How Do We Receive Him? - Homily for May 27

Readings for Sunday, May 27 / Trinity Sunday:  Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40  |  Psalm 33  |  Romans 8:14-17  |  Matthew 28:16-20

There are three basic ways to receive Christ into the home of our soul: as a visitor, as a renter, or as the owner. How do you receive Him? 

Trinity Sunday - Homily for June 11

Readings for Sunday, June 11 / Trinity Sunday: Exodus 34:4-6, 8-9  |  Deuteronomy 3  |  2 Corinthians 13:11-13  |  John 3:16-18

The feast of the Most Holy Trinity celebrates the central mystery of the Christian faith - that we worship one God who is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let us seek to know Him better that we might love Him more.

Update and Homily Audio

As regular readers have likely noticed, I have not posted any of my homilies since late January. That was partly due to a few weeks when I had no Sunday Mass homily to preach, and then it became a bit of an act of charity toward myself with a little blog sabbatical. But in that time I have been working on another project that I've wanted to do for a while but never made the time to investigate: homily audio. Beginning this past weekend, I will (attempt to) record one of my Sunday homilies and post them online for other to be able not only to read, but also to listen to the homilies. I am still working on some of the details, but at the moment you can follow any posts here on the blog or directly on the page that will host them: https://soundcloud.com/padrepbm

This week's homily audio can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/padrepbm/05-22-16-trinity-sunday

The text follows more or less below:

Patience. We all need it. Some of us have more of it than others. Some of us require it from others more often. Patience has been a recurring idea lately in my ministry and personal prayer. To my brother priests who are about to become pastors I gave the first and most important piece of advice: pray! And the second shortly followed, be patient. In counseling and spiritual direction the message has been continuous: be patient. And to myself, as I continue to grow as a priest and pastor, the same message: be patient.

 This weekend we celebrate Trinity Sunday, honoring the central mystery of our faith: the reality that the One God is Three Persons. Much has been said about God through the centuries and much more remains to be said in the fullness of time. In ages past there were many struggles in the life of the Church to understand this God who is Trinity and Unity. In the Early Church there were numerous struggles over the person of Jesus and how exactly He fit into the picture; whether He was fully God, fully man, a hybrid. How each person of the Trinity was God was a reality that had to be prayed and understood over time and through the Councils of the Church. In later centuries philosophers began to wrestle not so much with the things of the Early Church, but with more philosophical understandings of God. They used terms like ‘transcendentals’, referring to God as ‘The Good, True, and Beautiful’ and as ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’, and ‘the unmoved mover’. These and many other descriptions helped to make sense of God from a philosophical perspective. But while both of these are still important and discussed in certain circles, it seems to me that the larger issue that the members of the Church struggle with in reference to God today is what we would understand as His patience.

According to modern scientific theory, the universe is somewhere around 14 billion years old. The human person, the crown of creation, seems to have existed only around a million years or so. That is a LONG time to wait to place the final piece of the puzzle. When God made Adam and Eve, they fell to sin and in the second chapter of Genesis the Christ was prophesied. And it was many thousands of years before He actually came. The people of Israel were chosen by God to be His own people and a light to the nations and yet right from the start they spent 400 years in slavery in Egypt and, when they finally knew freedom, they spent another 40 years in the desert. The Christ was prophesied and another 1000 years passed before His birth. He came among us and from a human perspective we would expect to have great fanfare, the blaring of trumpets, beating of drums, and confetti tossed into the air, but He spent 30 years working in a carpenter shop before beginning His public ministry. Before His Ascension into Heaven, He told the disciples He would come back again and for 2000 years we’ve been waiting. This great mystery, God who is Trinity, is incredibly patient.

The culture in which we live does not lend itself to the use of patience. We are a culture of quick – quick food, quick communication, quick travel, quick everything. But God works in exactly the opposite manner, seeing things from a very different view. And it is that view that we’re invited to adopt for ourselves – patience.

