P.S. We had a great experience at Catholic Heart Work Camp in Milwaukee :-D
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Homily:
The Most Holy Trinity – Cycle A
I don’t know if any of you remember having finger painted
when you were in kindergarten, but I would guess that most of you at least
remember your kids having the opportunity to finger paint when they were
there. Now for kids, finger painting is
kind of like a dream come true. I have a
blank slate, I don’t have to use any tools (except for those I’m most adept at
using… my fingers) and I’ve been covered in an plastic apron which pretty much
gives me license to make as big of a mess as I’d like to during the
process. For the kindergarten teacher,
however, I imagine that finger paint day is the day that he or she has to
summon up all of his or her courage to go to work. This is a day in which every child at every moment
is teetering on the brink of disaster.
Thus, while the goal of other days is success and accomplishments for
the children, the goal of finger paint day (again, I imagine) is survival.
If I remember my kindergarten art projects correctly
(finger painting included), when all was said and done we almost always had
something to show for it; and we almost always had a “big-‘ol hot mess” on our
hands. Nonetheless, I don’t remember one
time when either my teacher or my parents took a look at what that mess
produced and said anything but how beautiful it was. Now (as you all know, I’m sure) it didn’t
matter if the art project had any sort of artistic merit on its own; because it
was the effort and the love that went into producing it (and its accompanying mess)
that gave the project all of the merit it needed.
Reflecting on this year’s Easter Vigil, I find myself
making a lot of parallels. It was my
first time presiding at the Vigil Mass and if you’ve ever been to one you’ll
know that it is a very complex liturgy.
There’s the liturgy of light, when we bring in the newly blessed Easter
Candle, an extended liturgy of the Word, baptisms, confirmations, and first
Holy Communions, all mashed together in one Mass. Add on top of all of that the need to celebrate
the liturgy in two languages and I shouldn’t have been surprised that the whole
thing felt like one “big-‘ol hot mess”.
Nonetheless, after it was finished, almost everyone who spoke to me
afterwards expressed just how beautiful they thought it was. Just like in the finger painting, it wasn’t
the product itself (the liturgy) that merited these comments, but rather it was
the effort and the love that went into
celebrating it (and, of course, the presence of the Holy Spirit) that gained
for it all of its merit.
You know, for years men and women of faith have tried to
figure God out. All the way back to
Abraham, Moses, and the Ancient Israelites and up until today, we have tried to
come to grips with this God who, in spite of being all-powerful, nonetheless
loves us and desires communion with us.
For the Ancient Israelites it was slightly easier. God hadn’t yet revealed himself as three
persons in one God. Nonetheless, the
mystery of the creating God who had chosen them for his people still kept them
intrigued. In Jesus, and through the
Paschal Mystery, God has reveled himself as a Trinity: a mystery of three holy
Persons in the one, singular godhead. If
you’ve ever tried to come to grips with this reality—and more so, if you’ve
ever tried to explain this reality to someone else—then you’ve probably
realized that it is a much more complex mystery even than what it seems; and
that any explanation that you come up with probably leaves you (and your
hearer) more confused than when you began.
In other words, you usually end up with a “big-‘ol hot mess.”
Still further, when we try to live out of this reality—that
God is three and God is one, and that, though perfect in himself, he
nonetheless desires a relationship with us: a relationship that demands certain
things of us—we often find that we fall short (way short) of what it is that
this demands of us. Perhaps some of us
even despair that we could ever realize what has been promised to us. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we find
that we’re left with little more than a “big-‘ol hot mess.”
This is where the grace of this feast that we celebrate
today, the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, comes into play. You know, we don’t celebrate this feast
because we already know all that there is to know about the Trinity and thus
hold it up like some kind of accomplishment.
We celebrate it, rather, because acknowledging God for who he has
revealed himself to be is a way to help us deal with the messes that we make in
our lives.
In our first reading, we heard about Moses going up onto
Mount Sinai with the stone tablets in his hand.
What we didn’t hear is that this was the second time that he was going
up. The first time he went up, he
received the Ten Commandments from God.
And when he brought them down, he found that the people had gotten
anxious while they were waiting for him to return and so decided to make an
idol—an image of God—whom they then worshiped.
