70th Anniversary Celebration
Lord, you have, you have the words of everlasting life.
As you know, I love to go walking in the neighborhood
and also climbing in the mountains.
The other day, I was walking in the neighborhood
and one of the neighbors off Morton Avenue
is redoing their whole front yard.
And they have torn up the entire lawn.
They have taken all the stuff out in front.
And they started to take out all those bushes and all of the trees.
It was quite unsightly.
So we are delighted to see some of it go, truth be told.
But underneath, they started to till the soil yesterday.
The smell of the fresh soil, oh my gosh.
You know I like to stop and smell the roses, right?
You know that part, right?
I stopped and I smelled the soil.
Then I remembered this whole land was an orchard field.
Is it any wonder that soil is so rich.
I reached down and I grabbed a big handful of soil and thought,
"Oh, look at this, it is the real stuff."
You cannot make that.
That is real soil.
I mean, it was so beautiful, and the smell.
Then Bella looked at me and thought I was crazy.
She is looking at me, saying, "That is my job."
The reason why I cannot help but think about that
is today we are honoring our 70 year history.
This place was a orchard of apricots.
And that is why we have honored it with the very apricots
we have here as a reminder of our roots.
The soil that produced so much fruit for so many years
then became the soil for this parish.
Now look at what we have done with
the seeds of faith of 70 years of believing,
70 years of toil in the soil of this parish.
What a tremendous gift that we have received.
I know many of you were here
when this building was transformed
into what it is from the first rendition.
Many of you have been there
for the building of the new parish center.
Some of you have even been here
when we built the STEM building.
Some were here when you built the school.
I do not think anyone has here from
when they built the original church, but that is okay.
The point is that this is what this soil has produced.
It may not be apricots anymore,
but what we produce is the fruit,
it is the people of God, you and me.
That is now what we plant.
Now, we are not going to build as many buildings
as in those early days, although we will be doing
one new building in this next couple of years.
But what we are going to be building is
a community of faith, the people of God,
which is you and me.
That is now why we till the soil.
But maybe the soil is not the ground,
but rather the soil is the tilling of our hearts
that we are called to continue to work on,
to develop this wonderful dynamic relationship
that Christ promises us.
Christ wants to have an intimate relationship
with each and every one of us.
And he wants that not just for us,
he wants it for everyone.
We are called to open wide our doors
and to welcome in the lost, the broken, the wounded,
those who feel at home and those who do not feel at home.
That is what we are called to do,
to build this place so that all feel welcome,
as that first song says over and over again,
no matter where we come from,
no matter what culture we come from.
Here we want to encourage them to plant themselves
so they can grow like those apricot seeds,
but also now this parish.
There is such great generosity
that has been given in these years of building,
and so many of you have put in
so much sacrifice to build these buildings.
Trust me, it is not buildings that make the faith.
It is you and me that make this parish.
That is what we have and
that is what we continue to plant and to till.
Now in time, you know, some of us will die
and we will get tilled back into the soil of this community.
And then there will be new ones who will come into our parish
and will start again afresh.
They will come and they too will die,
and the faith will continue this everlasting cycle.
What a wonderful cycle it is!
It is a gift to be part of this life-giving circle of faith.
That is what we celebrate every time we gather at this table,
that very same circle of life that God in Christ
gave his life for us and we then,
through his resurrection, experience anew.
Then we repeat that each and every week as a reminder,
as a reminder that we too once will also go into the soil
and the Lord will raise us up on that day.
But for today, we want to give thanks and praise
for all of you who make this parish,
and for all of those whose shoulders we stand on,
those who have plowed their hard work
and sacrifice into the soils of this parish.
We want to give thanks and
then give hope to all those who will come.
That whenever they come through these doors of this church,
or through the doors of this school,
or maybe they come through the doors of the parish office
or of the parish center,
or God willing, of the new spirituality center,
that they will feel welcomed.
That they will feel included,
that they too have a place where they can grow their faith
deep down into the soil of our hearts.
I want to conclude with two things.
As you know, we have been celebrating all week our anniversary
and we had this wall of history.
I am not sure if you had a chance to see it.
But it is a wonderful history of
all those who have gone before us,
right from the early days of when the land was bought
and each decade after dedication.
One of the things we found was
Father Spoonster's very first bulletin article.
It is really beautiful.
It is just a wonderful work to read .
"By the grace of the God, we have a new parish composed of people from Los Altos, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino. We are witnessing history in the making. Great privilege it is ours to start a new parish. At the present moment, all we have is eight acres where a sign now marks the site where eventually a complete parish plant will one day be built. Church, school, convent, rectory, and hall. And so it can be truthfully said, we are building, we are building from the ground up. Be sure my dear new parishioners, this requires courage, enthusiasm, prayer, and self-sacrifice.
Many of you, I realize, have helped in establishing many other parishes, and schools, but now another is before us. May I count on your help and your cooperation in this new and noble endeavor. As soon as possible, I intend to visit you in your homes. A good pastor knows his people, and I shall do my best to know each and every one of you."
Beautiful.
What a gift to understand that we now
continue to build this new parish.
I will continue to try to get to know each and every one of you.
We do it by name badges now.
But I will try to come and visit you as often as possible.
I will be starting, and the priest swill with me,
will be starting to go visit parishes by homes,
parish home by parish home.
No agenda. Just to say hello and get to know you.
We will not try and do it all in one month,
but we will try to do it over these months ahead. And why?
Because it is important to know each other by name
and to know each other's story,
to know the soil for which we have planted each other in.
So I close with a blessing and poem that I wrote for all of us.
A Blessing for the Light We Carry Forward
May the memory of these holy years
rest gently upon us:
seventy seasons of prayer,
sixty-five of teaching hearts to hope.
May their roots steady us now
as we lean into the winds of tomorrow.
May we walk humbly,
knowing that grace is gift, not possession,
and that faith is not a badge,
but a way of seeing,
a way of serving when no one applauds.
May our hearts stay tender
to the cries of the poor,
not from pity,
but from the deep knowing
that we are kin—
all children of one God
who weaves us in His own image.
May we be brave in love,
bold in compassion,
and tireless in building
a future radiant with hope.
Let our hands become lanterns,
our words seeds of peace,
our parish a hearth of light
for the whole world to see.
And when our own years fall silent,
may others rise upon the prayers
we leave behind—
carrying forward this light,
not as a monument to what was,
but as a living fire ablaze
of what still can be.
Amen.
Lord, you have, you have the words of everlasting life.