Living the Trinitarian Life

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  As we celebrate the Most Holy Trinity today, we do so in the secular context of Father’s Day.  Now, if priests are honest, today’s liturgical celebration of the Most Holy Trinity is one of the scariest to preach, because we preach about God who is infinite using finite words.  Most of the heresies of the Church concern how we speak about God, and priests want to accurately communicate this central teaching of our faith, that which truly makes us Christian, without misstating who God is.  And sometimes individual Catholics deputize themselves as the heresy police, with mixed results.  So I have to be careful as I preach about this revealed and yet beyond our intellect mystery of the Trinity.  
    And our understanding of God starts with the Father, who revealed Himself as one God (but not yet fully as Three Divine Persons) to the Chosen People.  Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph number 239 states, “By calling God ‘Father’, the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children.”  God as Father does not mean that He has a body or any of the male parts that make one a human father.  God is utterly spirit, and yet, He is the Creator of all things and has authority over all things.  Still, He exercises this power and authority in love and for the benefit of His children: men and women He created in His image.  

    The Father, paragraph 2789 reminds us, is also the source and origin of the Godhead, that is, of the Trinity.  Here, again, our finite words fail to adequately express what is beyond them.  It seems odd to think of the Trinity having a source or origin, because the Son and the Holy Spirit are also eternal, also equally God, not lesser gods.  God the Father eternally begets the Son, Jesus Christ, and God the Father eternally spirates, or breathes forth, the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son in a single procession.  And yet, there is a deference the Son gives to the Father, even as they are consubstantial, as our Lord will say both: “The Father and I are one” and “The Father is greater than I.”  Rublev’s icon of the Trinity demonstrates this reality, as the three Divine Persons are imaged as three angels, but the heads of two, the two representing the Son and the Holy Spirit, bow their heads ever so slightly towards the one representing the Father.
    But what do we do with this knowledge?  It’s one thing to know, in some limited way, how the Trinity operates.  But if it’s the central teaching of our faith, then it should impact how we live.  And certainly, it does.  First of all, it affects how we worship.
    Now, I know, worship in a modern context doesn’t seem all the important.  But how we worship guides the rest of our lives.  Our Lord told us that He desired us to worship “in spirit and in truth.”  So if we wish to give back to God some little bit of the amazing things He has given to us as Creator, then we need to worship Him as He has revealed Himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Wrong worship means we don’t give back to God what He desires, which is, to be frank, rude.  Imagine for a second that you asked your spouse for a copy of the painting “The Starry Night” by van Gogh, but she bought a star chart poster instead.  Yes, it’s a gift; yes, it’s connected to the request, but it’s not what was desired, and if we have the possibility of giving what is desired, we should.  We can worship God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and, in fact, our entire Mass, the perfect prayer of Christ and His Church, is offered to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Almost all of our prayers in the Mass we direct to the Father, through the One (Jesus Christ) who reveals the Father to us, in the power and authority of the One (the Holy Spirit) who allows us to call on God as our Father by making us adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God.

    Secondly, if God created us in His image, then understanding the Trinity helps us to be who God created us to be, both men and women.  Yes, fatherhood is connected necessarily to men, but God is the source of all fatherhood and motherhood, and surpasses all fathers and mothers in His goodness.  But He encourages us all to be loving, to work for the good of others, to create out of love and beauty and truth, and to exercise whatever authority we might legitimately have as serving the communion of human persons and creating a more loving world.  When we focus on ourselves, and work only for our good, we fail to show forth the love of the Father and the entire Trinity.  When we exercise authority to keep others under our thumb and dominate them, we fail to live as icons of the power and authority that the Father truly has by nature, in which He lets us share by mere participation.  When authority is only used as a hammer to beat others into submission, rather than a guide to help others grow into the full potential of their human nature and according to their legitimate freedom, God looks more like a despot or tyrant when we talk about Him as Father, and it draws others away from belief in and love of God.
    As we pray at this Mass on Father’s Day, we give thanks to God for our earthly fathers, but we especially worship God the Father who created all things, and whom the Son revealed to us to be loving, patient, and merciful, even as He is just.  May our worship help us each to be icons of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.   