The Letter to the Romans speaks to us and says that we ought to boast in our afflications – our trials, crosses, struggles, whatever you call them – because they produce endurance. The Traditional Latin Mass readings for Saturday included this same reading and the translation then actually said ‘patience’, afflictions produce patience. And patience, or endurance, produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint. The thing is that patience is hope in action. The thing is that God is not limited by time and space, so in a sense that we can’t understand all of history and all things that exist are, to God, ‘here and now’. God sees the full picture and works on a scale the likes of which we cannot even begun to understand and for this reason we become impatient. We are limited by our time, location, personal experience, and more. So we are invited to remember the bigger picture, even if we can’t see it, and to be patient in the midst of it unfolding. A patience that leads to hope; hope in action. Hope is the assurance of thing yet unseen, so to be patient is to have hope in that which is to come and to be patient here and now, confident that God will help us, that God will strengthen us, that God will accomplish that which we await. So we look there (heaven) and gain strength to be patient here (earth).

How many times have I heard and said, “It’s frustrating to go to confession because it seems like I say the same thing every time and it never changes!” I want grow, to change, to be better and yet nothing is happening! To this the Lord responds: patience. How many times I’ve prayed and longed for a resolution to a particular trial that was going on in my life or the life of another person and after countless prayers it seems like nothing has changed, where is the Lord here? And to this, too, the Lord responds: patience. In so many ways, over and over again, He invites us to patience, to see the bigger picture and to be filled with hope that God will hear our cry.

As we enter into the summer, the liturgical year becomes a bit quieter and the major feasts fade into a quieter routine, so I want to invite you to have a patient little walk with me and the parish - a 92-day journey (the months of June, July, and August) with a focus on one particular thing. I say one particular thing because the temptation in the spiritual life, as in everything else in our life, is to try to do a whole bunch at once. So, fight that temptation and be patient with one thing. Here is a list of 10 possibilities, though there are certainly others the Lord may be inviting you to consider.

1) For one day a week, do everything at half the speed you normally would. Not twice the speed. Half the speed. The only exception is driving; please don’t drive half your normal speed because you will certainly cause a wreck! But everything else, half the speed and give yourself the time to enjoy those things that ‘have to be done’.

2) If you’re not already doing it, maybe consider simply coming to Mass every weekend for those 92 days, being patient with your own struggles and the struggle that coming to Mass brings with it.

3) It wouldn’t a list from Father Brent without mentioning confession! So maybe to resolve to go to confession once a month from those three months and encounter the patient God Himself and receive grace.

4) Consider bringing a notebook to Sunday Mass during those 92 days and writing down one thing from Mass that ‘spoke to you’ and praying with it through the rest of the week.

5) Read the Bible for 10-15 minutes a day and learn about the other ways that God has been patient with His people through the years.

6) Make Sunday a day of rest, set aside solely for family and faith. Often we can become busy with so many things that the Commandment to ‘Keep holy the sabbath’ gets lost in the mix. Make a point to revive it.

7) Share a meal as a family a certain number of times each week and talk with each other. Share in each other’s joys and struggles and help others to be patient by your encouragement.

8) Find a good Catholic book and read through it slowly and reflectively, allowing it sink deeply into your heart.

9) Make a point to visit the Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament for an hour each week. St. Ann is open during the days and St. Mary’s has the Adoration Chapel, so plan for one hour each week to simply sit with the Lord in the quiet and talk with Him.

10) Pray together as a family. Pick one night each week (or multiple nights!) to pray the rosary together or do scripture sharing together.

These and many other things are ways in which we can learn to become more patient by encountering the infinitely patient God we love and serve. And so pick one and patiently walk with it. If you see some fruits from it, great! If you see nothing from it and feel no warm fuzzies, cool. Be patient. There is nothing that we do that goes unnoticed by the Lord and He will not let us go astray. So let us pray the Lord to teach us to be patient, that we might be patient with Him, patient with each other, and patient with ourselves.

Our Father

"Don't touch the plates. They're hot."

