|
“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.” (Deuteronomy 4:39)
Last week, we
celebrated Pentecost Sunday, recalling the day when the Holy Spirit
descended upon the disciples but also, and more importantly, the day
when the Holy Spirit descended into our lives. As an idea,
Pentecost teaches us that God isn’t far away and distant—either in time
or in space—but is alive, present, and actively at work in our lives.
As an experience, Pentecost is the event of God’s entering into
our lives and providing us everything we need to bring Jesus’ saving
mission to completion as in this generation we “go, therefore, and make
disciples of all nations.”
This week and next
week, we celebrate two distinctive beliefs—dogmas—that set Catholic
Christians apart from all other religious traditions. Today we
celebrate our belief in the Holy Trinity: one God in three persons, God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Next Sunday, we
celebrate our belief in the Eucharist: the true and living presence of
Christ in his body and in his blood.
Preaching on these
two Sundays is a particularly challenging task because it requires
addressing not simply what we believe but more so what we call
“mysteries of the faith.” To appreciate these dogmas, not only must the
members of the congregation know what we believe in—the “content” of the
dogma—but also appreciate how each dogma is much more than concepts in
that each represents how human beings experience God’s presence in their
lives. Ideas and experiences, not ideas devoid of
experience or experiences devoid of ideas.
To bring idea and
experience together, let me share a vignette from my childhood years.
When I was a
youngster between the ages of perhaps four and seven, I used to love to
spend the weekend at the home of my maternal grandparents. It was
a narcissist’s
dream come true because there was no having to contend with an older
sister or younger brother for adult attention. No, grandparents
have a way of doting on their grandchildren, lavishing complete
attention on them and, in my case, making me feel like a
“prince” who had his
own retinue to serve him. What a life!
Each day, as my
maternal grandmother would be preparing lunch, she would peel an apple
using a potato peeler. When I’d see the ribbons of apple peel in the
sink, I knew infallibly we would be having an apple for dessert. Not an
orange. Not a tangerine. Not a banana. We’d be having an apple.
After peeling the
apple, my grandmother cored the apple using one of those stainless steel
apple corers. Again, the fruit was unmistakably signified by the core I
spied left laying in the sink. Oranges, tangerines, and bananas had an
entirely different type of center. Seeing a core with the stem at the
top, the seeds near the middle, and the now-withered-away flower and
leaves at the bottom, the fruit symbolized could only be an apple.
[As an aside, did
you know that apples are members of the rose family? Furthermore, did
you know that if you slice an apple horizontally one half of the
distance from the top to the bottom and look at the center of both
halves of the apple, you will see mirror images of two perfect
five-pointed stars?]
Then, my grandmother
would slice the apple. She wouldn’t serve quartered segments but sliced
the apple in half and then into thin but firm segments. If she was
serving a Granny Smith apple, my Grandmother would arrange the segments
around the edge of a plate and cover the center with sugar into which we
could dip each apple segment. That made the segments taste sort of like
little apple pies. Seeing the segments arranged on a plate was an
infallible sign that we would be having an apple for dessert.
In “Three in One:
A Picture of God,” Joanne Marxhausen uses an apple to explain for
young people our belief in the Trinity.
All of us can easily
recognize an apple. More importantly, we know that an apple is
comprised of three distinctive parts. It has skin, flesh, and a core.
An apple just can’t be an apple if it isn’t comprised of these three
distinctive parts. Yet, we also know that the parts don’t make the
apple. The skin isn’t the apple. The flesh isn’t the apple. And, the
core isn’t the apple. It takes all three parts, conjoined in some
mysterious way, in order for an apple to be an apple. Yet, in its own
distinctive way, each part contributes to make an apple what it is.
Marxhausen likens
the apple’s skin to God the Father. No matter how big nor how small, an
apple never outgrows its skin. So it is, she says, with the Father’s
love. God’s love for his creatures is so great that it is capable of
stretching infinitely so that it can envelop all of humanity, no matter
what. The Father’s love is so expansive that it can never be stretched
so far that it would tear or break.
Each of us has
personally experienced this aspect of God because now matter how we’ve
sinned or how far we’ve wandered from the Father’s love, we’ve
experienced that God’s love is so supple and pliable that it is capable
of stretching with us. And, even though we choose not to remain
enveloped in the Father’s love, the Father’s love always continues to
envelop us.
