Encountering Jesus

Corpus Christi

If you could meet or have dinner with or talk to any person throughout all of history, who would it be and why?  Think about it.  Whom would you want to spend time with and get to know?  Especially for those who love history, but not limited to them, there’s a desire to meet people who are dead, whether recently or for a long time, to speak with them, to get to know them, and to try to understand that person and his or her choices.  We want to have a chance to more than just read about the person, or watch a movie about that person; we want to encounter that person.

Bishop Boyea, following the lead of Pope Emeritus Benedict and Pope Francis, have been emphasizing the importance of an encounter with Jesus.  How many of you said Jesus when I asked the question at the beginning of the homily (you don’t have to raise your hands)?  An encounter with Jesus is important.  Catholicism, and Christianity in general, is not just a bunch of rules of what to do and what not to do.  Catholicism, and Christianity in general, is not just a set of ethics or a style of morality.  Catholicism, and Christianity in general, is about an encounter with a Person, a Divine Person, Jesus Christ.  Jesus gathered disciples to Himself by inviting people to follow Him.  They, in turn, told other people to come with them and follow Jesus, and so Jesus’ disciples grew in number.  Christianity was able to spread because there were people who had encountered Jesus and found in Him the key to their life.

And it wasn’t just a continuation of their lives, which were usually altogether crummy.  It was a great improvement, and a means of being happy.  Those who encountered Jesus discovered how to be truly happy, even as fishermen, or a tax collector, or a zealot, or even a Pharisee, and wanted to share that with others.  And others shared that same encounter with others, who, through their preaching, encountered Jesus, too, and found a way to be happy.  

How often do we hear, “Mass is boring”?  Some of you may be thinking that right now!  But do we realize that each time we come to Mass, we don’t have to wonder what it would be like to talk to Jesus and see Jesus.  Each time we come to Mass, we have the chance to encounter Jesus and meet Him.  We get the same opportunity the apostles had.  They could see Jesus, touch Jesus, and hear Jesus.  We hear Jesus speaking through the Word of God, and hopefully through the homily.  We see Jesus and we touch Jesus as we receive Him in the Eucharist.  

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ.  We celebrate that our God, in the Person of Jesus, has not abandoned us, but remains near to us in a ways that our senses can experience.  We do not have to pretend to hear the voice of God; we hear it in Scripture.  We do not have to pretend to see God; we see Him under the appearance of bread and wine.  We do not have to pretend to touch God; our hands and/or our tongues receive the same Jesus who was born in Bethlehem, died on Calvary, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven.  The Eucharist is not simply a memorial meal to remember what happened, like posing for the Last Supper.  The Eucharist is not simply the spiritual presence of Christ when His people come together.  The Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood, soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ, present under sacramental signs, but truly present for us, nonetheless.  

So, the challenge for us is whether or not we treat the Mass as our chance to encounter Jesus.  There are many retreats that give us the opportunity to encounter Jesus, like Cursillo, like Marriage Encounter, like KAIROS, like TEC, like Renew, and the list goes on.  But the Eucharist is the pre-eminent and most excellent encounter with Jesus, and encounter that is unlike any other on earth.  Today, and every Sunday you have the chance to encounter Jesus.  Give yourself to Jesus; He has made Himself available for you to hear, to see, and to touch.

Icons of the Trinity

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

I invite you to look at the two icons to my right and my left for a second.  The icon to my right and your left is an icon of the four evangelists.  The icon to my left and your right is an icon of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  Icons are a beautiful way of praying, because they are like a window into heaven.  We do not worship these images, but we honor them as guides to help us pray.  The gold leaf shows how precious they are in the eyes of God and that they are in the heavenly Jerusalem.  Their peaceful, otherworldly faces show the peace and joy that come from being in the presence of God.  They are meant to remind us that, as we gather in this church, we are not at an earthly gathering like a meeting or a social.  We are in a place which straddles heaven and earth and gives us a taste of heaven in the eternal worship of God with angels and saints singing “Holy, holy, holy,” and the prayers of the just rising before God like burning incense.

As we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity today, we may wonder why we celebrate a teaching.  The belief that God is triune, One God and Three Divine Persons, can seem very academic, and removed from the day-to-day cares and concerns of life.  The mysterion, the mystery of the Trinity is not meant to be something only we think about, but something we live.  Mystery in this case does not mean a puzzle to be figured out, but a reality which is unseen and yet fully real.  Our lives, as believers in the Trinity, are meant to be icons of the life of the Trinity, since we are all created in the image and likeness of our Triune God.

Now, this doesn’t mean that we are called to have a multiple personality disorder.  We are radically different from God because He–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–is the Creator while we are creatures.  But while we are different, there is some similarity between us and God, and we are called to become more and more similar to God each day through His grace until we pray that He finishes making us like Him for eternity in Heaven.  In Church language we call this process divinization: to become like God by the power of God.  Our daily prayer life, our sufferings, our worthy reception of the sacraments, and our works of charity are meant to help us accept God’s grace to become more like Him.  St. Athanasius, one of the great Fathers of the Church, who died in the late fourth century, said it this way, in the light of the Incarnation: “God became man so that man might become God.”  

If we are to become like God, then we should know something about him.  We know that God is merciful, like a loving father who runs out to meet his wasteful son; we know that God heals and brings wholeness to His children; we know that God is just and will reward those who follow Him and punish those who reject Him; we know that God has a special love for the outcast and the abandoned; we know that God is Truth; we know that God is Almighty and eternal.  We know that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as reveled to us by the Son.  The list could go on and on.  We learned some of these things from our readings today.  We especially learned from our first reading and Gospel that God is not far away from us, but is near to us for all time.

If then we are to be icons, we have to match those images that we have received from the Deposit of Faith: the Scriptures and the teachings of the Apostles.  To be like God, to be divinized, means to be merciful, even to the point of foolishness; to heal and bring wholeness to the extent that we can by our words and deeds; to stand up for justice; to proclaim and defend truth; to have a special love for the outcast and the abandoned.  How do we receive the strength to do this?  Through the ongoing use of the sacramental grace that we have received; through the worship of our one God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–at Mass; through letting the Holy Spirit empower us to preach the Gospel.  Otherwise, we, as icons, will not look serene, peaceful, and heavenly, but agitated, anxious, and earthly.  Those earthly icons do not lead us to God, but keep us bound up on earth.  They are not windows to heaven, but mirrors reflecting the fallen state of our world.

Marriage is especially meant to be an icon of the Trinity.  Marriage, the union of a man and woman for life, open to new life, is meant to show us God the Father, who pours out all of who He is to the Son, who pours out all of who He is to the Father, and in that sharing of perfect and full love, a new Divine Person is breathed forth: the Holy Spirit.  The Church spends so much time with marriage and the family because married couples and families are meant to remind us of the love of God.  

But for all of us, married or not, by our baptism we were called to be an icon of the Trinity.  One way in particular we can do that is by witnessing the love of God in truth.  We are a narcissistic culture.  We are first and foremost concerned with ourselves.  God’s love, on the other hand, is always open to being shared and creating new life, as we see from the very creation of the world.  God the Father had perfect love in Himself with the Son and the Holy Spirit; He lacked nothing; He needed nothing.  And yet, out of love, God decided to create the world to have new ways to share His love.  Let us be icons of the Trinity; not self-centered, but selfless, and so help others to see the God who love us: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.