This weekend, we celebrate the feast of the Lord Jesus as Christ the 
King, and we also celebrate our own parish as the parish of Christ 
the King. I want to say something about both.

Kings aren’t very important these days, at least not for us. We don’t 
have one and we don’t want one. In fact, compared to years ago, kings 
are not obeyed very much. They don’t have much power. They’re not 
honored, except maybe in the world of entertainment.  We have the 
King of Rock and Roll. We have the King of Swat. We have the 
Sacramento Kings. We have the King of Comedy. We have the King of 
Late Night Television. Pilate, apparently, thought it was a good joke 
to put the title of “King”  on top of this man who had been deserted 
and had been condemned and was being crucified, this carpenter from 
Galilee. Wouldn’t he have been surprised if he could have hung around 
for another two thousand years to 1925 when the Feast of Christ the 
King, the carpenter from Nazareth, was declared official by the 
Church. It was done in the wake of the First World War and its 
devastation, and the growth of, not only atheism, but communism and 
fascism and all kinds of dictators and rulers and leaders and curers. 
And the Church kind of said, “Let’s not forget who is our ruler, who 
is our curer, who is our leader, Jesus the King.” And Jesus the King, 
not like earthly kings, (Earthly kings tend to set up boundaries to 
keep people out and dominate inside.) Jesus walks among us as a 
servant who welcomes everyone. There’s room for everyone in his 
kingdom. It reminds me of my favorite saying from James Joyce in 
describing the Church. He describes the Catholic Church as “Here 
comes everybody.” And that’s the Kingdom of Jesus, a kingdom for 
terrorists and patriots, for atheists and addicts, for saints and 
sinners, for gay and straight, for good thief and bad thief, for 
innocent and for guilty, for all of us. And his kingdom, what a 
concept!  It’s not a judgment. It’s not a tribunal. It’s a festival, 
and it’s a party. And it reflects our God’s love for all of creation 
and all creatures.

I want to say something about our parish. Our parish of Christ the 
King began on the other side of the street, not on this side of the 
street, over where it is now “Rolling Green.” Christ the King was 
formally established in January of 1951. The inside of a run-down 
farmhouse was converted into a chapel with a small altar, a couple of 
pews, even a confessional where the toilet had been. Actually, it was 
where the toilet was. You could get your sins flushed away! It was 
wonderful. The first Sunday Mass was celebrated under an attached 
awning. The people were under the awning. The priest was in the 
kitchen. You could view the Mass being said in Latin, with the 
priest’s back to you, through the kitchen window. Then he came out to 
share communion. Shortly later, they added sides to the canvas awning 
and it became a tent. We still have parishoners we refer to as the 
“Tent People,” who were there on that day. Mary McNally was one of 
the tent people. She died a couple of years ago, but she wrote a poem 
about those days. And remember, most of the parishoners were families 
who had gone through the Second World War and were veterans who had 
moved out here in the late Forties and early Fifties.

               We came from near. We came from far.
               We rode by train. We drove by car.
               We pulled off the helmets. We threw down the guns.
               The weary war was over, the raging battles won.
               The grassy slopes of Diablo called, a place to rest and heal.
               We reached for hammer and hand saw, and built a place to kneel.
               A tent we framed in the beginning to hold our eager prayers,
               A chapel in a cottage small to ease our daily cares.
               It was many, many years ago we favored few recall
               That Christ the King was born to us, born to one and all.

Ten years later, in January of 1961, they broke ground for a convent  
and for a school. That September, the school opened with the arrival 
of four Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. The gym was used for 
worship for twenty-seven years, from 1952 to 1979, when this building 
was built. If you go over to the gym, it is hard to imagine it being 
a place of worship. But it had not just the altar, it had a steeple, 
had a baptismal font, had a choir loft, and it had that cross 
(gesturing to the cross over the present altar). But we don’t just 
want to look at the past and where we have been, but where are we and 
where are we going, and how are we doing.