Readings for Sunday, August 30 / 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8
Psalm 15
James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Anyone who has recently seen me without my Mass vestments on can usually tell that my vestments have been in need of a little attention. Buttons have been missing the cloth covering, a few seams were torn here and there, a tear on one has been held together by safety pins for months, they’re a little too short, and admittedly no longer black but more of a dark gray. I’ve known this for a while. It actually began about a year ago when I went home and my mom told me it was time to start looking at getting new cassocks. I said ‘ok’ and continued on with life as normal. Next time I went home, the same exchange. Over the course of several months it happened more often than not when I would go home and it began to bother me a bit. Each time it was said I received it less as a critique of my clothing and more a critique of me; that there was something wrong with me. After months of the ‘you need new cassocks’ and ‘ok’ exchange mom finally just told me we were going to the store to look at the selection and so we went. I was already a bit worked up that day from other things and the cassock-critiques had worn pretty hard on me. Mom was looking at the rack of cassocks, all of which I didn’t like for some particular reason, and I was about 15 feet away looking at candlesticks. Her good friend joined us at the store and the two of them were talking and mom mentioned my cassock and she didn’t like how rough they were looking, this with me in earshot. In a moment of frustration I lost it and said something to the effect of ‘Well I guess I should consider it an act of charity that I don’t get to go home much these days, that way you don’t have to see me in it.’ As soon as the words came out my mouth I could feel things change. It hurt her and I knew it.

Very few words were exchanged after that. We rode silently to lunch and sat quietly at the table, each of us paying attention to other things around us rather than talking to each other. After lunch she dropped me off and I came back to the rectory. I was still upset and she was too. After a couple of days stewing things over I called her and apologized for what I had said and done and we experienced reconciliation and healing. I mention healing specifically because there was a wound that was inflicted, not to skin and bone, but to a relationship.

In the readings for today we hear a good bit about commandments, the law of God and the traditions of men. The commandments are good and holy things, but the problem is that most of us are never really sorry for breaking rules. I remember only one time in my life when I apologized to a rule for breaking it and that was in driver’s ed. Our teacher, Mrs. Paige, had a policy that any time we broke one of the rules of the road that we had to get out an apologize to the sign indicating the broken rule. I broke the speed limit (go figure!) and had to apologize to the sign for my infraction. After giving it a hug for good measure – I was and still am a bit weird – I hopped back in the car and off we went. I wasn’t really sorry for the rule being broken though. In fact most of the time I’ve felt sorrow for breaking rules it was more honestly sorrow that I had been caught.

That’s understandable when it comes to things like traffic laws and such. The problem is that we often and easily apply this laissez faire approach to commandments to the relationship that we’re invited to have with God our Father.

When we treat sins like mere rules and laws, we turn God our Father into the God our Master – a divine rule maker who we don’t have to care about personally but for whom we must ‘stay in line.’ To do this is to miss one of the greatest gifts that we have been given by God, namely, adoption in His Son. We are the Father’s adopted sons and daughters and He loves us as His own children. But that doesn’t mean He lets us simply do whatever we please. God never commands us to do or not do things ‘just because.’ There is always a purpose and reason. When my mom and I were sitting quietly in the restaurant, the waiter brought out our plates and told to us ‘Don’t touch the plates. They’re hot.’ I wasn’t upset that I couldn’t touch my plate. I appreciated that our waiter saved me the trouble of getting burned trying to reposition things. In the same way a father tells their child ‘don’t touch that’ to numerous things – open flames, open ovens, ant beds, etc. – all in the name of love. He does it not to restrict freedom but to preserve the child from pain. And the commandments of God? The exact same. I could go around committing all sorts of sins and reaping the rewards of physical, spiritual, and emotional pain and suffering and learn not to do those things eventually. Or I can simply listen to the Word of the Lord saying ‘my son, don’t do that, it’s not good for you’ and trust the Father who is showing His concern.

Last weekend we were faced with the call of Joshua to ‘decide today whom you will serve.’ Let us choose today once more not to serve a master of laws, but instead to embrace our Father. As we pray that prayer given so many years ago, may our hearts well up today with the joy of indeed being children of God and help us always to seek deeper union with our Father.

Wow.

Readings for Sunday, May 31/ Trinity Sunday:
Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-49
Psalm 33
Romans8:14-17
Matthew 28:16-20

At the seminary we had an entire course on the Most Blessed Trinity and the manner in which we learned our information was quite often by way of critiquing various writings on the topic throughout the centuries. Toward the end of the semester our professor split us into groups and gave each group a separate paper to critique and respond to. So our group went to work. Wanting to flex our theological muscles, we tore the paper to pieces. We highlighted all sorts of things that were just poorly worded, needed extra explanation, or seemed downright heretical about the Blessed Trinity. When it came time to present our responses, we got up and talked about what a rough paper it was and that the grade we figured it deserved was a C if not a D. When we were done our professor calmly looked at us and said, “I wrote that paper.”

