Homily:
The Most Holy Trinity – Cycle B
One
of the fundamental questions of life is one with which both young and old
struggle. Normally the question comes up
during some sort of life crisis or during some “liminal” moment in a person’s
life: in other words, moments when the future of one’s life isn’t clear and
that person is faced with making a decision that will determine the course of
the next stage of his/her life. That
question? “What is the purpose of life?” Or, put more simply, “What am I here for?”
For
the young, this is a vocational question, right? As we grow into adulthood, we all gain a
sense that we were put on this earth to do something and that our task is to
discover what it is that we have been called to do. Modern culture has made this difficult for
young people because it tells them that there are no guiding principles on
which to base your decision. “The sky is
the limit” we tell them. “Follow your
dreams” …even though we know that dreams are fickle and that not everyone has
the capacity to reach the sky. It’s sad
to see someone who has made it into their thirties, who has pursued their “dreams”,
but yet finds him/herself adrift, still feeling like he/she doesn’t know what
the purpose of his/her life is.
For
the elderly, the struggle can be just as real.
I’ve made it an effort during my time here to visit with our homebound
parishioners and many of them express a feeling of purposelessness, too. They’ll say to me: “Father, I just don’t know
why I’m still here.” They’ve worked,
raised a family, and tried to be active in retirement, but now their health is
limiting their ability to tangibly contribute to their community and so they
start to question: “What am I here for?”
This
latter case is a bit surprising as many of our older Catholics grew up in the
Church that taught the “Baltimore Catechism” almost exclusively. This catechism provided the fundamental
truths about life, about God, and about our relationship to him and the world
in a straight-forward, question and answer format. One of those questions was “Why did God make
you?” (In other words, “What are you
here for?”) And the answer… does anybody
here remember the answer? The answer is
this: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world,
and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”
There it is, friends. This is our
guiding principle. Simple, right?
Yes,
it is. But we all know that when an
unknown future or adversity squares its face against us that we can often
forget this: the purpose for which we were made. In a sense, we “can’t see the forest for the
trees”. Therefore, as we’ve returned to
Ordinary Time after our long and joy-filled Easter celebration, the Church gives
us this Sunday, Trinity Sunday, in order to bring us back to our roots and to help
us step out on mission once again. In
celebrating who God is, in Himself—three Divine Persons in one unified Godhead—we
are reminded of that fundamental relationship that directs our lives: that our
lives come from God and are directed towards God. Today’s scriptures reinforce this fact.
In
our first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, the Israelites have been
wandering through the desert for 40 years and are on the cusp of entering the
land into which God had promised to bring them, and Moses exhorts them to
remember who God is when they enter the land.
He recounts how God had made himself known to them, his chosen people,
by powerful signs and by leading them forth from slavery and he says, “This is
why you must now know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the
heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.” In other words, Moses is exhorting them to know God; and to know him through the
gracious way that he has cared for them throughout their 40-year exodus.
This,
too, is how we come to know God: by remembering how he has worked: both in our
own lives, those unique ways that his graciousness has touched each of us, and
throughout history, starting with the Bible and the history of the Church,
especially in the lives of the saints.
This Trinity Sunday, we can commit ourselves to know God better by
committing ourselves to studying the Bible and some of the great spiritual
works of saints, both old and new. The
spiritual biographies/autobiographies of holy men and women like Saint
Augustine, Saint Theresa of Avila, Saint Terese of Lisieux, Dorothy Day, Thomas
Merton, Saint Theresa of Calcutta, and Saint John Paul II are just a few worth
considering. Knowing God is the basis
for loving God. Thus, this is an indispensable
step to fulfilling our purpose in life.
In
the second reading, we hear Saint Paul speaking about the “Spirit of adoption”
that we have all received. He goes on to
say that it is the Spirit himself that witnesses to the fact that we are now
children of God. As adopted sons and daughters
of God (and, therefore, brothers and sisters of Christ), we are endowed with
the grace of being loved by God as his beloved children. In fact, as brothers and sisters of Christ
himself—the Second Person of the Holy Trinity—we are caught up in the eternal
outpouring of love that the Father makes to the Son and the Son returns to the
Father, and which eternally explodes forth and pours out into the universe in
the form of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore,
we love God as Christ loves the Father: by receiving the love that is poured
out to us and by returning that love with an outpouring of our lives. This love is expressed in adoration: which we
can do privately, in our personal prayer time at home, lifting our minds and
hearts to him, praising him for who he is and his glory that shines forth in
the universe, and also publicly, like when we gather for the Eucharist or
Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
These are acts of devotion, sprung forth from our knowledge of who he is
and of his great love for us as his adopted sons and daughters. It is this love for God that, then, impels us
into service.
In
the Gospel reading, Jesus gives his disciples the “Great Commission”. On this Trinity Sunday, we should certainly
hear this command to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit” as a revelation of who God is, in himself. But in the context of this homily, it should
also be heard as the commission to service.
Having spent three years with Christ as he preached and worked miracles,
then having been witnesses to his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, Christ’s
disciples knew and loved him. Now, they
were being shown how they would serve him: “Go and make disciples of all
nations…” And that they did. With great love and devotion, they poured out
their lives in service of the Gospel so that all peoples would come to know,
love, and serve God in this world, and be happy with him forever in the next.
We
serve God when we seek out the particular way that God has called each of us to
fulfill this great commission and then strive to live it. When we know and, therefore, love him, we
offer ourselves generously and seek a way of life that allows us to serve the
building of his kingdom here on earth by working towards the good of
others. For some that means clerical
state (that is, priesthood or the diaconate) or the religious life. For most that will mean a career in some kind
of trade or business and then, perhaps, raising a family. In all, the question is not “what do I want to do?” (because if you know and
love God, you want to serve him!), but
rather, “what is God calling me to
do?” You will already know your purpose,
but the answer to the latter question will show you how you are going to fulfill that purpose.
And
if you’re elderly and you’ve completed your career and your children are all
grown and off on their own and if your health doesn’t allow for you to
participate much in the life of your family, parish, or community… what is your
purpose then? It is still to know, love,
and serve God in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next. Living out the last years of your life still
striving to know God and love him more deeply, and still striving to serve him
by praying and offering your sufferings for the conversion of sinners and the
release of souls from purgatory, you will be fulfilling your purpose in life
and you will become a saint.
Friends,
as we celebrate this great feast honoring God for who he is, in himself, may we
commit ourselves to know him more completely, to love him more profoundly, and
to serve him with our whole lives, regardless of the state in which we find ourselves;
so that we, too, may one day share in the fullness of Divine Love that God is
in himself: a foretaste of which we experience here in this Holy Eucharist.
Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – May 26th
& 27th, 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment