Most Reverend José H. Gomez Archbishop of Los Angeles
St. Rita Catholic Parish Sierra Madre, California September 10, 2022
My brothers and sisters in Christ,1
As I said, I’m very happy to be with all of you this evening for this special celebration of the anniversary Mass for your school.
We praise God today, and we thank him for all your benefactors and all the parents, pastors, principals, faculty and staff — religious sisters, too — who helped build this school over the years.
One hundred years is a long time, isn’t it? So it’s a great blessing to have a school for all of this time and so, as I said before, let’s praise God and thank him for this beautiful gift.
So let us especially invoke your patroness, St. Rita. And let’s ask that this school continue to be a light that guides many more young people to develop their God-given gifts and discover God’s beautiful plan for their lives.
In our Gospel today, we hear a series of parables about his mercy. These parables show us who Jesus is and they show us his mission.
In these parables, Jesus is compared to a Good Shepherd, who goes out to find his lost sheep. He is compared to a woman who searches everywhere for a valuable coin that she has lost.
So, my brothers and sisters, this Gospel, especially I think, ask us to open our hearts to the reality of God’s love for us — for each one of us. Yes, we all are sinners, but in spite of that, God loves us personally.
He never gets tired of forgiving us. Jesus rejoices for even one sinner. He will leave 99 behind and go for the one that’s lost.
He keeps going out to look for us. He’s always outstretching his loving arms to us, to welcome us home.
And as we know, Jesus is still seeking the lost. His mission is not over and his mission is our mission. It is the mission of his Catholic Church.
So each of us has a duty in the Church, in God’s plan of redemption. We really have the same duty as St. Paul and the apostles.
So we have to share the gift of our faith with others. We have to share the good news of God’s patience and mercy. Cause yes, we know that there are still a lot of people out there who are kind of lost.
In our first reading today from the Book of Exodus, we heard God telling Moses that the people have“turn aside from the way I pointed out to them.” That’s what Moses says.
I think that’s still true in our society. Our lives are filled with many distractions and many things that try to take the place of God — sometimes work, or money, or possessions, or entertainment.
So I was thinking that we need to reflect on how we have to be like that woman in the Gospel with the parable of the lost coin. As she did, we have to light the lamp of Christ. And we have to go out and sweep the house of this world, searching for those who are lost.
And when we find them, we need to tell them about Jesus. I’m sure that’s what we all are trying to do. But today it’s especially, I think, a beautiful moment where we reflect on these ideas. We need to bring them to a personal encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ.
His mercy is our hope. We can never earn our salvation — it can only be his gift.
We can never forget that God made us because he loves us. He died for us because he loves us. And he wants us to live with him forever in heaven.
So, what I’m trying to reflect on is that beautiful truth that God has a plan for our lives, a plan of love, a plan of beauty.
And as I was saying in my Angelus Column this past week: What Jesus commanded, the truths that he revealed, make it possible for us to lead a fully human life.
And Catholic education aims to communicate all these truths which we can know by faith and reason — the truths about who we are, how we are made, and what we are made for. The truths about where we come from and where are we going.
So, as today we celebrate this anniversary, we have to reflect and understand that this is the beautiful reality and importance of our Catholic schools.
We want to lead our students to wisdom. And wisdom means knowing how to live in the world, and what to live for and why.
So God wants us to do great things with our lives. And there is nothing that we can do that will stop him from loving us. He made us for a reason and he’s not going to give up on us.
This is why we are celebrating this 100 anniversary of your school. And why, for the Church, educating young people remains central to the mission entrusted to us by Jesus.
So today, let us remember that God is calling us to be a witness, to be living signs of his mercy in the world. Jesus said: “Be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful.” The mercy that he shows us, let us show to others.
And on this very special anniversary let us rededicate ourselves to being messengers of God’s mercy in the world.
We ask the intercession of St. Rita, asking her to pray for us!
And let us ask Holy Mary, the Seat of Wisdom, to help us in the beautiful task of preparing our young people in our Catholic schools to live as children of God, made in his image and called to follow her Son and continue his mission.
1. Readings (24th Sunday in Ordinary Time): Exod. 32:7-11, 13-14; Ps. 51:3-4, 12-13, 17, 19; 1 Tim. 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32.