses grow in love after they have suffered with and for each other. And churches grow only if the commitments of their members speak of love that is given away and given away and given away. And our church’s greatest heroes are those whose love was so enormous that it did not hesitate even unto death. We call them martyrs.

Now I will come clean with you. I admit that there are many times when I prefer a Gospel of full-time celebration. I prefer the thought of commitment without discomfort, without suffering, without risk. I would prefer "hobby" Christianity, where I can kind of do compassion in manageable moments in manageable ways during free time and without stress. Yes, I want peace and joy and I don’t want pain. And, yet, you and I know that this is only a fantasy. This is not love.

Let me add a word of hope and encouragement. The relationship between vision and virtue, the relationship between what we believe and what we would hope to become are the journey and mystery of faith and spiritual growth. To know the vision, to speak the vision, to pray the vision, to discuss the vision, to act on the vision, will mean that I will move toward the vision. I will take steps —-- perhaps small and perhaps large —-- which will engage me in the ministry of Jesus, in the broken body of Christ.

And the testimony of those who have walked this path is that each step taken, each choice made to love, reveals yet another aspect of the vision previously unnoticed. And as the vision becomes clearer, the next step is made possible. aAnd, yet again, something else is revealed about love or about forgiveness or about compassion.

And, of course, each step, each choice, changes us. What at one time might have been frightening or scary or unthinkable becomes easy. People that we once feared become lovable. Stuff that we once thought we needed now no longer interests us. Sacrifices that once seemed enormous are now not even noticed as sacrifices. Selflessness mutates into joy. And, paradoxically, every time life is given away, we discover we have more life than before. Just like seeds that, when they fall to the ground and die, bear much fruit.

In conclusion, I would like to recall a story by Anthony de Mello entitled the "Salt Doll." The story goes that a salt doll, a doll carved out of salt, had wandered far and wide trying to figure out who she was, what she was. Her travels had left her tired, dispirited and still anxious. One day she came to the edge of a great ocean. And she felt drawn to wade into its waters. As she walked deeper and deeper into the water, she was at first shocked to discover that she was becoming smaller, literally dissolving in the water —-- as salt does. And yet she continued to wade deeper and deeper until at last there was only the last fragment left. And just before even this fragment dissolved, she said to herself quietly and happily, "Now I know who I am."

The Annual Community of St. Malachi Annual Meeting and incoming Council elections were held on Sunday, April 20, after the 11 a.m. Liturgy. Attendance was reflected in the 99 Community members who voted.

Nominations for Council were presented by Peggy Connell (Nominations Chair). Voting resulted in the election of the 1997/98 Council who will be:

• Eileen Garven, Christian Formation Chair
• John Lucic, Communications Chair
• Terry Hayes and Greg Gortz, Hospitality Co-Chairs
• Kay Vine, Liturgy Chair
• Bill McLaughlin and Judie Flynn, Membership Co-Chairs
• Lois Dingman, Social Action Chair
• Jane Smith, Spiritual Development Chair
• Joanne Kramer, Treasurer
• Michelle Simoneau Johansen, At-large
• Jeff Leich, At-large
• Ron Perger, At-large

Continuing as at-large members will be Peter Toomey and Paul Kunkel (as he finishes his term as president). Thanks to Teresa Andreane, Caroline Kramer, Ron McComas, and Stephanie Pritts and Bill Schubmehl who ran as at-large candidates.

Current President Paul Kunkel gave a brief report on the Cleveland Catholic Diocese Sesquicentennial. Many events will take place during the next year, including events such as a mass at the Mall in August, a walk-a-thon in September, a performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, and an exhibit of Vatican art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Watch for announcements in the newsletter and in local newspapers. Additionally, St. Malachi’s will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the current church building this year.

Peter Toomey gave a review of the Council’s commitment of the Community’s resources to sponsor a Somalian refugee family. The following Community members can be contacted if you are able to help:

• Daily support and transportation:
  Sally Hayes, 808-9726.
• Household goods and clothing: Judie Flynn, 228-7610 or Bruce Wacker, 221-0374.
• Housing: Kathy Cooney, 252-0231.
• General Information: Kay Vine, 521-5836.

These people will be holding a strategy meeting immediately after the 11 a.m. liturgy today, April 27, in the Rectory. All who are interested are invited to attend. The Somalian family is not expected to arrive until June.

Lois Dingman, Social Action Chair, has provided a poster summarizing Catholic Social Teaching during the last century. It can be viewed in the school hall.

The Annual Report was provided to all who attended the meeting. Those present voted to accept the Pastoral Plan thatwhich was presented at the end of the Annual Report. Copies of the report are available at the doors of the church. Discussion of the Pastoral Plan revealed that some Community members are not aware of or understand some of the programs that Council is involved in promoting. Efforts are made to explain all information relevant to our faith journeys in the Newsletter and Communio.

"Community Activities Survey For 1997" was passed out at the meeting. Copies are available at the doors of the church. Completed copies can be put in the collection basket.

The next Community Council meeting will be on Sunday, May 18, at 6 p.m. All who are interested are welcome.

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THE COMMUNITY OF ST. MALACHI is a lay-directed, non-territorial personal parish of the Diocese of Cleveland. Although separate from the Parish of St. Malachi, we join together for many worthwhile activities. All are welcome to worship at the 11 a.m. Community liturgy on Sunday. Community members are expected to actively contribute of their time, talent and treasure.