June 11, 2017

June 11, 2017 Feast of the Most Holy Trinity Exodus 34: 4-6, 8-9; 2 Corinthians 13: 11-13; John 3: 16-18 Today we are celebrating the feast of the Most Holy Trinity. It is a mystery. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines mystery as: “a religious truth known by revelation alone; something not understood or beyond understanding.” I went to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and under Mystery it lists nine topics: “of Christ; of the Church; of the Church’s unity; of creation; of the existence of evil; of faith; of God; of man; of man’s salvation.” It states that all our human words always fall short of describing the mystery of God. So if we always come up limping what can we take away from this feast? Perhaps the best way to say what does the Trinity tell us or mean to us is to say that it is all about God’s love. This helps us to put our arms around this mystery. We all know about love. We can say in one voice that we understand love but in another frame of mind we can say that love is a mystery. We are constantly discovering its depth which changes our understanding of love. I’ve been privileged to be the minister at many weddings. I’ve talked to each of the couples before they're wedding day and see their ‘love’. Years later I can see their ‘love’ in a much deeper way. Love has brought them closer. Many have said that in seeing each other’s love they come to an understanding of God’s love. This is what the Trinity is about—God’s love. Today’s words from John’s Gospel, perhaps the most often quoted in all of the Bible, says, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal live.” So the Trinity is about love…the Trinity is about sharing their love. Love among humans is about sharing love: the triple command of Jesus found in Luke 10:27 tells us to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” God is love…the Trinity is about love…discovering and living love is what each person is about. God is about relationship. The Trinity is about relationship. Living is about relationship. We all search for a deep, rewarding, intimate relationship based on honesty, trust and love. Many find this…some still search. One writer said,, “Marriage would be so much easier if there wasn’t another person involved, but then it would be meaningless, too.” These are the words of William Paul Young the author of The Shack in his introduction to Richard Rohr’s The Divine Dance, the Trinity and your Transformation. Mr. Young continues: “Bad theology is not a victimless crime. It dehumanizes God and turns the wound and the messy mystery of intimate relationship into a centerfold to be used and discarded… Richard Rohr and Mike Morrell call us forward and invite us to actively change what we let into our hearts, calling us to consciously participate in this divine dance of loving and being loved…Divine Dance is a celebration of Relationship… God, You have never had a low view of Humanity.” In urging us to read this book he says, “May we feel within us the eternal life of Jesus reaching through our hands—to heal, to hold, to hug—and celebrate the bread of our Humanity, the sanctity of the Ordinary and Participation in the Trinity.” I have found a tremendous amount of insight into a proper thinking of God, the Trinity in both the book, The Shack, written in 2007 and the movie, The Shack, that was released earlier this year. I have found the clearest understanding and deeper insights into the Trinity from Fr. Richard Rohr and Mike Morrell’s book, The Divine Dance. I totally recommend both of these works. What it all comes down to is John 3:16, which in itself is misunderstood. The passage is telling us that the Trinity is not a thing, it is a Divine Relationship. So often I hear people quote this passage and say that…'God SENT’… The passage says that “God so loved the world that He GAVE His only Son……” This emphasizes the nature of this gesture as a GIFT. God is giving us a GIFT…His Son… He loves us that much. This shows that God’s love is about a RELATIONSHIP. Moses had a tremendous amount of closeness with God. He describes this in his writing of the creation accounts and tell us they are about the RELATIONSHIP of our first parents with God. It doesn’t take a neuroscientist to see that the words used are deeply loaded with love and care and concern. Later in John’s gospel, Jesus promises His disciples the gift of the Spirit/Paraclete which then completes the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Continuing with John’s Gospel we see that Jesus is not condemning the world, He came to SAVE each one of us. Our SAVING comes with how we respond to God’s invitation and be people who continue to love, care, forgive, and respond to the needy and hurting. So each person is in a relationship and again it is to be a relationship of love. Everything is rooted in God’s love for the world. Perhaps one of the worst things we have done is to make the Trinity such a formality that has no relationship with each created person. Saying that God created and stays up in heaven and doesn’t care about us is a total untruth. Saying that God is distant to us and lets us solve our own problems and just waits so that we can goof it up so that He can lower the boom on us shows a God that doesn’t care and is even irrelevant to us. The reality is that God wants to be close to us AND is close to each one. We are the ones that push God away. The bottom line question: am I grateful to God for my life, for the lives of my loved ones and special people who touch me? Am I grateful to God for being present and caring about me? Am I grateful for the gift of my faith that tells me God loves me? Am I grateful for God’s grace to help me though the difficulties of each day and the mindless things too? Am I grateful? Sunday Homily Helps says, “We would not be celebrating an annual feast in honor of the Blessed Trinity if the doctrine were only an unsolvable riddle. The Trinity is a mystery, yes but a mystery of God’s unfathomable knowledge and love.” So I reflect on: • How have I experienced God’s love in these last few days? Did I express my gratitude or did I take God for granted? • What gets in the way of being merciful, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity? • What gets in the way of my gratitude? • We are in a loving relationship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Am I? Sacred Space 2017 shares: “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son”! This is the heart of the good news, and I must be eternally grateful of it. There are no strings or strings attached to God’s loving. Nor must there be any strings or strings in the quality of my loving. We believe that God intervened in human history and gave His only Son to show that His attitude to us is that of a loving parent. Prayer may be compared to a time of opening ourselves to the light of God, like sunning ourselves in the warmth of the sun, the gentle and bright light that illuminates us completely. “