So angry was Moses to see this that he threw down the stone tablets and
shattered them to pieces.
Thus, Moses went back up the mountain to beg God for
another shot, for him and for his people.
The people had gotten themselves in a “big-‘ol hot mess” and Moses went
back to ask for mercy (and for another copy of the Ten Commandments). When God revealed himself to Moses a second
time, he did not call himself “the God of wrath and vengeance”, but rather “a
merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and
fidelity.” At hearing this, Moses,
already fearful of God’s response, could only fall down and worship; that this
God, powerful beyond comprehension, would spare this people who had made such
of mess out of his graciousness was truly a thing of wonder. At that moment, Moses saw who God really was
and he was filled with awe.
For all of us here today, this feast provides us with an
opportunity to experience something of what Moses experienced on the top of
Mount Sinai. We all come here, having
been here before and having heard all of God’s admonitions for how to live our
lives in constant communion with him, and we realize that, in spite of our best
(or, perhaps even, our barely minimal) efforts to fulfill all that God has
commanded us, we have fallen short and basically have made a “big-‘ol hot mess”
out of it all. Nonetheless, we come here
and God reveals himself to us for who he really is—the Father, whose creative,
life-giving love has made us and sustains us, the Son, whose saving love
redeemed us from our sin, and the Spirit, whose sanctifying, healing action
works among us even now—and our reaction is (or at least it should be) the same
as Moses’: to fall down and worship him who so graciously revealed himself to
us.
This loving, merciful God who has revealed himself to us in
three persons looks upon all that we have done—good, bad, and everything
in-between—and he sees the mess it has produced. More than anything, however, he sees the
effort and the love that we put into striving to fulfill his commandments; and
his response is the same response that we give when we receive a
kindergartner’s finger painting: “Yeah, it’s a mess, but it’s beautiful.”
My brothers and sisters, as our Holy Father encouraged the
young people at World Youth Day last year, let us not let our fear of stirring
things up and making a mess prevent us from trying our hardest to fulfill God’s
command to go out into the world and make disciples. In fact, let’s be intent on making a mess:
for from out of that mess God’s Kingdom will come, the beautiful mess that unites
us perfectly to the Holy Trinity; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Given at All Saints Parish:
Logansport, IN – June 14th, 2014
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Homily:
Corpus Christi – Cycle A
As Americans, we know that we can be pretty pragmatic. We like things to fit into structures and
routines so that we really don’t have to think about them. As a result, things that we do frequently
become common or ordinary to us and we oftentimes forget how important they really
are for us. Consider our morning
breakfast: a couple of pieces of toast or perhaps a bowl of cereal, a glass of
orange juice and a cup of coffee and we’re on our way. Yet, it throws our whole day off, doesn’t it,
if we find we’ve run out of bread or someone finished the last bowl of our
favorite cereal. We just feel better if
it remains the same, day in and day out, and we don’t realize how important it
is to us until we don’t have it anymore.
In today’s first reading, we hear Moses reminding the
Israelite people, who had been wandering in the desert for forty years after
leaving Egypt, about what a miracle it was for them to have the manna as food
for their journey. Way back at the beginning
of their journey, the Israelites grumbled against Moses and against God after
they were led out into the desert from Egypt because they had no source of food
to sustain them during their exodus. God
responded and promised “bread from heaven,” the manna that appeared each
morning like dew across the ground. Each
day the Israelites would gather enough to feed their family for the day and on
the next day—faithfully, for forty years—more would appear. If you could imagine what it would be like to
eat the same food every day for forty years straight, you might understand that
the Israelites began to take this blessing for granted. The manna, as miraculous as it was, had
become common and the Israelites had come to take it for granted.