Marxhausen likens
the apple’s flesh to God the Son, Jesus. “Son though he was, Jesus did
not deem equality with God something to be grasped at,” St. Paul tells
us. “Instead he took human form and became a slave.” Just as the
apple’s flesh provides nourishment and its nutrients stimulate good
health, so too God the Son came to earth in order to provide for our
spiritual nourishment and to stimulate spiritual health. Through his
teaching and especially by the witness of his life, Jesus has shown the
way we might live as God’s beloved sons and daughters.
Each of us has
personally experienced this aspect of God because we’ve come to know in
our own lives that love of God and neighbor is a most challenging task.
The more we try to become like slave owners, the less happy and more
fearful we become. But, the more we try to become like slaves—in
imitation of Jesus Christ—the more happy and joyful we become. And, we
discover our greatest happiness when we lay down our lives—in most
cases, that means our selfishness—and serve others.
God the Holy Spirit
is like the apple’s core which gives the apple its strength. The core
also provides for an apple’s continued growth because the core is not
only the apple’s source of life but also is its source of new life.
The seeds present in the core, when planted in good soil and nourished
properly, become new apple trees which produce new fruit to nourish and
strengthen a new generation. In the same way, Marxhausen suggests, God
the Holy Spirit continuously provides for our continued spiritual growth
and, as we mature spiritually, the fruit of the Holy Spirit—joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control—not only changes us but also effects change in others as
the seeds of these spiritual fruits take root in their lives, too.
Each of us has
personally experienced this aspect of God because, as St. Paul warned
the Galatians, we live in a world where sexual immorality, impurity and
debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of
rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness,
orgies, and the like. When we participate in these sins and experience
where they lead us, the dissatisfaction and unhappiness with ourselves
and our lives leads us to contemplate another way—a better way—to lead
our lives. That’s the experience of God the Holy Spirit teaching us and
leading us to conversion of mind and heart, to turn away from a life
centered upon self which ends in unhappiness and ultimately in death to
a life centered upon God and neighbor which leads to true happiness and
ultimately eternal life.
Lastly, Marxhausen
reminds her readers that an apple is a type of fruit possessing unique
properties believed to promote good health. After all, haven’t we all
been told at one point in our lives or another, “An apple each day keeps
the doctor away”? The unity of the apple’s
three parts
promotes something very good—physical health—that none of the parts can
do individually. It requires all three parts to make it possible
for an apple to promote good health.
Interestingly,
however, just as I knew when I was staying with my grandparents we would
be having an apple for dessert when I saw any of its three parts, so too
we are able to grasp the idea of the Trinity simply by examining its
three persons.
It’s the same with
God.
The fullness of God
is revealed not in three distinct persons and but in God’s unity as one
being. The fullness of God the Father, as Father, reveals God the Son.
The fullness of God the Son requires the Son’s love of the Father which,
in turn, reveals God the Holy Spirit. United in the Holy Spirit of
love, the Father and the Son form the Triune God.
Trinity Sunday is a
celebration of a fundamental mystery—a dogma—of our faith.
Unfortunately, this mystery is so profound that we oftentimes think it
impenetrable by human mind and give up on it, leaving it for theologians
to figure out what the dogma means. It is true that we can only grasp
the mystery of the Trinity only by analogy, like the apple.
However, today’s
celebration of the dogma of the Trinity isn’t just a mental exercise so
that we better grasp the idea of the Trinity. More importantly,
today’s celebration of the dogma of the Trinity points us toward an
experience where we not only know that God is not far beyond and
distant from us but is intimately present with us. Just as an apple is
comprised of three parts, each of which is uniquely apple and without
which the fruit cannot be an apple, so too, God is made up of three
distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each is uniquely God
without which there is no God. And, the traces of each person of the
Trinity are present with us in our own personal experience: the Father
who has created us; the Son who has redeemed us; and the Holy Spirit who
has sanctified us.
The dogma of the
Trinity, then, is a mystery, one we will never be capable of
understanding fully but it is a mystery that we are capable of
experiencing.
So, why does the
Church take one Sunday each year to focus upon this dogma?
The Catechism of
the Catholic Church reminds us that “by sending his only Son and the
Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost
secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange” (# 221) .
In baptism, each of us has been given new life in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus commanded
the Eleven. On that day, we not only became the Father’s beloved sons
and daughters, the Son’s brothers and sisters, and temples of the Holy
Spirit. On that day, God also revealed to us His innermost secret and
then sent us into the world to be the living presence of the Trinity—the
presence of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—for
others. It is that call to mission we are challenged to consider in our
minds and to experience in our hearts on this Trinity Sunday and, most
importantly, to live out all the days of our lives. |
HOMILY
