Good news, we had about 90 folks sign-up for liturgical ministries at our interest gatherings after Masses a few weekends ago. Thank you to those who took that first step to serving! Maybe you are still thinking about serving in a ministry yourself? It's never too late to get in touch with me or one of our ministry leaders to learn more about serving on the weekend.

As you may remember, that weekend I spoke about doing "little things with great love" that comes from the lyrics of a song by Audrey Assad by the same name. One idea I shared was this notion of being paralyzed by thinking we need to come up with big, game-changing solutions to all the challenges we face in our personal lives and in our society. Because we can't do something big that can immediately fix everything, we instead fall into despair and do nothing.

I think this mentality finds its way into our worship together. More and more, we are expecting big productions, twist-turning plots, bombshell revelations, and celebrity saviors that can wave their wand and make everything ok. This is not a new phenomenon. The Jewish people were expecting the Messiah to be a powerful king ruler who would conquer the world for God. They did not expect a suffering servant for a savior. It was almost inconceivable that the Messiah would be a poor carpenter from a backwater town who would suffer a horrible death at the hands of an occupying power. They were shocked that Jesus hung out with women, tax collectors, and lepers.

Our worship, and our faith, can't be about big production values, celebrity saviors, or plot twists (spoiler alert, the stories have ended the same way for the last 2000 years). We can't do it all by ourselves, without God, but at the same time, we are called to take part in it. We are called to participate in the saving work of God, little by little, in the mostly small ways that we are capable of. God will take our little things that we offer with great love and transform them into the means to redemption, the win over death. The little things start in the work of worship together, our "leitourgía", and overflow into the rest of our lives as Christians. So, thank you to those who stepped forward to serve, and those who have been serving. You thought you were just lending a helping hand here at the parish, but it turns out you are participating in the saving work of God!