This past Tuesday morning, as I was sitting in the rectory, enjoying an extra long cup of coffee (on my rest day).  As I looked out the window, I saw across the street two of our long time parishioners going out of the Ministry Center.  They were on their way over to the church to pick up the collections from this past Sunday and the thought came to mind: Thank you.  Without them, I don’t know what we would do.  I am so grateful for everything they do.  It’s not just these two.  There are a number of people who have given their time and work to the support of the parish, each one is essential, without them, we would be hurting.  There are those who are doing things now, and others who have given tremendously in the past.  For each of us God has a time and a season.  Whether it is in the past, the present, or will be yet to come.

We need to regularly show our gratitude, and the recognition that this is part of what it means to be a Church—its one of the things that makes us different from ordinary businesses and corporations.  One of the local grocery stores, and a few others tout that they are employee owned or even customer owned.  But even this is different.  Part of the difference is in the profits.  Businesses exist either to make a profit for their owners, or to provide a useful service while at least providing a fair living and meet the needs of the owner and employees.  This profit comes from the pockets and labor of others.  But this is not so with the Church.  We are both the laborers and the profiteers.  Even more significantly, what we profit is not for ourselves, or even the Church.  We do not operate under a corporate structure, nor even a proprietorship, but as a hierarchy a Holy Ordering.  This is not a rank and file system, nor one that seeks promotion.

The Church is both the body of Christ, and it is also the one through whom Christ’s Mission continues in the world.  This is one of the things that Pope Leo has begun trying to communicate to us and remind us of: our Missionary character.  It is through the Church, that is, the people gathered in His name, that the work of salvation continues.  This is our profit and our labor.  The labor that builds the community of God and from that comes the community of God that we belong to.

Thank you to all who work this corner of the vineyard of our Lord, for both the care that you have shown our Lord’s house and what has been entrusted to us and for helping St. Mary’s to be that church of Mission, a place where God brings His people to get to know Him, that they too may be joined in the Body of Christ.  Without Missionaries, the body on earth would wither and there would be no more harvest.