Being Restored to Worship and Family

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of my professors at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit was Fr. Earl Muller, SJ.  Now, I know the Jesuits get a bad reputation, sometimes very much earned, but Fr. Muller, even with all his quirks, was a very faithful, orthodox professor.  I remember him preaching on this Gospel, and approaching the account in a way that I have never considered.  We usually dive right in to the fact that we should say thank you, and those other nine lepers who were healed were simply rude.  But Fr. Muller had us examine our Lord’s words.  What did He say?  “‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’”  That’s it.  Nothing more.  Never did Christ say, and then come back to me and say “thank you.”  In fact, the Samaritan doesn’t even make it to the priest, as our Lord commanded him, but runs back to Christ and thanks Him.  Yet, our Lord praises the Samaritan’s faith, and seemingly puts down the other nine. 
    As I first sat down to compose this homily, I immediately went to gratitude.  After all, the Samaritan is praised for returning to thank Jesus, whom the Samaritan acknowledges as God.  And I’ll likely get back to that point.  But first, we should look at what was happening, which would have caught the attention of any early Christian who had any knowledge of the Jewish law.
    Leprosy was not only a skin disease (it may not have been Hansen’s disease, as we now call it, but could have included any number of skin maladies).  Leprosy, besides being an illness, also made one unfit for any kind of temple worship.  If you could not be around people, there was no way you could go to the temple and worship God.  You were cut off from the practice of your faith in its greatest sense.  You were also cut off from your family, which, to any Jew, was everything.  After all, the Jewish people themselves were, first and foremost, the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, aka Israel.  The nation was basically the twelve tribes.  And yet, as a leper, you had no share in that family, and so you really had no people, no nation, to which you belonged.  You were totally cut off from the main ways in which people found belonging.
    The old law had given the priests the authority to determine if the leprosy was truly cured, to act both as those in charge of worship, as well as members of the tribe of Levi, the family of Israel.  The priests were the ones who could re-attach the leper both to worship and to family/nation.  So our Lord, as one who came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, sends the lepers on their way so that they could be returned to worship and family.
 

   But this Samaritan, who had no share in either the worship or the family of Israel (recall that the Samaritans were, as far as worship goes, heretics, and as far as family goes, the crazy uncle that you don’t invite to family gatherings or even talk to anymore), he returns to thank Christ for what had been done.  And the Savior praises him for it.  As my old professor, Fr. Muller, said to us, rhetorically, “What was Jesus’ problem?”
    Christ, throughout the Gospels, is creating a new law (see Matthew 5); redefining family (“unless you hate father and mother you cannot be my disciple”); and claiming to be the object of worship (“the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath”).  And it is this Samaritan who gets that, somehow, even though he was separated from the Chosen People.  Somehow, this Samaritan recognizes that it is Christ who will restore him to proper worship and make him a part of a new family, those who follow the Lord.  Perhaps he had spoken to the Samaritan woman from Sychar, who had dialogued with Christ and heard Him that that the day was coming when true worshippers would not worship in Jerusalem or at Jacob’s well, but in spirit and truth.  Perhaps he had heard of our Lord saying that whoever hears the word of God and observes it is a mother, brother, and sister.  But however it happened, the Samaritan came to recognize that the belonging that usually was found in temple worship and being restored to the family of Israel was possible through this man, the God-Man.
    God is the one who gives us belonging through Christ.  Christ is the one who broke down, as St. Paul says, the old barriers between Jew and Gentile, making them both one through the Blood that Christ shed on the cross.  Christ restores us to worship through His forgiveness, which we receive in the Sacrament of Penance.  In that case, the priest, acting both in the name of Christ the Head and the Community, restores us to worthy worship and to belonging to the family of God. 
    And for that, we should be thankful (I told you I’d get back to this point).  Thanksgiving should come as naturally to us as breathing.  It doesn’t necessarily, but that’s the goal, because everything is a gift.  Nothing that we have has not come from God, either willed purposefully or allowed.  The only thing that we can claim ownership of is our sins.  And so we are invited to give thanks to God, for His mercy endures forever.  Psalm 136 (135 in the Douay-Rheims) is the perfect example of this.  The Psalmist praises God for His work of creation and redemption, and after each word of praises says, “for his mercy endures forever.”  So for us, we can and should go through our day or week, thinking about what God has done for us, “for his mercy endures forever.”  Maybe it’s our family and friends; maybe it’s our job; maybe it’s an easier drive to an appointment than we expected; maybe it’s a vacation; for our parish; for our opportunities to grow; for God’s strength when we avoid sin; for God’s mercy when we fall into sin and repent.  Even for our crosses we should thank God, because they draw us closer to Him if we unite them to the Cross of Christ. 
    When we recognize what God has done for us, it should lead to thanksgiving, like the Samaritan, who does not follow our Lord’s word to the letter, but understands that what the priests were supposed to do, not of their own power but as a way of recognizing what God had already done, our Lord did.  Today I invite you to give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His mercy endures forever.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Revelation: Consolation & Worship

Fourth Sunday of Easter

When a lot of people think about the Book of Revelation, they think about scary stuff about the end of time.  They think about 666, the number of the beast, and the trials and tribulations of the end of the world.  And those things are in there, to be sure.  But the overarching theme of Revelation is not what we probably think.