This weekend we celebrate Trinity Sunday, when homilists throughout the world are called to the often-difficult task of preaching about the Blessed Trinity. The problem is that the Trinity is revealed to us as One God, yet three Persons. We could spend years reading, reflecting, and praying on this mystery but it will never fully make sense to us. That’s why the temptation arises to simply shrug our shoulders, say ‘it’s a mystery!’ and move one to a topic that suits us better. But this is exactly the opposite of what God desires of us. The Scriptures we just heard proclaimed speak powerfully of the fact that God has revealed Himself to us, inviting us to come to know and love Him here in this life and to be joined eternally to Him in the next.

In Deuteronomy, Moses asks the people to think back throughout the ages and see if there ever was a God so close to a people as the Lord God had become with them, whether they had known anyone who spoke with God and lived, whether God had walked with a particular people, and even revealed to them His Most Holy Name. God had begun to walk with them in order to restore what was lost by Adam and Eve, namely, union with God. It’s not enough to simply walk with God. As we hear in the Letter to the Romans, we are to become children of God and heirs with Christ Jesus to the kingdom of Heaven! God wants to bring us into Himself and it begins here and now. But how? By talking to Him – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The other day I came into the Church to prepare for this homily and I brought with me a journal with my reflections, three books of commentaries on the various scripture passages, three textbooks on Trinitarian Theology, and a notepad to write on. After sitting for a good 40 minutes in front the Blessed Sacrament, which I had exposed for Adoration, I looked up and just said, ‘Lord, what am I supposed to say?’ In the silence I felt a response saying, ‘I love you.’ I closed the book, sat there before my God, and began to talk to Him.

There are so many wonderful things in the world around us that are designed to lead us to know God and to interact with Him, but unfortunately we sometimes remain focused on the thing rather than the Lord who used it as a way of catching our attention and drawing it to Him. Concretely, I want everyone to pay attention to one particular word this week: WOW. On my way from the rectory to the church to hear confessions I saw a huge black cloud back behind the cemetery and just then a huge lightning bolt struck and lit up the sky. It stopped me in my tracks and I said, “WOW!” in response. The ‘wow’ happen in the course of our days and I believe it to be a way in which the Lord uses something extraordinary to catch our attention and highligh something in particular. What I invite you to do is when you say ‘wow’ this week, stop and talk about it with the Lord. Ask why it struck you. Talk to Him about other events like it. Talk to the Father as a child telling stories from their day at school. As a sibling to the Lord Jesus who walked and experienced many of the same moments. And to the Holy Spirit who permits us to not only see the moments but to understand them in union with our Creator. As we do this we can enter deeper and deeper into the loving Heart of our God, knowing Him not by memorized formulas but by a relationship of love.

The Most Important Sacrament

Readings for Sunday, February 15/ 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46
Psalm 32:1-1, 5, 11
1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1
Mark 1:40-45

One day in seminary our sacramental theology professor simply asked us the question, “Which sacrament is most important?” and off we went each debating the importance of the sacraments and essentially playing a highly theological game of paper-rock-scissors, as each point was able to be trumped by another. In the end the point of the exercise was to recognize that each sacrament of the Church really is ‘the most important sacrament’ in regards to some specific situation or theological truth.

A couple of weeks ago I preached about the priesthood and the weight that it can sometimes carry for those who exercise such a ministry. In practical terms, this often comes out as the community looking to the priest as having the more difficult vocation and ‘taking one for the team’ by not getting married and serving the Church. While this latter view is clearly a poor understanding of the priesthood, it seems to me in many respects that the former assertion is also false. Why so? Because while I may be obliged to a higher level of holiness because of my ordination, at the end of the day I return to a rectory wherein I can leave my stuff where I feel like it, I can wash the dishes or just leave them in the sink, I can squeeze the toothpaste tube wherever I want, etc. In short, priestly life is intense when in the community but in the rectory I am left to myself and able to maintain a life according to my preferences and not be concerned about others’ conflicting with mine. A married person does not have that luxury but necessary interacts with another person – and in a family, multiple people – who challenge some of those preferences and provides the raw material of growing in holiness, namely the opportunity to serve others rather than self.

When I asked several ladies at my previous parish assignment the secret to a good marriage they quickly responded ‘separate sinks, separate closets, and a lot of love’. This gets to that reality that marriage necessarily involves some challenges to the personal space and preferences, but even more, it confirmed what every single one of us knows about relationships: that love must necessarily be present for it to work.

In the scriptures we just heard proclaimed we hear about the life of lepers. To be a leper was bad enough just from the illness itself, but this was intensified by the isolation that accompanied the illness. In the Jewish context, to be a leper made one unclean. To be unclean wasn’t that one was a sinner, so much as they were unable to enter into worship at the Temple. To be unclean was also a restriction in interacting with others because if an ‘unclean person’ touched a ‘clean person’ then they were both unclean. For this reason, and for health reasons with the leprosy, the lepers were made to keep their bodies visible for others to see the illness and stay free from them. Additionally, they had to shout ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ as they walked around so that others might stay clear of them.  And if that weren’t bad enough, they were made to dwell outside the camp away from the community. Imagine the intense isolation that one felt in such  a situation; separated from family, friends, the larger community, and even your God! The human person simply cannot take such isolation. It’s written in our hearts to love and give love to others. Remember the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks. What happens when he finds himself stranded alone on an island? He finds a volleyball, makes a face on it and give it a name all in an attempt to have an ‘other’ with which to interact. That’s why the leper in the gospel responds the way that he does. Some might be shocked that he disobeyed the command of Jesus not to tell anyone but, honestly, I would be shocked if he hadn’t gone to tell everyone. Imagine the joy of being able to go tell everyone what God had done when before he hadn’t even been able to interact with others.

Again, the need to be in relationship with others is written in our hearts and the God Who put it there knows that need and created the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony as a way to fulfill it for those called to the vocation. I say vocation because it is indeed a calling from God. Often when we hear ‘vocations’ we think only of priesthood and religious life, but the Church has always held marriage as a sacred vocation and the basic cell of the Church and the world. It is only by holy marriages that the faith is passed from generation to generation, as the family is the place in which faith is first learned, later deepened, and later personalized in the vocations of the youth. This all happens to the extent that the family resembles the Blessed Trinity. You thought the burden was heavy for me simply to try to live up to being Christ Jesus in the midst of a community, but the family is called to image in a similar way the Trinity itself – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – in your complete gift of self and outpouring of love for the other. The family, founded on a holy marriage, is a place in which the world should look and find the face of the Triune God. Married people: do you feel the weight of that?

All of that is the reason the Church calls people to marriage not on the beach, the mountains or the nice plantation home, but at the altar of God. It is recognizing that God joins the couple together and it is God alone who can sustain them. Just as the man in the Gospel was able to enter once more into relationship with the community by the healing of Jesus, so too Jesus works in a miraculous way to unite two souls together in Holy Matrimony and sustains them in His love and grace so as to be that image of love for the world despite the trials, temptations, and sufferings that come with the natural course of life. This weekend we honor those who are celebrating special anniversaries this year in recognition of their fidelity to each other and the Lord, to set them as models for younger couples to look to for encouragement and wisdom, and to honor the God who has held them in His embrace since their wedding day. May the Lord continue to watch over them and all married couples, strengthening their love for each other, blessing them in their families, and training them in holiness so as to spend eternity together beholding the face of our God.

Focus on the Trinity

Not this Trinity...

Readings for Sunday, May 26/ Trinity Sunday:
Proverbs 8:22-31
Psalm 8:4-9
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

As we come this weekend to celebrate Trinity Sunday, we rejoice in the great mystery of the self-revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Through the Scriptures we hear of these three Persons who are One God and as I was reflecting on them throughout the past week the question continued to come to mind: where is my focus? For all of us, where is our focus? Is our focus truly on the Lord our God, or is it rather on us?

