Communion Cannot Come through Facebook

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

One of the great blessings of technology is the ability to keep in touch with people that we would otherwise not see.  It can be notoriously difficult for priests to meet up with friends sometimes because of the nature of our vocation.  I have one friend who has lived in Ann Arbor for the past four years.  But even though we’ve been only 45 minutes to an hour away from each other, we’re generally doing pretty well if we can meet up twice a year.  So we rely on texting to catch up and see how each other’s doing.  Technology is certainly great for that.

Today we celebrate a communion of Divine Persons as we celebrate the Most Holy Trinity.  God is one.  But God is three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  How that works is beyond us.  Our finite minds cannot totally understand an infinite God.  But we do have some access to understand who God is.  God demonstrated His one-ness throughout the Old Testament.  The great prayer of faith of the Jews called the shema from Deuteronomy is: Adonai Elohim, Adonai ehad (The Lord is God, the Lord is one).  But in the New Testament, God also revealed that, while He is one, He is also Three Divine Persons, a communion of Persons, a communion of love.  That is why St. Paul can talk about Jesus as Lord (a reference to His divinity), and speak of the Holy Spirit in the same way that St. Paul speaks about God.  We hear that in the greeting at Mass, which comes from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”  The Holy Spirit is also on equal footing with God the Father and God the Son in the command to baptize that Jesus gives at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew: “[baptize] them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  

But even though the Trinity is based in Scripture, the Church has unpacked what it means to be one God and three Persons for two millennia.  In fact, the first term to speak about God’s three Persons was trias, a Greek word, used by Theophilus of Antioch in 180.  That word would later be translated into the Latin word trinitas, from which we get our English word Trinity, and was used by Tertullian who died in the early 3rd century.  Many of the first Ecumenical Councils starting in 325 were about how Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God.

But one of the great developments of Trinitarian theology is that God is a communion of Divine Persons.  His unity is not such that He is alone, but shares love between the Father and the Son, a love that pours all of the Person out (except His identity) to the other, a love so strong that it breathes forth (spirates is the technical theological term) the Person of the Holy Spirit, which doesn’t happen in a linear fashion, but has always been and always will be.

I brought up technology at the beginning of my homily because, as good as it is to help people keep in touch, it cannot create communion.  Communion can only happen in the presence of the other.  God the Father does not text God the Son.  Their outpouring of deep and abiding love does not happen by technology, and so neither can ours.  We can stay in touch with each other, but we do not have communion with each other by text, FaceTime, or SnapChat.  

We are created in the image and likeness of God, and so we also have a desire built within us to have communion with others.  This communion can be the communion of faith, the communion of family, the communion of husband and wife, and the communion of friends.  Each communion has its own rules and expressions of love, but they are all forms of communion.  And we all need these to be a happy, holy, and wholesome human being.  And this is where our challenge is as modern people, especially the young: we seek communion through technology, but we cannot find it there.  As good as texting my friend from Ann Arbor is, it doesn’t even come close to actually spending time with him.  

But if we don’t realize that technology doesn’t really fulfill that need, then we can put ourselves in a vicious circle or seeking communion in a way that will never give us communion.  Why do so many people (especially young people) act as if they’re glued to their phones?  Because they want communion, and they think staying in touch will meet that need, but they’re never quite satisfied.  It’s like setting up a treadmill at the starting line of a track meet.  Running is still happening, but you’re getting nowhere.  

Pornography is an even more evil expression of this phenomenon.  A man or woman desires the communion that is proper between a husband and wife.  But seeking it in a video with a stranger or strangers only mimics that communion, cheapens it, and in the end, does not fulfill the desire of the heart.  And so a man or woman can easily get sucked in to seeking communion when that communion can never come through pornography.

Technology is not inherently evil.  It does allow people to stay in touch and keep updated on each other’s lives.  But it never creates communion, and because we are created in the image of a Triune God, that’s what our hearts desire most of all.  

So how do we fill that need?  One way is time-tested: have a meal with each other.  Have a weekly family meal, or meals with friends.  Even the sacrifice of Jesus in the Mass is in the context of the Last Supper–a meal.  These are the ways that we find communion.  There are other ways, too, but simply by having a weekly or occasional meal, especially as a family, can satisfy that need for communion and keep us from trying to seek it in artificial ways.  Does it take a little more work than a text?  Yes, but love always takes a little more work than simply affection.  

Be who God has created you to be: a person created in His image and likeness; a person created for communion with Him and with others.

The Root, the Shoot, and the Fruit

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

            One of my favorite classes at Sacred Heart Major Seminary was Theology of the Trinity. 