If you’re looking for a good book on how to read the Book of Revelation, you can pick up Scott Hahn’s book, The Lamb’s Supper.  As a Church, we have been listening to the Book of Revelation for the past few Sundays of Easter.  But we haven’t heard too much about beasts and tribulations, dragons with seven horns, or the like.  And that’s because the overarching theme of Revelation is that God is going to take this fallen world, put an end to the fallenness, and then fully bring about a new heaven and a new earth, which He began through the Resurrection of His Son, Jesus.  Yes, evil will be punished, and justice will be established in fullness.  And then we will begin to enjoy the eternal reign of Jesus Christ that will last forever (no, it’s not just 1,000 years; that’s a symbolic number to signify eternity).  

Revelation is meant to be a book of hope for those who were suffering for the faith.  Those who were suffering during “the time of great distress,” those who gave their lives for Jesus, either by martyrdom of blood or the martyrdom of the witness of their lives, will be rewarded.  And it will not be limited to one group of people.  There will be those “from every nation, race, people, and tongue” in heaven.  And what will they do?

Revelation does not describe heaven as a sunny day of golf (golf wasn’t invented yet).  Revelation doesn’t describe heaven as a Caribbean paradise (as nice as that sounds).  Revelation describes heaven as filled with those who have remained faithful to Christ standing “before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.”  The white robes should remind us of the white garments that those who are baptized wear.  It is also the basis for the alb that I and some of our servers wear, or the white surplice that our servers in cassocks where.  The white robes are the clothing of those who are worshipping God.  The palm branches should also remind us of Palm Sunday, when the people, and we in imitation of them, praised Jesus as the Messiah as He entered Jerusalem.  

Our second reading continues that those in heaven, “stand before God’s throne and worship him day and night in his temple.”  Heaven is eternal worship of God.  Heaven is a Mass that lasts forever, but without the symbols and signs that we have in the Mass, because God is all in all, and there is no need for things to remind us of God because He is fully present.

Coming to Mass each Sunday and Holyday is practice for heaven.  In heaven we join with the angels in adoring God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in an eternal act of praise and adoration.  When God spoke to Moses in the Book of Exodus, God gave Moses a pattern by which Moses was to make the ark of the covenant, the meeting tent (where the ark was, and where God dwelt).  The Temple of Solomon was built to represent the universe as it should be, with waves of the sea, oxen, and fruit, all symbolizing paradise and the Garden of Eden, with the ark of the covenant in the middle, and incense offerings and bread offerings before the presence of God.  Our churches, though some do this better than others, are meant to be patterns of heaven, drawing our hearts to the things that are above, as St. Paul says, not the things of earth.  Earth is fallen; heaven is perfection.  But all of these are patterns for heaven, with Christ at the high point in the sanctuary, especially represented by the altar, as well as His real presence in the tabernacle.  And our angels and saints are meant to remind us that we do not worship alone.  

Revelation teaches us that heaven is a place of reward for those who have followed Christ, where there is no more sorrow or tears, no extremes of weather, no need for any earthly food or drink.  We worship God and He satisfies all our needs.  Coming to Mass each Sunday and Holyday is not about being forced, or making us feel good about ourselves, or getting anything (though God does provide for us to hear His Word and receive the Body and Blood of His Son).  Coming to Mass is about preparing ourselves for eternity.

There may be lots of other things that sound more enticing, that sound more enjoyable than heaven.  There are many shepherds that want to lead us to their goals of happiness.  But, as the sheep of the Good Shepherd, the only truly Good Shepherd, Jesus, we are called to follow Him to eternal life.  If we are honest, we have all listened to other shepherds, who sounded like what they were offering us was what we wanted.  But only the Good Shepherd leads us to heaven.  We cannot get there by any other guide.  Only Jesus welcomes us into the verdant pastures of eternal life.  Only Jesus leads us to heaven, which the Book of Revelation describes as perfect happiness and justice, where sin has been fully defeated, and death and sorrow are no more, where we join with the angels in worshipping God forever in an eternal act of adoration, in the place where God provides perfectly for all our needs.  May we listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd so that we can follow where He leads His sheep.  

Wasting Time with Jesus

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Brad Paisley, one of the great country music singers of our time, has a song he released in 2005 called, “Time Well Wasted.”  He goes through all the things he could have been doing, things that were very practical, like raking leaves, washing the car, etc., but talks about how spending time with his love was “time well wasted.”

