Did Jesus Establish a Church?

Good morning.

Just a couple of announcements before I give the homily on the Word of God today.

Yesterday, as you heard, the past uh several weeks, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the founding of our diocese at the event at the Honda Center, There's More.

And it was an amazing event.

I want to share with you a few of the pictures that we have from the event.

The first one is from St.

Joseph.

That sea of blue that you see there.

That's us, St.

Joseph Church.

We had 500 people who registered to come to this event.

And so we took up that whole section of uh, I was gonna say pews, but those aren't pews, those are uh seats at the uh Honda Center.

And then there was somebody that you may know that wanted to say hi to you guys.

Do you guys remember him?

Father Carlos was there, he wanted to say hello to uh his peeps at uh St.

Joseph Church.

There's another person who wanted to say hi to you, too.

You know that guy?

Anyway, it was such a beautiful event uh celebrating the past 50 years of our Diocese of Orange and really looking forward to what God is going to do uh in the years ahead.

And so uh for those who went to that celebration yesterday, thank you for coming.

And we look forward to all that God is gonna continue to do in our diocese and also in our parish.

Now, speaking of our parish, it leads me to my second announcement.

The Holy Spirit is working in very powerful ways in our community, and in one of those ways is Alpha.

Um, now for those of you who are new here and don't know what Alpha is, uh Alpha is a relaxed and welcoming space to explore the big questions about life and faith and meaning.

And we're about to launch our Alpha this Wednesday, September 2nd, and running for 11 weeks, every Wednesday uh for 11 weeks until November 11th.

Um, how many people, I'm just out of curiosity, in this mass here, how many people have have experienced alpha at this mass already?

Okay.

All right, okay, good.

Um now for those of you who haven't experienced alpha, every week begins with a beautiful dinner, like a banquet.

And this season we are having like international food.

Like one week will be American food, another week will be Mexican food, another week will be Filipino food, another week will be Vietnamese food.

And uh, now that Father Arun's here, we will also have Indian food.

He's he's gathering some Indian families together to do that for us.

And yes, we also have wine at Alpha as well for those who are above uh 21 years old or over.

And this is just a beautiful space to explore big questions of life.

You know, is there more to life than this?

Who's Jesus?

What's the Bible?

How can I have faith?

What do I do in the midst of suffering?

How do I forgive somebody who's hurt me?

Big questions of life and faith and meaning.

And so if you haven't had a chance to experience Alpha, I would love to encourage you to try it out.

Like I mentioned, there was 500 who registered for the Honda Center event.

Between the two courses that we've had of Alpha since January, we've had nearly 500 people who've gone through our Alpha course here at St.

Joseph's Church.

It's a lot of people, right?

If you haven't had that chance to experience it, I'd love to invite you to experience it as well.

Now, if you have gone through the experience of Alpha, I would love to invite you to come back to either serve, invite somebody to come with you, uh, and to come along with them.

Uh, two new things we're doing for Alpha this season, uh, the third season of Alpha.

Our confirmation teens will be going through Alpha as well.

At the same time, we're gonna have about a hundred teens that'll be going through it.

They'll be upstairs and the adults will be downstairs, and we're also offering child care for parents who have little ones but aren't able to uh have a place to have them cared for, we're gonna offer child care as well.

So I invite you to please pray and consider you know, is the Lord inviting me to experience Alpha, to come back and serve, or to bring someone along with me?

Okay, those are the two announcements for today.

And now I'm gonna share with you a brief homily on the Word of God.

Theme of my homily today is Did Jesus establish a church?

Or did he just come to teach us about God and salvation and love?

What do you guys think?

Did Jesus come to establish a church?

All right.

Catholic Church makes a very bold claim.

And the claim is this Jesus came to establish a church, that church lasts even until this day.

And all of you um very handsome and beautiful looking people here.

Yes, you're welcome.

Yeah.

Belong to that church, the Catholic Church.

That's the that's the claim of the Catholic Church.

Now, where does that claim come from?

Where how can we substantiate that?

We're gonna dive into the Word of God to see uh how we can substantiate that today.

From our gospel of Matthew and what that means for us, practically speaking.

