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Well, fire, candles, alleluia, bells..... What next? Well, some of you we are going to douse with water. That's what's next. And some of you we are going to anoint with the Spirit of God's confirming love. And all of us are invited to be nourished at the table of the Lord. What does it all mean? What's the big deal? Well, we are gathering as family and it's this celebration of faith that makes us a Catholic Christian family. And some of you, especially here in the front, are joining our family. So I am going to suggest you brace yourself because I am going to tell you something about our family.

Number one, our family is old. I always quote the priest-scholar who says that the mean age of priests in the United States ten years ago was fifty, and it's getting meaner every year. But that's not what I mean when I say our family is old. Our family is close to two thousand years old, formed by the death and resurrection of Jesus, by the Gospel, and the following of Jesus. And that's amazing! That's awesome! That's unbelievable! Two thousand years, and we are still going. We are still going. Despite it all, we are still going. That's amazing. That's the first thing. We are old.

The second thing, as a family, we are dysfunctional..... (laughter).... Oh, you knew!? Yeah. You know, I have to say that if you didn't know before, with all the coverage of sexual abuse in the Church and its mishandling by Church leaders, you now know. We are a dysfunctional family. In fact, in our parish bulletin, which I hope you pick up as you leave, I talk about that. We have an article about our diocese outside and an open forum about those issues next Friday night. But, I think it was Father Dibble who told us last Sunday how a convert, an RCIA person, came up to him and said, "I know this is Christ's church and Christ is with this church because it survived even the clergy."

The Church definitely has its problems and, at times, even its corruption. And that suggests a number of things to me immediately. The first, that it's amazing that God's Spirit still holds God's people together and we still manage to go forward. The second is that we are all wounded, one way or another. We are wounded and we even wound one another. There was a book on ministry, very popular many years ago, called, "The Wounded Healers." And we are called to be people who, even if wounded, heal one another, called to be "wounded healers" in our family. But, at the same time, neither the wounds nor the healing are an excuse for not being accountable. That we are a family called to be, each of us committed, to be responsible for our faith and our life, and to make this a better church and to work at that. That's the first thing about our family. It is old. And the second thing is it is dysfunctional.

The third is there is always something deeply personal about belonging to this family. It involves a personal spiritual journey. In a few moments we will be addressing our catecumens and candidates with questions. And their answers will not be, on this occasion, "We believe" or "We do." It will be "I believe." It will be "I do." Remember that African-American spiritual, "You gotta walk that lonesome valley. You gotta walk it by yourself. Nobody else is gonna walk it for you. You gotta walk it by yourself...." We are called to a deeply personal spiritual journey and that means that, in our family, people are at different stages of the journey, different levels of belief, different stages and levels of understanding. And they are ALL welcome. There is room for ALL. That's the kind of family we need to be.

Fourth, as a family, the word says it itself. We are community. We may have to say "I do," and "I believe" but, along the way, it becomes "we." And, although we have to do it ourselves, we are not alone. We are a people who share memories and share stories, a people, hopefully, who hold one another accountable and responsible and give each other a great deal of support as we celebrate and try to live our faith.

And the fifth and final thing about our family, our Catholic Christian family, it's all about sacrament, which is that fancy word of saying the invisible love and presence and power of our God is always communicated to us and made present to us through the visible. The first and primary sign of God's presence and love for us is the Universe, Creation itself. Billions and billions and billions of galaxies reveal a little bit of what God is like. And then, in wise and holy women and men through the centuries (Prophets we call them. Saints we call them.) God is revealed in the sacrament of people. And then in Jesus Christ, the good God Almighty breaks through in that human person of Jesus Christ, not only to be the breakthrough of God into our human race, but to be a prototype who says, "This is the kind of people you have to be too." And then in our celebrations, we come together and are held together in our sacraments where we are gathered as family and nourished as family in sacraments which point to and make present the love of God in the person of the Risen Jesus Christ. That's quite a family!

So we start a fire. We light a candle. We sing alleluia. We ring bells. And we douse some of you with water, because we celebrate a faith in the God of Jesus Christ, Who conquered death and lasting evil, Who conquered terror and continues to do it today with compassion and love, with hope and resurrection. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed! Amen.