Communion with God

 Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

    One of the questions people have been asking me most about my role as pastor of both St. Pius X and St. Matthew (especially now that the new Mass schedule has been released) is how I’m not going to burn out.  And it’s a valid concern; there’s a lot of work and I’ll be kept quite busy.  But I’m not just relying on myself.  I have some good friends that I see almost every week who allow me to relax with them, have some dinner, and set aside the concerns of work.  Sometimes we run together, we often eat (and drink) together, and we just hang out.  My time with them allows my batteries to recharge so that I’m ready to go with whatever the week throws at me.
    I think we all have people that we lean on to help us unwind.  For some people it’s a phone call to mom and/or dad.  For others it’s a spouse or a friend.  Maybe it’s your Bible study group, or a group of friends with whom you go to dinner.  But time with those people seems to make things better, and allows us to enjoy life again, and handle whatever stresses come our way.
    As we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, we celebrate our God who is both One and a Communion of Three Divine Persons.  Jews and Muslims recognize the oneness of God, but only Christians recognize the Trinity of Persons.  We believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, One God, equal in dignity and majesty, co-eternal.  God is transcendent, beyond the confines of our reason.  And yet, in Jesus, God the Son, God also humbled Himself to imminent, to be like us in all things but sin and to be with us in communion.  
    God didn’t need us.  God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–is perfect in Himself, and lacks nothing.  And yet, out of an abundance of love, God created the universe and everything in it, and then, even beyond any imagining, extended that perfect Communion in Himself to the creatures He had made in His image and likeness.  
    That’s the message we hear from Deuteronomy in the first reading.  Moses says, “‘Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?  Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation?’”  We might not think of that as so great, but, as Moses points out, it was unheard of!  God didn’t simply deign to speak with His creatures, but saved them from their oppressors and gave them a law to help them live the fullness of life for which God created them.  And, as far as Moses was concerned, that was proof enough that God is God, and that He is worth obeying.
    But Jesus did more than simply speak to us from fire and thunder.  Jesus spoke to us while looking like us and sharing our human nature.  He communicated even more of what would truly make us happy and give us joy.  Jesus built on the Ten Commandments that were given on Mount Sinai with the Eight Beatitudes that He gave in the Sermon on the Mount.  He filled out the deeper meaning of the law, and showed us that true happiness comes from giving of ourselves, rather than taking.  
    But by Jesus’ Incarnation, and then by His Passion and Death, He allowed us to be joined to Him through baptism, and to be sustained by Him in the Eucharist, so that the Communion that the Most Holy Trinity enjoys, we could also enjoy.  St. Paul writes about this in the second reading as he talks about our adoption that the Holy Spirit accomplishes so that we are children of God the Father, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.  We are not simply slaves to a law, but co-heirs to glory and the Communion of God.
    And communion is what God wants for us: He wants to have communion with us.  And that is what truly sustains us, even in the most stressful times of our life.  Friends are great, and I value mine.  But God is the one who can sustain us through anything.  He lightens our sorrows and increases our joys.  He gives us strength and wisdom to deal with the hardest parts of life, beyond even what our human friends, even beyond what a spouse, can help.  
    And that is the greatest gift of our God.  He is transcendent, higher than the heavens.  And yet He is also imminent, closer to us than we are to ourselves.  God does not only want us to know that He is–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–a Communion of Divine Persons, He also wants us to be united to that Communion.
    So when things are rough and when things are easy; when life is painful and when life is full of joy; when storm clouds gather and when the sun shines brightly; yes, turn to friends on earth to share in the experiences of life, but turn even more to God, the Communion of Three Divine Persons, and know the strength and happiness of being in Communion with our Creator.