Okay.

Could I invite us to read this together from Matthew chapter 16?

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

Jesus said to them, But who do you say that I am?

Simon Peter said in reply, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

Begins with a question, and now let's go to our next verse.

Together?

Jesus said to him in reply, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly father.

Notice his name there.

What's his name there in this passage?

Simon.

Simon.

But in the next verse, Jesus changes his name.

Okay, together?

And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the nether world shall not prevail against it.

So he changes his name from Simon to Peter.

Anybody here know what the word or the name Peter means?

It means rock.

Peter means rock.

In the Greek of the New Testament, it's Petros, and in the Aramaic, which is the language that Jesus would have spoken, it would have been Kephah.

So Jesus would have said to Peter, you are Kepha, and upon this Kepha, I will build my church.

But when you translate it to English, you lose the word play, right?

You are Peter, and upon this rock, and he's saying, You are a rock.

Or maybe you can translate, you are rocky, not the rock.

And upon this rock, I will build my church.

Jesus came and he established a church, and he established it on the rock, the foundation of Peter.

Jesus came and he established a church.

And then check out this next verse and how it connects with our first reading from Isaiah together.

I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Do you remember our first reading from Isaiah chapter 22?

Isaiah 22 · chapter mention

The Lord says, Eliakim, I will give you the keys to the kingdom of David.

David is still the king, but you receive the keys.

You're like the prime minister.

You're gonna serve him, you still have a position of authority.

And Jesus does the same thing here.

Jesus is saying to Peter, I'm the king.

Jesus is the king, but I give to you the keys.

You're gonna be my prime minister, you're gonna be the head of this church that I'm going to found, Peter.

Okay.

So we've just established from Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

Jesus came, he established a church.

And he established it on the rock and the foundation of Peter, which means rock.

Okay.

Now how do we get from there to say that this church is the Catholic Church?

Okay.

Alright, see if you can follow with me, alright?

After Peter, he had his successors, the people who came after him.

We know their names.

Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixus.

We know the people that came after Peter.

And there's a beautiful depiction of this.

I don't know how many people here have ever been to Rome.

How many people here have ever been to Rome before?

There's this church in Rome called St.

Paul outside the walls.

And at this church, there's this depiction of all of the successors of Peter, all the way down to the current successor of an unbroken lineage.

Who's the current successor of Peter today?

Pope Leo.

I'm going to show you a few pictures to demonstrate this connection.

So here we have Pope Leo, right?

Our current Pope.

And the one before him?

Francis.

Okay, let's go to the next one.

Before Francis, we had Benedict.

Before Benedict, we had John Paul II, the great charismatic Pope, right?

And here's more popes down through the ages.

And then you finally go around the church and you get to the beginning.

To the very beginning.

Now, can you read the names?

I guess maybe if you're closer, you can probably read it.

Who's the first one?

Peter.

Petrus in the Latin.

That's that's there.

Then second, Linus.

Cletus.

Clemens.

I don't know if you're you're you're following my line of argumentation here.

Our church can trace our lineage.

From Pope Leo.

Down through the ages.

All the way to Peter.

And to the words that Jesus spoke to Peter.

You are Peter, you are the rock! And upon this rock, I will build my church.

Are you aware?

Jesus established the Catholic Church.

And we can trace the lineage all the way back to Peter, our first Pope, our first Papa, our first father.

That blows me away.

I don't know if that blows you away.

That we can trace it all the way back.

No.

None of this is to say, oh wow, look, look how great we are.

Look how wonderful.

No, it's not about that.

It's about this.

That Jesus is faithful to his church and to his promises.

You know, when you were married, you say, I promise to be faithful to you.

In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.

That's Jesus' promise of faithfulness to his church, to you and to me.

Every time we come to Mass, we're coming into the church that Jesus founded.

And that means Jesus has something for you.

Whether that's in the Word of God you hear, the homily, the Eucharist, the greeting, the music, whatever it is, Jesus has something for you and his church.

So today, we want us to open our hearts to receive that grace from Jesus and to give thanks that we get to be in the church that Jesus Himself founded.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.