January 12, 2025 Homily

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Year C                                     Cathedral of the Assumption     

Fr. Fred Klotter                                 ENROLLMENT SUNDAY                   January 12, 2025

 Lk 3:15-16, 21-22

John baptized Jesus.  The Jordan’s water flowed over Jesus, and he responded with prayer.  His heavenly Father reacted to the baptism and prayer by sending forth the Holy Spirit like a dove and thundering aloud, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

What is happening here?  John was offering a baptism of repentance, of turning away from sin.  Jesus whose will was always in perfect alignment with that of his Father, had no sin.  He had no need of repentance.  Since he was fully human, though, he might have been guilty of making the occasional social gaffe; yet poorly executed etiquette is not a sin.  Nevertheless, this baptism by John did represent for Jesus and his Father a type of turning.  Jesus was not turning away from sin but turning the focus of his life.  Before his baptism he had been living a normal life for a human male in the time and society in which he found himself.  With the baptism, Jesus turned from the ordinary to the extraordinary life and ministry to which he was purposed.  For Jesus, his baptism was a true new beginning, an entrance into his Messiahship confirmed by the Father:  “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Today, we began Mass not with the usual penitential act of “Lord, have mercy’s,” but instead, we accepted a sprinkling of holy water to remind us of our own personal baptismal promise to always turn away from sin.  Our sacramental Baptism brings about a radical change in our very being.  We leave behind our human failings and become fully children of God.

Of course, there is a sense in which every human born into this world is a child of God, for God is the Father of all.  Nevertheless, by the grace of Baptism, Catholic Christians accept the reality of our bond with the Father.  Baptism raises us from ordinariness to a sacramental extra-ordinariness.  Our Baptism does not make us permanently perfect, but it does create a relationship with the Father and the Church community which can never be fully broken.  We can scuff it up; we can stretch it out of shape; but our spiritual bond with God is never fully blown asunder.  Love consists of the fact that God loved us first.  Even if we are unfaithful, God remains faithful because he cannot deny Himself.  We have been baptized into his Life.

My friends, we at the Cathedral of the Assumption are a community of people who recognize that bond we individually share with God and with each other through God.  Something I can honestly say from my, now, almost seven months here, is that the Cathedral is a joyful community.  Not all parish communities display the joy I have found here.  Different parishes might do other things better than we, but I genuinely believe that God’s joy is felt, shared, and expressed here.  It is, indeed, a privilege for me to live among you.

This joy we share as a parish community creates both the background and the motivation for the rest of this homily.  I have been told that my predecessor here, Father Chandler, once challenged you all to “start acting like a parish.”  I think his charge to you to have been insightful, for we certainly have a kind of turning to do.  While this community radiates joy, I also think it tends to run on a kind of autopilot; the remains of the fuel gathered here thirty and twenty years ago continues to power our self-concept.  That is not a bad thing; having pride in one’s history can bolster a great deal of enthusiasm.  However, the fuel of decades past has about exhausted itself.  The Cathedral parish now needs to discern and embrace what it is today and to define where it wants to go in the future.  Staying the same will not propel the community forward.

Despite what general trends seem to be in the world of attendance at Christian worship, we have something here that is inviting and “sellable,” if you will.  My hope is that we set ourselves up for a resurgence.  A resurgence would have to do with an increase in parish participation, attendance, and, frankly, offerings.  However, to build solidly we must first define our current parish base.  From where is it that we begin?  The first step is to develop accurate census records.  Without good, accurate registrations, we cannot discern the way this parish must turn from where it is today.  At one time, the Cathedral boasted registrations of 1,700 households, and our records say we now have 1,100.  I am thinking, though, that the reality might be more like 300 households.  Part of this drop stems from the natural attrition of time; some of the decline could be attributed to the frequent changeover in pastors here since Father Fichteman’s retirement; and without doubt, the new social patterns brought on by COVID and our city’s racial tensions have very much changed many aspects of downtown Louisville.  Nevertheless, while the number of households we have does matter; what matters more at this point is that the parish can identify them.  We need to know the starting point God has given us.

You may have noticed that throughout this homily, I have been referring to the Cathedral community as a “parish.”  From city to city in the United States, such is not always the case.  In some dioceses, the cathedral, while offering regular services, serves more as a centralized location for the bigger celebrations of the diocese with its bishop.  Recently, a new member of our parish said he had just moved to Louisville from another city, and in that city the diocesan cathedral is a lovely building with no parish base.  He was so excited that here he could absorb both a cathedral and a parish experience at the same time.