Bishop John Quinn,
Bishop of Winona, MN

Besides being a great subject to study (you can never go wrong learning more about God), I also enjoyed the class because of the professor, Bishop John Quinn, who was at the time an auxiliary bishop of Detroit, and is now Bishop of the Diocese of Winona, Minnesota.  He taught well, but also became a mentor to me, and a kind of friend, with whom I still keep in touch today with an occasional letter or email.  In that class we learned about the different images that were used to describe the Trinity: The Sun (s-u-n) Itself (God the Father), the Light of the Sun (Jesus), and the Warmth of the Sun’s Rays (God the Holy Spirit); the Root (God the Father), the Shoot (Jesus), and the Fruit (God the Holy Spirit); and many others.  But what was key to describing the Most Holy Trinity was the understanding that God was not simply a monad, but a Communion of Persons.

            Our belief in One God, yet Three Persons, distinguishes us from the other two major monotheistic religious of the world: Judaism and Islam.  They both hold, with us, that God is One, based upon the words of Deuteronomy: “Shema Yisrael: Adonai Elohim, Adonai Echad”: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.”  And yet, throughout the Gospels, Jesus makes clear that He and the Father are One, not just in some metaphorical sense, but in the core of their Being, shown when Jesus forgives sins, something which only God could do.  That is why the Sanhedrin condemns Jesus for blasphemy, for claiming to be God.  And in today’s Gospel, Jesus affirms the role of the Holy Spirit, who is God, as continuing His work.

            But while we can talk until the end of time about the Trinity, seeking to understand more fully who God really is, we experience the Trinity in our everyday lives.  For, if God is a Communion of Persons, and we are created in the image and likeness of God, then we too are called to be a communion of persons.  And we know this from the beginning.  We know, as the Book of Genesis states, that it is not good for the man to be alone.  It is not good for us to lack communion.  We have, built within ourselves, a desire to know another and to be known by another, and to pour ourselves out for another, just as God is known in His fullness by the Trinity of Persons, and shares that knowledge with each Divine Person, and each Divine Person pours out all of who He is to each other.

            First and foremost, our desire for communion leads us to desire God.  St. Augustine rightly said in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  Each person, even the most hardened atheist, has a desire for communion with that Communion of Persons in the Trinity.  We want to be connected to the infinite.  And whether we are single, ordained, consecrated men and women, or married, there is an aspect of our desire for communion that can only be filled by God.  And when we try to fill that with someone else, even a best friend or a spouse, we are perpetually frustrated, because they are finite, and we desire communion with the infinite.

            But we do also desire communion with each other.  For many here, that life of communion is fulfilled in a special way through marriage, which is itself a symbol, something which points to another, of the communion of the Trinity: each spouse pours their life out to the other, which is always open to new life, just as the Father and Son pour themselves out to each other, in a love which is so strong that it spirates, or breathes forth, the Holy Spirit.  That is why Jesus, and therefore the Church, teaches that divorce cannot be a possibility, because marriage is called to make visible the invisible total union of God, which will never be divided or broken up.  My dear married couples, you are the way that we witness what the love of the Trinity is meant to look like.  What an exalted vocation!!  For those who promise celibacy or take a vow of chastity or virginity, that spousal union is lived out with God, which then allows us to share that infinite love of God with you, whom we are called to serve. 

Sts. Gregory (l) and Basil (r)

            But all of us, no matter what our vocation, are also blessed with the communion of friendship.  In that platonic union, we are also able to pour ourselves out to another, such that sometimes friends become like another self.  What a great blessing to be able to have a person who accepts us as we are, but also calls us to the heights of holiness and virtue, with whom we can be open and honest.  Two of Christianity’s greatest friends, Sts. Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, lived this out, though they had their very rough patches.  St. Gregory wrote on the anniversary of the death of St. Basil, “We seemed to be two bodies with a single spirit.  Though we cannot believe those who claim that ‘everything is contained in everything,’ yet you must believe that in our case each of us was in the other and with the other.”  We can each experience something akin to that in our trusted friends.

            What we celebrate today, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, is not some far-removed doctrine which has nothing to do with our life.  It is a defining part of who we are as Christians, and it is built into the very nature of our being.  May the Eucharist, though which we have communion with Jesus, and therefore communion with the entire Trinity, draw us each day deeper into the communion which is the basis for all others: the Communion of Divine Persons in the Most Holy Trinity.