In the past century a great change has happened that moved the focus from God to men. The Church, representative of God in our midst, was the center of community life. It was the place where we gathered, found encouragement, guidance, and direction in daily life. Now the Lord has been set aside and man has become the center and focus. ‘Man is the measure of all things’ is a phrase we’ve all heard before and it simply affirms that desire of many to have us be the determining factor of what we should do. Sadly this over-emphasis on the human person and humanity as a whole has even seeped into our faith. When I first began my theology studies in New Orleans, our Spiritual Theology professor asked us at the beginning of the course what the most important thing for each of us was. “Getting to heaven,” rang from our lips and he asked if we all agreed and we said yes. To this he responded, “You’re all wrong. The most important thing for each of us is glorifying God. Getting to heaven is just the means to doing that.” It’s not about us at all. It’s about Him.

We can also see this turn towards ourselves in the everyday life of the Church in the celebration of the Liturgy. Music in the past century has taken a dramatic turn from being mainly God-oriented to people-oriented. Listen for a while at the music that we sing regularly in Mass and look through the hymnals and note how often we sing about ‘me, I, mine, us, we, and our’ instead of actually singing in praise of God. It’s more about what we get from the deal than what God does. Architecture and Sacred Art, too, are places where we see that world around us turning our gaze from the Lord to ourselves. Rare is the newly built church a structure that lifts our minds, hearts, and eyes to Heaven. Instead, we oversimplify everything to the point of it being all-too-human. Most lamentable of all is the orientation of the liturgy. The ancient practice of the Church was the have the priest and people facing the same direction in the liturgy. Often it is termed as ‘the priest had his back to the people’ but truly it was simply the priest and people together awaiting the coming of the Lord Jesus, who was traditionally believed to return in glory from the East. And so the whole community focused on the East, symbolized by the Crucifix in the sanctuary, in worship. And yet now most often the Mass is celebrated with the priest facing the people rather than joining the people looking toward God. As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI so powerfully pointed out in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, we have turned in on ourselves, focusing on what we do and making humanity the center of the celebration. Interestingly, the Roman Missal still assumes that the priest is facing the same direction as the people. But since that cannot be done just yet I and other priests –following Benedict’s example - have begun to have a cross on the altar to remember the focus is not on the community, nor on ourselves, but on the Lord God Himself. He is the center, the focus.

Those are just a few of the many ways that the world has attempted to take our focus away from God. So how do we refocus? How do we ensure that the Lord truly is the center, not only of our worship, but of our entire lives? I would suggest three practical things that I myself am still trying to strengthen in my own life.

The first is prayer. When we come to pray before God we realize immediately that God is God and we are not. He has the power. With Him we can do all things; without Him we can do nothing that is good. To pray is to recognize our rightful place before the Lord, that His majesty is so great that in comparison we are nothing  and that helps us to remove the focus from me and turn it towards Him.

The second thing is a daily examen. And examen is a practice wherein at the end of each day we pause to ask God where He was that day. We pray that the Spirit would show us how He was active in our lives – where did He give us some special grace, where did we see Him active in another person’s life, and where did we see Him but struggle or fail to respond. To be able to stop and see what God is acting and what gifts He is bestowing forces us to realize that many gifts that come to us each day through God’s gracious providence. He cares for us immensely and blesses us accordingly. If we turn back to give thanks, we recall the reality that it is He who acts first to bless us and we simply respond.

The third thing is simply to have visual reminders of God’s presence with us. Having a religious image in a prominent place at home, a crucifix over the bed, a holy card on our work desk or a rosary in our car. These and many other things throughout the day are visible reminders of the Triune God who walks with us throughout every moment of our day. Never are we alone and never shall we be abandoned. The God who created the universe created us out of love and wants nothing other than for us to turn to Him in love and respond with the same love.

As we go throughout this week, let us be especially mindful of our focus and work always to keep it on our God that in all that we do it might not be for us but for Him that we act. To conclude this homily I invite you to join me as we together turn towards Our Lord and give Him the praise that is due: Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Trinity and Liturgy

Readings for June 3/ Trinity Sunday:
Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40
Psalm 33:4-6, 9, 18-20, 22
Romans 8:14-17
Matthew 28:16-20

Last weekend we concluded the Easter Season with the Solemn Feast of Pentecost, marking the event when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles. With this last gift from Christ to His followers, the true mission is begun and thus the birth of the Church takes place. From the Jewish faith, something new has begun. It is fitting, then, that on this first weekend after the birthday of the Church we celebrate with another Solemn Feast the mystery that is the center of our Christian faith – the Most Holy Trinity.