The fact that Louisville has a living, breathing, community regularly worshipping within its Cathedral is a wonderful asset to our archdiocese, to us who habitually enjoy the beauty of the place, and dare I say, to the spirituality of our entire city.  Of course, not everyone in an American city is Catholic or even Christian, but just by the spire standing here in downtown Louisville, the Cathedral offers to all the suggestion of something beyond and a place of quiet, reverent, reflection.  This is a Roman Catholic cathedral, but the edifice stands here so that all may benefit from it in whatever way they can.

Because our Cathedral is a parish, we need to think about what a “parish” is.  In the first three centuries of the Church, the community of the faithful usually gathered in a home in each town to hear the Word and break the Bread.  The community came to be headed by an episcopos, some presbyteroi, and some diakonoi.  As the number of Christians grew, especially when Christianity became legalized in 313 A.D. with the Edict of Milan, the communities became too large to manage.  So, the worshipping assemblies were divided into what we now call “parishes.”  Each parish was headed by a presbyter (now called a priest), but all parishes in a region were still held together by one episcopos or “bishop.”  From the fall of the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages, parishes were established wherever they were needed with the boundaries being loosely defined.

In the mid 1500’s, though, the Council of Trent established that parishes should have well defined borders.  These borders were to fulfill three purposes:  first, that everyone had proper access to spiritual and sacramental care; second, that the pastoral work would be distributed more evenly among the clergy; and third, that sufficient resources were available to run each community.  People were to attend their own parish church.

Eventually, something called the United States of America came into being, and Americans tend to follow rules; so, parish boundaries were important here.  Moreover, in the mid 1800’s the Council of Baltimore declared Catholic families should not send their children to public schools:  each parish was to have its own school.  A student attended the parish in the area one’s home and the school it provided.  Again, the use of parish boundaries kept local communities united and tended to distribute things more or less equally throughout the diocese.

Eventually, things like the automobile and Vatican II came along, and people felt much freer to worship at a parish outside of their defined boundaries.  Parishes like St. Martin of Tours, St. William, St. Louis Bertrand, and the Cathedral of the Assumption became, in common parlance, “parishes of choice” that offered unique social and worship experiences.  Yes, each retained formal boundaries, but the mobility of society made inroads into the geographical system as people “shopped” for a church.

The Church’s canon law holds that parishes should be firstly defined by be geography, but they can also be defined by serving the needs of a specific group.  Such would be the reasoning for a bishop to found a Vietnamese parish or a Spanish-speaking parish.  The idea of a “parish of choice” does not exist in the legal structure of the Church, but such parishes have certainly engrained themselves into the Church’s reality in the United States.

For any so-called parish of choice to stay strong and healthy over the long run, it needs to have an involved base of congregants and to maintain solid connections with authentic Catholic teaching and practice.  The fabric of our Cathedral Community maintains both these characteristics, yet we need to turn these trademarks of current strength and healthiness toward the future.  We need to use them to bring a new vitality to our community in order to grow into what we envision ourselves to be in the future.

Thus, we have a tremendous need to update our parish census rolls.  We cannot connect effectively when the records contain landlines that were disconnected years ago, addresses from which people moved from last year, and email accounts that have been long-discarded.  Happily, all the parishes of the archdiocese recently migrated to a new database for parishioner information.  With accurate information, our Cathedral can take the best advantage of the new system for communicating effectively, planning wisely, and setting goals appropriately.

Be assured, the data we gather from you will be kept confidential.  The parish will not sell the data or make it generally available to the public or parishioners at large.  One day, we do hope to publish a new parish directory, but the matter of unlisted phone numbers and such will be dealt with at that time.  For now, we plan to take three weeks to gather the data after which we will spend time processing it, then verifying it.  Finally, at Eastertime, we will share a sketch of the parish that has been revealed by the new data.

Walk through the card now. 

At this time, I ask you to remove the registration card that has been placed in your worship aid while pencils are being distributed by ushers in the aisles.

1. The card is purposely short.

2. There are three different boxes that pertain to parishioners. You may check as many of them that apply. 

3. There are two boxes referring to “Friends” of the Cathedral. This category used to be called “Associate Members.” This category is for folks who truly belong to another parish yet still enjoy visiting here regularly or keeping in touch with us. 

4. There is a box for “Just visiting.” Please tell us from where you visit us. 

5. We invite all. Foreigners/Filipinos have a long history at the Cathedral.  Registrations might not be a norm in different cultures, but please do register if you consider this your parish home. 

6. This registrations effort is not to be seen as a grab for parishioners from other parishes. We are simply trying our best to feed sheep, not steal them.

7. Thank you for your cooperation.

8. You may return the card in the collection basket in a few moments.