Welcoming Jesus into our Homes

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

            What are the reasons we invite people over to our house?  Maybe it’s a birthday party, and we want to celebrate the anniversary of our birth with our friends; maybe it’s a school project that has to get done; maybe it’s to watch movies with our friends or a significant other; maybe it’s to watch the big game.  No matter what the reason, we invite people over to share friendship and fellowship; we want to enjoy one another’s company; we want to celebrate a holiday or Holy Day with family.  Inviting someone over to our house is a way of expression communion with them, even if it’s on a very basic level.

According to tradition, the tree that
Zacchaeus climbed to see Jesus

            In our Gospel today, though, Zacchaeus does not invite Jesus into his home.  Rather, Jesus invites Himself in.  What is interesting is that Jesus did not originally intend to visit Zacchaeus.  St. Luke relates that Jesus, “intended to pass through the town” where Zacchaeus was.  But, passing through Jericho, Jesus must have felt the intense love, a love so strong that it caused him to climb the tallest tree on the roadway, so that Zacchaeus’ lack of height would not impede him from getting to see this great man.  And so Jesus approaches Zacchaeus in that tree and says, “‘Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.’” 

            Jesus wishes to be in communion with Zacchaeus.  He wishes to enjoy friendship and fellowship with his tax-collecting host.  Jesus loves Zacchaeus with the love of God, the love of a caring Father, and wishes simply to spend time with one whom others certainly would have shunned from their homes, since he worked for the foreign, idolatrous, Roman government. 

            This recounting of what happened to Zacchaeus is not meant to make us simply say, “Wow!  That was really nice of Jesus.  Look how welcoming He was to the outcasts of His day.”  Rather, it is meant to currently, this day, tell us something.  It is meant to communicate to us how much Jesus wants to enter into our homes and share communion with us.

            “But Father,” you might say, “Jesus doesn’t want to come to my house.  The dishes aren’t done; the room is dirty; we don’t have the special towels out in the bathroom.  And, most importantly, I’m a sinner.  Jesus doesn’t want to come over.  Doesn’t he know what I’ve done?”  Or maybe it’s not that we’re afraid that Jesus will find out that we’re a sinner, but that we’re convinced that Jesus wants nothing to do with us because we’re a sinner.

            In either case, we are wrong.  Jesus does want to come into our homes.  He does want to share His joy and His friendship with us.  He wants to love us.  In the Book of Wisdom, from where our first reading came today, we hear this truth almost in the form of a dialogue: “For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned…O LORD and lover of souls.”  If we have life; if God has brought us from the nothingness of non-existence and created us, with the cooperation of our parents at the moment of our conception, the God loves us.  In fact, it is precisely His love which brings us into existence and keeps us existing for all eternity.  God’s love is stronger for us than a loving mother or father, a devoted grandparent, and even stronger and more intense than the love between a man and a woman united in the sacred bonds of marriage. 

            God wants to come to our house, to be a part of our family.  And His love and His mercy, if we allow it into our lives, will change us, will lead us to repentance for the sins we have committed, so that our home is a fitting place for such a Guest.  And God is not alone in wanting to dwell in our homes.  All of our extended family wants to be at home in our home.  And as a family of faith, our extended family doesn’t just mean grandpa and grandma, uncles and aunts, cousins, and the like.  It means the saints, the holy ones, those parts of our Catholic family that have gone before us and have witnessed to Christ in heroic ways as martyrs, virgins, priests, religious, mothers, fathers, children, and in every way of life of which we can think.  They want us to have fellowship with them, because, as St. John says in his first epistle, their fellowship is with God. 

This Sunday evening and Monday we as a Catholic family celebrate our Catholic saints.  So many of our parents and grandparents used to, and hopefully still do, have images of the Jesus, Mary, and the saints in the home.  And while pictures don’t necessarily mean that we welcome the saints, they do a lot to remind us that the way we live, and the way we have communion as an earthly family, should be a place where Jesus and the saints feel welcome, should feel like family.  We can think of particular patron saints that we have, especially the ones associated with our state of life or work.  We can think of American saints.  We can think of the saint name we have or chose at confirmation. 

Soon Jesus will dwell within us who approach the Eucharist and receive it worthily.  He will make His home in our hearts.  Let us use that grace that we receive from the Most Holy Sacrament, so that in all parts of our life, Jesus and the saints are welcomed.  Let us remind ourselves how much Jesus and the saints are a part of our life by reclaiming the Catholic practice of pictures and statues of the Jesus, Mary and the saints in our homes.  Jesus wants to come and have communion with us.  Will we, like Zacchaeus, welcome him in?