It’s interesting, if you go back to 1951, a lot of parishes were 
being opened. If you go to 2007, a lot of parishes are being closed. 
Not long ago, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, overnight, closed sixteen 
parishes, and they put out the criteria, the standard by which they 
judged whether a parish was thriving and should stay open or not. 
They had eight criteria to grade the parishes by. I want to share 
them with you, and I want you to think about two things. One, how 
would you grade our parish on each of these? And two, how can you 
contribute around each of these? Here are the eight things:  number 
one, a good sense of community; number two, a good level of 
participation; number three, vitality of worship (It was nice how 
they put that. They didn’t say you had to have a modern Mass or you 
have to have Mass with music, or you should have Mass with silence, 
or should have Mass with Lat.... Doesn’t matter. The question is do 
you have vitality in the way you choose to worship.); religious 
formation and education for children, teenagers and for the adults 
too; active service to the poor; ministry to those who are hurting; 
concern for equality and justice; and last, adequate facilities for 
parish life.

You know, it is interesting, in the 1980’s, the National Opinion 
Research Center at the University of Chicago, studied the parishes in 
the United States, Catholic parishes, and it came up with three lines 
to say “This is a sign of a thriving parish, of a good parish, if you 
have these three things.”  Then in the 90’s, the U.S. Bishops met and 
they started something called the “Parish Project.” It took five 
years to study the parishes of the United States, and they concluded 
there were three things that were characteristics of a good parish, 
same three things. And then the University of Notre Dame did a five-
year study of parishes in the United States, and they ended up with 
the same conclusion, the same three things.

Well, here they are and let’s see how we are doing. Number one, good 
liturgy and good homilies. (Much applause here!) ....I think I’ll 
quit while I’m ahead. You know, I think it’s great. We have four 
different priests as homilists. We are all a little different, and if 
you don’t like one, you get another one the next week. So you don’t 
have to go with the same guy every week. We got Father Dibble. Isn’t 
he something when he gets going? (More applause!) We’ve got Father 
Aidan, and we are looking forward to Christmas Day when once again he 
gets us jumping up and down with the Twelve Days of Christmas. (More 
applause!) We had a parishoner, last year, who’s about eighty and he 
came out and he said, “I’ve been going to Mass for almost eighty 
years and I just had more fun at that Mass than ever before in my 
life.” And also, sometimes, we upset you. Now, that’s a good thing. 
Charles Wesley, the founder of Methodism, when he appointed pastors, 
would tell them, “If I don’t get a letter of complaint about your 
preaching in the first year, I’m removing you because it means you 
are not preaching the gospel.” So I hope, at least on occasion, we 
upset you.

So that was the first item, good liturgies and homilies. The second 
was a sense of ownership and participation. Do you feel welcome? Do 
you feel at home? Do you feel that you belong? Do you feel you can 
join in, if you choose to? You don’t have to, but if you choose to. I 
think behind that, I hope is a sense of welcome. Also, we have at 
least sixty ministries going on. We have well over five hundred 
parishoners who spend at least one day a month or one day a week or 
sometimes seven days a week in those ministries. And finally, 
ministry to the hurting. That’s the third criteria, ministry to the 
hurting. Our St. Vincent dePaul Society, we are very proud of how 
they work with the poor. We have also started a Bereavement Ministry, 
a Mental Health Support Group, a Divorced Group. There’s a lot to be 
thankful for, a lot to celebrate and a lot to be part of. So, let us 
give thanks to the Lord who is so good! Amen.

And now, I am going to suggest you take the Bulletin, which has 
printed on it a Mission Statement of our parish. This was formulated 
after several years of study by our parish council and, at that time, 
consulting the whole parish. And, in place of the Creed today, would 
you stand together with me and join in this Mission Statement.....

We the Church of Christ the King in Pleasant Hill, see ourselves as a 
Catholic Community of Faith, gathered by the Word of Scripture, the 
celebration of the Eucharist and the Gospel call to service. We 
accept the common summons to grow as God’s people, especially as a 
community of welcome and participation marked by good communication, 
warm hospitality, and openness to diversity, as a people comforted 
and challenged by strong celebrations of liturgy, thoughtfully 
prepared and well-celebrated, as strongly committed to faith 
formation and growth for all peoples and at all stages of life, as 
disciples of Jesus, called to a rich variety of ministries, both 
within our community and beyond its boundaries, on behalf of the 
Gospel values of Christian unity, service, compassion and justice.