America, in particular, has a thing against “wasting” time.  We place work and productivity on a very high pedestal.  And there’s something good about that.  Work can be sanctifying if we unite it to Jesus, and producing new ideas and new products helps to better society.  But the temptation in our prodigiousness, the excess of that virtue of working hard, is working too hard, and missing out on the important things of life.  I remember when I was studying in Italy how things would close down for a few hours around lunch.  Now, I don’t mean to offend, and certainly I don’t want to stereotype too much, but in Europe, Italians are not known for being hard workers in the first place.  But they always make sure to take a break in the middle of the day for pranzo, lunch, and a nice riposo, a nice nap.  And while we might think that’s a waste of daylight, there’s something good about spending time with family and friends to enjoy a leisurely meal and rest.  The work will always be there, but as some people learn in tragic ways, friends and family are not always with us on earth.

Bishop Barron, in his new series on the Mass, talks about how the Mass is the ultimate form of play.  That might seem counterintuitive, given how serious we take the Mass.  But, think about children and how seriously they take playing.  Or think about sports and how seriously we take playing those games.  There are rules, there are expectations, there are uniforms.  So often, we think that the most important thing is work, and we play if we have time.  But play can be more important, especially when we talk about the Mass.

It’s no secret that people don’t go to Mass anymore.  We notice it as we look around, and as we prepare for the transition to two Masses per weekend.  So why are Masses so scarcely populated, and not just here in Flint, where people continue to leave the city, but around the United States and around the world?

Jesus, after His disciples had returned, invited the apostles to go off “to a deserted place and rest awhile.”  The ones whose very title, “apostle,” means one who is sent out, need time to rest with Jesus.  And what do we do at Mass, if not rest with Jesus?  We worship God, and that is most important, but just like the Jews on the Sabbath, we rest, and worshipping God allows us to rest from our labors, not because we are lazy, but because we imitate God in resting from His work of creation.  I think that part of the reason for people not coming to Mass is that they expect the Mass to provide something that it’s not meant to provide.  If you want to be entertained at Mass, then you will surely be disappointed, because the Mass is not a movie or a show.  If you want an emotional or spiritual high, then you may be disappointed, because the Mass is not meant to appeal to every personality style and temperament every week.  If you want music that speaks to you each and every time, then you’re putting way too much pressure on the Mass, because Catholic music, truly Catholic music, is meant to be adding dressing to Scripture.  Can we be entertained at Mass?  It happens; some priests are funny, and others, like me, are just funny-looking.  Can we get an emotional or spiritual high?  It can happen, and praise God when it does!  Can music touch our hearts in a way that mere words cannot?  Sometimes the words put together with a certain musical setting hits us right in the feels.  But Mass is meant to help us worship God and rest in Him.  

I know that’s a tough message.  I know it’s not the message we want to hear, because we want to be entertained, we want the high, we want the feels.  But too many sheep have wandered away from the fold because what they want from the Mass is not what the Mass is meant to give.  Sometimes even priests have mislead and scattered the flock by overly inserting themselves in the Mass, making the Mass a performance of their personality, instead of celebrating the Mass as the Church asks.  And I also know that sometimes, despite my own best efforts, my homilies are boring.  Our sound system could also use some updating. 

But I invite you to come to St. Pius X each weekend after your weekly work of spreading the Gospel to rest with Jesus and to worship Him, who brought us near by His blood, and who reconciled us to God through His Body through the Cross.  Sunday sports may sound more enticing.  The lawn may need mowing and the laundry may need cleaning.  The kids may be a handful and may be noisy.  But come to Mass anyway, to rest with Jesus.  And since you all already do come to Mass, tell your kids, tell your godchildren, tell your friends that Jesus knows you need a rest–not entertainment, not an emotional or spiritual roller coaster, but rest.  Receive the Body of Christ.  Taste the fountain of immortality.  Waste time with Jesus and worship Him who gives you the precious gift of rest in Him.

"Father, Mass is boring..."

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

            There are few things more disappointing to a priest than the words, “Father, I think Mass is boring.  I prefer going to my friend’s church because it’s more exciting and they have better music.”  These words generally come out of the mouths of teens, because they generally speak their mind, whether you like it or not.  But, if I had to guess, I would say that many adults feel this way too, they just have become familiar enough with the rules of decorum not to say it, at least, not to the priest’s face.