This mystery is most central, and thus most important, because it is the Trinity from whom, in whom, and for whom all things exist. To put it simply: without God, nothing. In addition to being the most important mystery of our Catholic faith, it is also the most difficult for us to grasp. Who of us can ever truly understand how the One God, who is absolute unity, is somehow also a Trinity of Persons? And yet this doesn’t dismiss us from the obligation to try to understand. We must study the Scriptures, Catechism and Creed to understand what ‘consubstantial’ means, why ‘begotten, not made’ is so important, and how the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son because my knowing more about God, we can love Him more deeply. But we cannot stop at simply knowing about God. We must know Him; we are called to foster a relationship with this great mystery.

God, being love itself, was compelled to create the universe out of love and to draw it to Himself. So incredible is our God that being the creator of all things did not keep Him from coming to us as a human race and as individuals to reveal Himself to us. He reveals Himself to us in the beauty of the creation He has made, in the love shown to us by others, in the complexity of the universe, and in the answered prayers that bring peace to our hearts. Even more miraculously, He revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, walking among us for 33 years and teaching us the way to eternal life. This same Jesus Christ revealed to the disciples – and to us today through the words of the Gospel - that God is not simply One God, but that the One God is also Three distinct Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and eternal communion of persons pouring out love and receiving love.

In addition to these and many other ways that God reveals Himself to us in the midst of our days, I posit that one of the best places to come face to face with the Triune God is here in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is here that we as individuals and the mystical body of Christ, are joined to the Father, Son, and Spirit, as we are at no other time until we are joined to them in Heaven.

Each time we gather to celebrate these sacred mysteries, we begin in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We turn to the Father in prayer time and time again; notice that most of the prayers of the Mass are addressed to the Father. At the consecration, Christ Himself acts through the priest in order to offer Himself to the Father on our behalf. And all of this happens by the power of the Holy Spirit. By this glorious exchange of the Son offering Himself to the Father through the Spirit and the Father receiving that offering, we receive Holy Communion and are drawn into that exchange. For a moment in time we are actually united in our flesh to the incomprehensible mystery of God Who is Love.

I’ve said it before and I say it again – if we truly understood what was taking place each time we came to Mass and each time we received Holy Communion, we would be shocked beyond words. And so we give thanks to the God who veils Himself out of mercy and pray that He would help us to grasp more and more this privilege that we have and the mystery that He is. 

By their root you shall know them???

I have always loved listening to music. Ever since I was a little child I enjoyed listening to different types of music and singing along to it or playing along with it on my guitar. Even today when I hear certain words or phrases, songs immediately pop into my head and I feel the need to sing them. Every time that I hear Jesus’ words “By their fruits you will know them” I immediately think of the song “They’ll know we are Christians by our love” and the tune just doesn’t go away. Even now as I speak to you I am resisting the urge to hum the tune.

As we reflect on the gospel for today, it is pretty clear what the message is: we can see what is of God and what is not of God based on the fruits; thus the connection with people knowing we are Christians by our love. But I’d like to take a look at things from a different angle. We see the fruits, but what is really important is the roots – the part we don’t see.

In one of my classes at the seminary, we were given an illustration of the spiritual life. The professor said to think of ourselves as a big tree. We can have a big healthy trunk, beautiful green leaves, and an abundance of fruit, but if we are separated from the ground it all fades quickly. In the spiritual life, the ground is the Holy Trinity and we bear spiritual fruit only because our roots grow deeply into God’s love and peace. Our roots, by being immersed in the presence of God, are the means to our bearing great spiritual fruit because the soil of the Lord is the most fertile and life-sustaining soil one can find. And more than just bearing good fruit, as our roots begin to spread they not only draw life from the soil but become so connected to it that the two become one. We can recall from past hurricanes the image of fallen trees not just pulling up roots but bringing with them a huge chunk of the earth as well.

And now, as we prepare to enter into the presence of the Lord in a more real way, we pray that our roots might sink more deeply into His love, that we might not only bear good fruit but will be joined intimately to Him.