I would venture to say that some of us here might experience
a similar problem. Many of us have been
parishioners here for a long time: perhaps some of us even for forty-plus
years. We know what mass we attend and
where we generally sit (I say “generally” because there are always those
“floaters” who sometimes end up in our seats, right?), the music perhaps is
somewhat predictable and we generally know what to expect from the experience—I
mean, the mass is the mass, right? And
it all becomes very routine for us. Even
though every week we are called here to worship God and to receive the Body and
Blood of Jesus in the form of bread and wine—the true bread come down from
heaven—we nonetheless sometimes find ourselves looking forward more to the
opportunity to meet with friends; or on the flipside considering it a chore to
be drudged through so that we can get on with the rest of our day. Because we come here every week and because
the mass—by design, by the way—generally looks and feels the same, it has
become familiar to us and perhaps we forget what a miracle it is to be called
here to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As we look back again at the Israelites and Moses’ speech
from the first reading today, we recognize one important fact. In spite of all of their years of taking it
for granted, God never once failed to provide it for them. For forty years the Israelites wandered,
grumbled, and wandered some more and in all of that time God never failed to
provide them with that miraculous bread from heaven. The manna, therefore, was their viaticum—which literally translates to
“on the way with you”, but less formally means “food for the journey.” Manna was the miraculous “bread from heaven”
that sustained them on their way and was their reminder of God’s providential
presence with them throughout it all.
In giving us this great feast of Corpus Christi, the Church
is doing what Moses did for the Israelites a few thousand years ago. It is reminding us of what a miracle it is
that we are called here every week and have the opportunity to receive the Most
Holy Body and Blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine. It is a reminder that, even if we sometimes
take it for granted, God will never fail to give us the Eucharist, our viaticum, our “food for the
journey.” And this is so important for
us to remember. Not just because it is
food—obviously the little portion that we receive is not much to satisfy us—nor
only because it is spiritual food—which of course it is—but primarily because
it is our intimate comunion with God.
God gave the Israelites bread for their bodies, but the manna, however,
was just that, bread. The bread that God
provides us in the Eucharist is both bread for our bodies and spiritual food to
nourish us on our journey, but because it is the Body and Blood of Jesus, our Lord,
it is also a participation in the intimate communion that is God: the communion
which we celebrated last week in the feast of the Most Holy Trinity. The Body and Blood of Jesus is the
fulfillment of what the manna of the ancient Israelites foreshadowed. It is the sacrament of God’s presence
intended to effect, that is, literally, to make, our communion with God, until
that day when we cross over from this life into the land promised to us, not
the land of Canaan that God promised to the Israelites, but rather God’s
heavenly kingdom.
My brothers and sisters, the real, sacramental presence of
God—the Body Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ—in the form of bread and
wine is the most perfect gift that God has given us. It is the sign of God’s presence with us,
even in the midst of our worst afflictions.
Many people today, much like the people of ancient Israel, often want
extraordinary signs that God is with them in their affliction. What I want you all to realize today,
however, is that God has given us such a sign.
Yet, in his great condescension to us he has allowed this extraordinary
sign to be experienced by us as ordinary.
I realize that sometimes when we are in the midst of our worst
afflictions, we want—we feel we need—the clouds to part and a voice to come
from the sky saying, “It’s ok, I am with you.”
We want to see Jesus face to face and have him put his arm around us and
say, “I know that this is hard, but look I haven’t left you.” But what I am telling you is that God has
done that for us. Every time that we
walk into a church and mass is being celebrated, or even if we only get a
glimpse of that red candle flickering in the corner—we can know that God has
not abandoned us, but rather that he is with us. Thus, in the midst of our worst afflictions,
God calls us to run to him in the Blessed Sacrament. He calls us to receive him as often as
possible so that his presence may comfort us and strengthen us for the journey. This is why he sent his Son to us and this is
why Jesus instituted this great sacrament.
He did it for us.
Moses needed to remind the people of Israel that the sign
of God’s providential care was something right under their noses: the
miraculous bread from heaven that they received every day. Today, the Church gives us this great feast
of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ to remind us of the same thing and
more. The Blessed Sacrament that we
receive ordinarily from this altar is the sign of God’s providential care as we
wander as pilgrims on this earth. It is
also the bread that will strengthen us to remain steadfast in faith through all
of our trials. Most importantly, it is
our intimate connection to God, who desires communion with us.
As we continue to plow head-long back into the “routine” of
ordinary time, let us strive to remember what an extraordinary gift it is that
God has given us, the invitation, as Saint Paul says, “to participate in the
body and blood of Christ,” and let us strive to celebrate this gift as
extraordinary, even amidst our ordinary participation in it, an opportunity
that we enjoy here today.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – June 21st & 22nd,
2014
The
Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)
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