Trinity Sunday, 2022

The various feasts we celebrate every year commemorate something in the life of Christ or his mother or the lives of the apostles or saints.  Except Trinity Sunday, when we celebrate a doctrine.  And when we try to explain the doctrine, two things usually happen.  The preacher will almost always say something that is a heresy, and the congregation will wonder what the big deal is. Someone once said that most Catholics are Unitarians in practical terms.  Saint Patrick was said to compare the Trinity to a shamrock -- three leaves, one plant.  But that’s a heresy.  The Trinity has been compared to water -- can exist as steam, liquid, or ice.  But that’s a heresy.  Thomas Aquinas said that God knows everything completely, including himself, and because God exists, the knowledge he has of himself exists and because God is completely loving and loveable, the love itself is a person.  But even Thomas sails near heretical shores, because we can’t help but see the Father as giving rise to the Son and both bringing about the Holy Spirit. But that’s not the case; there was never a time when only the Father existed.  Saint Augustine said that “The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God.  The Son is not the Father or the Spirit; the Spirit is not the Father or the Son; and there is only one God''.  I’m not sure that helps me.

But maybe instead of trying to explain how the Trinity works, we could look at what it means to believe in God but not in the Trinity.  First, there are a lot of people who have a vague appreciation for a God who is the creator and sustainer of the universe.  Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin believed along those lines.  But such a God made no difference whatsoever in their lives. For them, God sets everything in motion and then stands back to watch.   And there are numerous other examples of this line of thinking among philosophers and scientists. 

There are other people -- people like Martin Luther King who said “The arc of history is long, but bends towards justice”.  There are people who devote their lives to a cause.  One of the reasons Marxism caught on was that there was a spiritual quality to it.  Marx preached that it was inevitable that the human race was going to reach the ideal where ``from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” would be a reality.  There are people who find meaning in associating with a movement.  And there are many people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. My grandfather who practiced no religion felt close to God when he was fishing..  What all of these have in common, even if they don’t admit it, is that they recognize a power outside of themselves -- maybe not a God, but certainly something to which they can relate, something that can satisfy a craving in our hearts for relationship.

And finally we have people that set out to change themselves for what they think is better.  There are people that obsessively work out developing muscles on top of muscles.  There are others who work long days and nights to gain a doctorate, or to build a business, or to change themselves in some other way that they envision will be an improvement over their present.  Sometimes this is good and sometimes it’s misguided, but it’s probably never entirely satisfying, and after you’ve achieved your goal you are looking around for another.  

In the Trinity, though, we speak of the Father who is the creator and sustainer of the universe who is God; and the Son who is God in relationship, the one we encounter when we have a personal experience of the divine, who is God.  And when we allow God to live in us and move us toward his idea of perfection, not ours, that is the Spirit, who is God.  And the doctrine of the Trinity is a reflection of how man relates to the infinite and the infinite to man.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov, a saint beloved by Eastern Christians, Said “God is above us, God walks beside us, God is within us”  the Father, Son and Spirit, three persons, one God.  

Corpus Christi 2022

Luke 9:11b - 17

When I was learning my catechism in grade school, I learned that the Mass was the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary.  I understood “unbloody”.  I knew about Calvary.  But I had a very limited appreciation of sacrifice.  To me, sacrifice meant giving up candy for lent.  But if you read the Old Testament or have a little knowledge of world history, you know that human beings have always been sacrificing something to God.  And in this sense, sacrifice is not giving up candy, it’s destroying a possession as a sign that you are offering something of value to God.  Once destroyed, you and no one else can ever use it again.  

We read in Genesis that Cain and Abel offered sacrifices; Abel’s was accepted, Cain’s was not.  It doesn’t say how they knew or why.  Noah offers sacrifice when the flood recedes as a way of thanking God.  Abraham offers his son to God, but an angel restrains him from putting his son to death and a ram caught in bushes is substituted.  And on and on it goes, down to the time of Christ and beyond.  Joseph and Mary offer two pigeons in the temple ritual as a way of buying back their first-born, who according to Jewish law, belongs to God.  

It’s a natural human instinct.  Buddhists, Shinto, Hindu and Confucionist religions all have sacrifices – sometimes it's incense, a flower, or some delicacy made by human hands.  Muslims, at least some, offer animal sacrifices, causing no little anger among their neighbors when they do this from their balconies in European cities. 

One of the4 main reasons the Israelites offered sacrifices was because it was a reminder of the seriousness of sin.  It was felt that God accepted the animal’s death instead of that of the sinner.  Sacrifices for sin were so common in Jesus’; time that it was said blood ran from the temple into the valley below.  

We Catholics believe that the Eucharist is the real presence of Jesus, and that the bread and wine no longer exist after the consecration.  Of course not all Christians, or unfortunately even not all Catholics, believe this.  We talk about the Eucharist as heavenly food, as food for the soul and the body – but Jesus can enter the soul if he wants, right?  According to the gospel of John, Jesus promised that he and the father would make their dwelling in those who love him and keep his word.  Doesn’t say anything about the Eucharist.  Of course Jesus did say that “Unless you eat my body and drink my blood you cannot have life in you.” resulting in the turning away of many of his followers.  But later he said, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail”.  And we certainly know of many very holy people who seem to get by just fine without participating in the Eucharist.  

But I think there is another reason for holding on to the doctrine of transubstantiation, the teaching that the Eucharist becomes the real presence of Jesus.  It has to do with sacrifice, sacrifice for sin.

If you had been an Israelite around the time of Christ, not all sacrifice ended with the destruction of the victim.  After a while, people began to see the actual taking of the life of the animal as the focus of the sacrifice.  In the book of Genesis, it says that God really liked the odor of the sacrifice that Noah offered.  That is a pretty primitive idea, and we can see that as time went on the people’s idea of God changed from that primitive conception to something far more sophisticated; from the vengeful tyrant of a God who killed people for even a slight mistake to a God who loved the people enough to forgive them over and over, and never leave them.  And the notion of sacrifice changed as well; once the life was taken from the sacrificial animal, its destruction could be by ritual consumption.  Even though the Jews no longer sacrifice animals, in the Passover Seder in Jesus’ time the meat would often come from an animal offered in the temple.  

Do we humans need to sacrifice to God?  We are still sinners, like our ancestors in faith, the Jewish people.  And of course if we didn’t then there would have been no reasons for Jesus to sacrifice himself for us.  So what can I offer to God in thanksgiving for all he has done for me?  What can I offer to make up for my sins, which are many, and even if small, still are great because of whom I offend?  The answer is, The Father gives us the Son to be our sacrifice, and we offer this sacrifice when we consume his body and blood. 

In the olden days, it was more apparent that the Mass was a sacrifice.  The priest faced the tabernacle – where God was, and led the people.  The Eucharistic prayer was clearly a prayer of sacrifice.  Participation by the people was elicited when the priest turned and spoke to the congregation, who would reply in the person of the altar servers.  And then, when God had given his son to us in the bread and wine, we would consume his flesh and blood.  To consume a symbol would have nothing to do with a real sacrifice.  And to consume the Son is to join in the sacrifice of Calvary.