Most Reverend José H. Gomez Archbishop of Los Angeles
Our Lady of Refuge Church Long Beach, California May 14, 2023
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ.1
So as I said, I’m very happy to be with all of you today for this special celebration of the 75th anniversary of your parish.
We thank God for all his blessings on this faith community. We thank him for all your pastors and priests, religious sisters, all the ministers and volunteers, and all the many families down through the years that have made this parish a source of light and peace, of life and love.
So it is also very special that we are celebrating this anniversary on Mother’s Day, as today is Mother’s Day. So congratulations to all the mothers and I think at the end we’ll have a special blessing for all of you.
Today, in a special way, we invoke your patron, Our Lady of Refuge, we ask her to intercede that we continue in our mission of following Jesus and sharing his love with the people of our time.
So, Happy Anniversary and Happy Mother’s Day.
And as we know, we are nearing the end of the Easter season, next Sunday we will celebrate our Lord’s Ascension.
And it is always inspiring during the Easter season to hear about the acts of the apostles and the life of those first Christians.
In our reading today, we heard about the deacon St. Philip proclaiming Jesus in Samaria. And we heard that the whole town was paying attention to what he said, and the disciples were working great wonders and curing many people with diseases.
And there is that beautiful line in the reading today from the Acts of the Apostles: “And there was great joy in that city.”
My brothers and sisters, this is the truth, this is what happens when people meet Jesus. When Jesus is found, there is always great joy.
Pope Francis speaks about that on the “joy of the Gospel.”
And Pope Benedict XVI used to say: “There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know him and to speak to others of our friendship with him.”
That’s the beauty of our Catholic faith in a special way and that’s the beauty of these 75 years in Our Lady of Refuge parish.
And in today’s passage of the Gospel, Jesus makes this amazing promise to us. He says: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. … You will see me, because I live and you will live. … I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.”
So Jesus wants such a close relationship with each one of us, he wants to live in our hearts. St. Paul used to say, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” That is the friendship that Jesus wants for you, and for me, and for every person!2
So today we especially ask for the grace to truly believe in this promise, and to truly live with greater awareness that we have Jesus in our hearts, that he is walking with us every day on this journey of our lives.
And then, my dear brothers and sisters, Jesus, as we know, has a mission for us. Just as he gave those first disciples a mission. Following him, living with him, means sharing in his mission, helping to spread his love and his promise of salvation to the ends of the earth.
That is what St. Peter is talking about in the second reading of today’s Mass.
He tells us: “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence.”
So again, Jesus really wants to live with us, he wants to walk with us, and he wants to share the hope that we have in him with the whole world. We have to be missionaries and evangelists in our everyday lives.
One of my favorite saints, I wanted to share with you, is Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl, who lived with the poor in Paris in the 1940s.
She used to say that we should think of ourselves as “missionaries without a boat.”
That means we do not have to sail off to far away countries to be missionaries. We can be missionaries wherever we are, wherever we happen to be.
We need to be missionaries in our homes and families, in our communities and neighborhoods, at work. Everywhere.
It’s so important for us to really understand, that in a simple way, we are called to be missionary disciples, as Pope Francis talks about.
We do that just by living the life of love that Jesus calls us to. Being kind to others, looking out for their needs. Living, as St. Peter said, with “gentleness and reverence.”
What a beautiful mission we all have, and it should be our reality in our daily lives, let’s ask for that grace today — especially to have the close friendship with Jesus and also to be able to share this beautiful truth and reality with the people of our time.
When we think about those disciples in the Acts of the Apostles, when we think how they did it — they worked person to person, soul to soul.
It is true, most of us do not have a big way to talk to people, to reach people with the Word of God, with the love of Jesus. But we all have the opportunity every day to speak to people about things that matter, to do good for others, and to share the love that we have found in Jesus.
So, today on this wonderful anniversary, let us especially open our hearts to the grace of God. And let us ask that we can make that resolution — that we can be close friends with Our Lord Jesus Christ and missionary disciples.
Let us make that our prayer. May we continue to deepen our friendship with Jesus and our commitment to being “missionaries without a boat,” spreading his love throughout our lives.
And we ask, especially, Our Lady of Refuge to pray for us!
1. Readings: Acts 8:5–8, 14–17; Ps. 66:1–7, 16, 20; 1 Pet. 3:15–18; John 14:15–21.