            Saying that Mass is boring betrays that one does not know what’s really going on at Mass.  Many of us come because we have always come.  Many come because we don’t want to commit a mortal sin of missing Mass on a Sunday or Holyday.  If you’re a minor, you may come simply because it’s one of the expectations for those who are provided with free room and board by mom and dad.  But do we know what we are doing when we come here?  Do we know the privilege we have?

            In our second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, the author tells us that we

have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and countless angels in festal gathering, and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and the sprinkled blood which speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.

He is talking about the worship of the Church, and contrasting it with the ways the Israelites worshipped at Mount Sinai, when God revealed Himself, and it was so terrible (causing terror)—with a mountain that could not be touched, blazing fire, gloomy darkness, storm, trumpet blast, and a voice speaking from the clouds—that they begged the Lord not to reveal Himself to them in such a way, but to speak through Moses from that point on.

            As we gather here, in this Church, to celebrate Mass, we are being drawn up to heaven.  The stained glass, the high ceilings, the occasional incense, the candles, the bells, the gold, the special vestments, the occasional sprinkling rite—all of this is meant to tell our senses that we have left earth and have entered into a new reality.  We, at this Mass, have entered into the halfway point between   With angels bowing down in worship, with the saints, our Catholic brothers and sisters who have shown us in countless ways what it means to be a faithful disciple of Jesus, we hear God’s Word proclaimed to us, the Word that brings life, the Word that saves us from sin, the Word that tells us how to live so as to not stay in the halfway point, but to truly enter in to what was promised to us in Baptism: the Kingdom of Heaven.  We are able to see the miraculous, as Bread and Wine become, not as a corporate game of imagination, but in reality, the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.  What the angels do not even dare to gaze upon, we hold in our hands or receive on our tongues and Christ becomes one with us.  Our God so loves us that He will not remain separate but pierces the veil between heaven and earth and draws us up to Himself so that we can have communion—union with—Him.  And because of that, our music is different, our words are different.  This is no common place, this is not just another building.  This is sacred space, dedicated to God, and where we are drawn up in anticipation of what heaven will be like, when we are all worshipping God in love before the throne and the Lamb, as the Book of Revelation tells us.

earth and heaven.

            And how do I know that at least some do not understand?  I can tell because, if this Sunday is like other Sundays, or weddings, or funerals, some here are probably chewing gum as I speak.  Some here probably brought in coffee to the Church, or have not observed the fast for one hour before the reception of Holy Communion.  Some here were probably reading the bulletin during the proclamation of the Word of God.  And because some here in coming weeks will just drop the kids off for religious ed and your children will only rejoin you more than halfway through Mass, and they will never fulfill their Sunday obligation.  And that’s just those who are here.  There are so many, including even parents who sacrifice to send their children to our parish school, who won’t even come on Sundays.  This betrays the fact that there is ignorance about what’s going on.  “Father, you don’t know me.  You don’t know my circumstances.  You can’t judge me!”  I certainly cannot judge your soul; that is only for God to do.  I cannot judge your culpability: perhaps you’ve never heard this before; perhaps you have forgotten; perhaps we priests have not done all we can to form you in understanding what the Mass is.  But I can call all of us together, as the Body of Christ, to feel shame for the fact that we have the most precious gift here, and at times we treat it like going to a movie theater, or a play, or a concert.  We treat it just like another weekly event on our calendar that we need to attend for whatever reason.

            Right now in Egypt there are families who are risking their lives, in no exaggeration of that phrase, to go to Mass, because it is likely that radicals could blow up or try to set fire to their church.  Right now in China there are groups of Catholics that gather in secret locations for Mass because if the government finds out that they are more faithful to the Pope than to the Communist government they could go to jail, be tortured, or just “disappear.”  Right now there are many places in the US that see a priest once every month, or even once every few months, and that is the only time they are able to receive Holy Communion.

Our first reading and our Gospel both remind us to be humble.  Let us be humble enough to recognize that we somtimes don’t understand what we are doing, or don’t show the proper appreciation for the great gift that we have in being able to gather each Sunday as the People of God and join in the worship of the angels and saints in heaven as we hear the Word of God and receive that same Word of God, Jesus, in the Eucharist.  And then let us work at being formed to be receptive to the Mass through the many great books that are out there on the Mass, through adult formation sessions, and more, rather than asking the Mass to be formed according to our desires.  Because, brothers and sisters, right now, at this moment, we are participating in the halfway point between heaven and earth.  We are worshipping God and the Lamb, as angels bow down in adoration around this altar as Christ is made present.  We are surrounded by the saints who are filling this room to capacity, joining with us in our worship of God.  We are preparing to receive “Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.”