Unity & Diversity

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.].  Throughout the history of the Church, as people have tried to explain the Most Holy Trinity, whom we celebrate today, more often than not they have fallen into some kind of heresy.  Some have advocated that our one God appeared in three forms, which is the heresy of modalism.  Or others have advocated that God the Father, our one God, created the Son and the Holy Spirit, but made them like Himself, which is the heresy of Arianism.  The best route has always been sticking with what God has revealed through Sacred Scripture (that God is one, and yet God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are somehow one God), and using the terms given to us by the early Church, especially the term Trinity, by which we confess that God is one, but is also Three Divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

    When we talk about God, who is infinite and cannot fully be explained or understood by us who are finite, we see a unity of substance (one God), but a diversity of Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).  We also know from Genesis that man and woman are created in the image and likeness of God.  So in humanity we are meant to see a reflection of God, who is unity and diversity.  The more we see this, the more that God’s image and likeness shine forth.  The less we see this, the more muddled our understanding of God is.  And like the early Trinitarian heresies, we can tend to overemphasize one aspect or another.
    God desires our oneness or unity to be based in Him.  God wants all human beings to believe rightly about who God is and who we are.  God desires that we confess one faith that properly professes right belief and advocates right action.  God desires that we be united in the truth and in the love which we call charity (the love of God).  From the beginning, God has sent us out to make disciples of all nations, and bring them into the unity of the Church, rightly believing in, living by, and worshipping the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  We desire all people to become Catholic, not by force or compulsion, but by the free assent of the mind which recognizes the truth and the freedom that comes from living according to God’s plan.  And until that happens, our work of spreading the Gospel is not done.  Until all people not only believe the Catholic faith with their mind and heart but also live in such a way that reflects what they believe, we can grow in our manifestation of the oneness of God.
    At the same time, oneness in faith does not mean that we are all automatons who look the same, who all have the same vocation and avocations, and who give up our individual identity to a corporate identity.  Yes, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, and yet the Father is not the Son, the Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit.  They are different divine Persons, united in the one Godhead, or consubstantial. 
    That is why the Church, from the beginning, has welcomed people of all nations, not just Jews, to follow our Trinitarian God.  Indeed, on the day of Pentecost, there were Jews of many nations gathered in Jerusalem, who heard the Gospel proclaimed in their own language.  Very early on even Gentiles, non-Jews were baptized.  People of different skin color, of both genders, slaves and free, rich and poor, and any other grouping you can think of were invited to change their beliefs and the way they lived their lives to the way that God teaches us through His Word and His Church. 
    This diversity is also a reflection of God, who is not one Person, but three.  Each participates in the one work of salvation, but each does so with the identity of the Person, so that we can say that the Son suffered death, but we cannot say that of the Father.  We can say that the Holy Spirit was spirated or breathed-forth, but we cannot say that of the Son. 
    In our own day, we tend to emphasize one or the other quality of God, unity or diversity.  But an overemphasis in our reflection of these attributes of God leads to a disfigurement and poor reflection of who God is, just as the early heresies which emphasized either the unity of God or the diversity of God in one way or another did not lead to the true faith, but marred our understanding of who God is.
    The temptation to overemphasize unity can often be seen in the Mass.  The Mass is supposed to have a certain unity to it, a way that all people can relate to what is going on within that one rite.  But there are 23 different rites or churches who celebrate Mass in a particular way, including the Latin Rite (ours), the Chaldean Rite (from Iraq), the Syro-Malabar Rite (from India), the Coptic Rite (from Egypt), the Maronite Rite (from Lebanon), and the Byzantine Rite (from modern-day Turkey), just to name a few.  We also have diversity in our vocations and the roles those vocations have.  The vocation to consecrated life (religious brothers and sisters, monks and nuns, hermits, and consecrated virgins) show in a most excellent way the priority of the heavenly life following Christ who was poor, chaste, and obedient.  The priesthood continues the sacramental life of the Church, especially the Eucharist and Penance, in a way that no other vocation does.  And married life creates new life through a sacrament which reflects the life of the Trinity in a way that consecrated life and ordained life cannot.  The diversity of rituals and vocations are just two examples of how our differences can be beautiful and express the life of God in a way that only one does not.
    At the same time, there is a temptation to overemphasize diversity, which weakens the unity of the Church and does not reflect God.  We did not allow diverse teachings about who God is, because some of those teachings are wrong.  We do not allow diversity when it comes to recognizing that life is sacred and a gift from God, from conception to natural death.  The diversity of belief that women should be allowed to be priests or that marriage between two persons of the same sex is not based in God, and is not welcomed into the Catholic Church, because it is not as God has revealed reality to us.  For diversity to be a benefit, there has to be some commonality that binds everyone together, not a free-for-all and scattering based on wrong understanding of who God is or how God has called us to live. 
    Just as with the false understandings of the Trinity, so with the human person and the Church today: either unity or diversity is emphasized over and against the others.  Some, in order to advocate unity, would suggest that all Catholics should do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way.  Others, in order to advocate diversity, would suggest that it doesn’t matter what you believe or how you live.  In reality, our Triune God shows us that both unity and diversity are realities of who God is, and that if we wish to live as those created in His image and likeness, we, too, need the unity and diversity of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Where No Christian Man Has Gone Before

Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

            I sometimes hear from people that the Catholic Church is a “men only” club.  Sure women attend (and are often more faithful than their male counterparts!) but only men can be deacons, priests, and bishops, many of the major saints are men, etc., etc.  This solemnity stands in direct contradiction to that vision of the Church.  It is a denial of that point of view at its root.  No other Christian man in the history of the Church has received so great an honor as the one we celebrate tonight.  And what we celebrate is that Mary, at the end of her life, was assumed, body and soul, into heaven.  She is the only Christian person to receive that honor. 

Painting of the Assumption from the
Orthodox Church of the Dormition

            What makes the Blessed Mother worthy of this unique privilege?  Was it simply the fact that Mary carried Jesus in her womb and nursed him?  In our Gospel, Jesus takes the usual Jewish thought of blessing being connected with the generation of children, and modifies it so that the truly blessed ones are those “‘who hear the word of God and observe it.’”  And who has done this better than the Blessed Virgin Mary?  Mary heard the word of God through the Archangel Gabriel telling her that she would be the Mother of God.  But, while she wondered how this could happen, since she did not know man, she did not doubt the angel, but said with that great act of faith, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”  Because Christ is the Incarnate Word of God, every time Mary, along with St. Joseph, cared for Jesus: feeding him, teaching Him to walk, teaching Him to talk, and all the work of raising a child, she was being attentive to the Word of God in a way no other person could. 

            But the fact that Mary carried Jesus in her womb was also a special privilege that prepared her for the privilege of the Assumption.  In our first reading we heard about the preparation of the Ark of the Covenant made by David.  The Ark of God was the place where God dwelt with humanity in a special way, and so it was treated with great honor and joy.  At the moment of the Incarnation, when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Mother by the power of the Holy Spirit, she became the new Ark of God, the Ark of the New and Everlasting Covenant because she carried within herself God Himself.  Because of this previous honor, she who carried within her he Whom the universe cannot contain, the Source of Life Himself, it was most fitting that she should not taste death, but be preserved from it by her Son who gained for her the blessing of the Resurrection, not only of the soul, but also of the body. 

            But there the other mysteries of Mary’s life are also connected to this great privilege.  On November 1, 1950, in the Papal Bull Munificentissimus Deus, the document which solemnly defined the Assumption as belonging to the Deposit of the Faith, and therefore which must be believed by all the faithful, Pope Pius XII recalled how all the mysteries of Mary’s life are connected to this celebration.  He cites the Byzantine Divine Liturgy which, when celebrating this day, states, “‘God, the King of the universe, has granted you favors that surpass nature.  As he kept you a virgin in childbirth, thus he has kept your body incorrupt in the tomb and has glorified it by his divine act of transferring it from the tomb.’”  The privilege of Mary’s Virginal Motherhood is connected to this day.  So, too, is Mary’s Immaculate Conception, that she was conceived in the womb of St. Anne, without the taint of original sin touching her soul.  Pope Pius XII writes, “[Mary], by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.”  Even Mary’s Immaculate Conception prepares her for this day that we celebrate, when she did not undergo corruption, but already enjoys the full joys of heaven, body and soul.

            There is no male human person who shares the same honors that we give to a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary.  There is no male person celebrated as much as we celebrate Mary, not even St. Peter or St. Paul.  Because of her Immaculate Conception, Virginal Motherhood, unique care for and adherence to Jesus as a perfect disciple, and her Assumption, no other human person can claim such honors.  We are a Church who celebrates only one human person who on earth lived perfectly, and that human person is a woman.  Mary is the glory of Jerusalem.  Mary is the fairest honor of our race.

            While women have often been the most faithful members of the Church, by the will of God only men can become deacons, priests, and bishops and share in the ordained ministry of Jesus Christ.  But, this is certainly not because men are better than women, smarter than women, or holier than women.  This celebration of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary reminds all of us, men and women, that our salvation was made possible by a woman, and that the holiest human person we have is a woman.  But she is for all of us, men and women, an example to strive to follow in her obedience and love of Christ, so that one day, after our deaths and the resurrection of our bodies, we, too might be able to share in the joys of heaven, body and soul, and Mary currently does.