Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 11:1 - 13

I barely remember the first time I prayed for something. I think I was about four, and my birthday was coming up, and I was hoping for a little toy bulldozer that you wound up and turned loose. They were made of metal and could push things around. That of course is a quality a four year old admired. I was not yet in school, but my parents made sure that I said my prayers at bedtime and I guess I began to see that prayer was a great shortcut to getting what you wanted. And in fact at my birthday I had the bulldozer; like magic. I learned a very important lesson. And as time went on, I had other prayers answered, usually for stuff I wanted; and I didn't notice the coincidence that my prayer requests for various toys seemed to be fulfilled on my birthday or at Christmas. As I grew older I began to notice that not all my heartfelt prayers were being answered. And I learned several reasons for that. One was that God always answered prayers, but sometimes he said “no”. Another was that God knew that if He answered my prayer it would end up hurting me, so He didn't answer them. Still another was that someone else may have been praying for just the opposite of what I prayed for, and God either remained neutral or responded to the one who was most sincere. That was a good explanation as to why my team lost an occasional game to another team – God probably favored them, even though we had prayed to win. And the most pernicious of all, which I've heard on the lips of patients I've taken care of, or their relatives – “i guess I didn't pray hard enough”.

The scriptures don't always help. There is a passage in john in which Jesus says, :”If you ask the Father anything in my name it will be given to you.” Maybe that's my problem – I don't always remember to add “in Jesus' name” to my prayers. And we have this lengthy reading from Genesis, which seems to tell us that if you keep after God he might change his mind Sure seems that way. And Jesus tells us about the neighbor who will get bread from the householder if he bangs on the door hard enough, or how about the widow that keeps bugging the unjust judge until he finally gives in?

But the bottom line is that prayers are not always answered. Jesus himself prayed in the garden of Gesthemeni: “Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken away from me”. But it wasn't. And philosophers and theologians tell us that God is all powerful, all knowing, all good, all just and the list goes on. God does not change and His will which cannot be overcome, doesn't change either. What will be will be. Can we change God's mind? Not really.

So let us look at this Gospel passage again. The disciples say, “Teach us to pray”. Being good Jews they've been praying since their bar mitzvahs. They know the prayers. They know the postures; why are they asking Jesus how to pray? And notice Jesus' answer: “When you pray” Jesus knows they already pray. And I think an important question to ask is do we pray? Oh, yes, we come to Mass, we might say a few prayers now and then, but do we really make time to devote our attention to God alone even for a few minutes a day? Prayer is ultimately a conversation with God, not the words in a book or a Hail Mary repeated over and over again. I'm not saying these are bad – they aren't, they are good and important – but each of us needs to enter into that personal relationship with Jesus and that can't be gotten by anything other than actually sitting down and doing it.

Notice what Jesus' prayer is all about. He prays for the things that God wants; the petitions in the Our Father – and this is Luke's version, not the one we are familiar with – are exactly what God wants and is moving the world towards; we pray that God's kingdom come. I think that you will notice that most of the prayers of the church are like this. If we pray that God's will be done, it will. If we pray that we be forgiven our trespasses, they will be, because Jesus died so that we would be forgiven.

Jesus invites us to ask, to seek, to knock. And He tells us that these actions won't be in vain. But I think Jesus is saying something along the lines of “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those...” In other words, our prayer needs to be accompanied by action. If we pray for the coming of God's kingdom, what are we doing to bring that about? If we pray to end abortion and vote for pro choice politicians, I doubt that God takes us seriously. If we aren't asking, seeking and knocking, it won't happen, not so that we can see, anyway.

And I think the last thing to mention is that Jesus does make a promise in this Gospel passage. He says, “If you who are evil know how to give your children good things, how much more will the Father give good things to those who ask Him?” Oops, I think I misquoted that. It really says, “How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” And that's the bottom line. Saint Paul tells us, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”

When we pray in Jesus' name we are praying as He did, seeking always to do God's will rather than our own. When God's Holy Spirit prays within us, that is the same Spirit that prayed in Jesus Christ, the Spirit that allows us to call God “Father” and that guarantees that He sees us as His own beloved sons and daughters just as He sees Jesus. If I am a child with parents that I love, part of me wants to please them, and if they are really wonderful parents, I want what they want, especially what they want for me. And that is the guarantee that Jesus gives us – if we ask for the Holy Spirit, it will be given to us, and He will teach us to pray properly; He will give us the mind of Christ, which always seeks to do the Father's will – as Jesus said, “My food and drink is to do the will of the Father”.

So pray that God will heal little Billy, or that uncle Ted will give up drinking and join AA, or that you will ultimately find true love. God listens. But at the same time, learn to pray as Jesus prayed, that God's will be done, that God's kingdom come; and put your money where your mouth is – if you are praying to pass an examination, you better be studying as well. If you are praying for better health, throw away the cigarettes and start exercising. Because you are the Body of Christ and you must want what He wants – enough to do something about it. And above all, find time every day to sit alone and speak to God and let Him speak to you. And say, “Lord, teach me to pray.”

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 10:38 – 42

My mother was quite a theologian. She listened to the scripture readings and the sermon at Sunday Mass and usually had a few choice comments afterward. In those days of deep and widespread Marian devotion, Mary was often the topic of a sermon, and held up as an ideal to which all women should strive. My mother would comment that it was probably easy for Mary to be an ideal Mom because she only had one kid and he was God. I heard that more than once. But another reading that she would become particularly incensed about was the one you just heard – where Jesus seems to put down Martha who has been slaving away in the kitchen while the menfolk are all in the living room drinking wine and talking theology – and her little sister Mary is right there with them. My mother sympathized deeply with Martha, and I think she figured this was one time when Our Savior was wrong, wrong, wrong.

My mother was probably not alone. I think we all can hold out a little sympathy for Martha, and we all can imagine the scene – Martha is rushing about trying to get supper on the table, and no one is helping. And it extends into the rest of life as well. I don't know how many times I've been in charge of something and could not get people to work with me – and I suspect that is true of most of you as well. They say that in the average parish, about ten percent of the parishioners actually do more than come to Mass on Sunday. We all lead very busy lives, and we all have different ideas of what is important enough to take up some of our precious time. Our beloved Tony Moran, whose funeral we just celebrated, was totally committed to the pro-life cause. He devoted hours every week on behalf of those children who are the most vulnerable of all. And he was frustrated because he couldn't even convince enough parishioners to participate in the life chain every year; all he wanted was a line of people a block long to stand on Longmeadow Street in front of the Church for an hour, and never did enough parishioners turn out to meet that goal. I wonder if he ever cried out, “Lord, tell my brothers and sisters to help me!”

What did Martha need when she cried out to Jesus? She wanted Jesus to use his authority to make Mary get out in that kitchen and get to work. Why Mary? Why not John or James or any other apostles? Well, kitchen work is woman's work, after all. Martha, being a typical first century Jewish woman, knew that women saved their souls in childbearing and taking care of the household, while it was men who were supposed to study the scriptures and wrestle with theological issues. Not only was Mary not doing the work she should be doing, but she was sitting with men as they listened and responded to Jesus' words. “Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?”

If you read the Acts of the Apostles or pick up the hints in the letters of Paul, you know that the first generation of Christians had many women who were leaders. We hear mention of Dorcas, who was a holy woman raised from death by Peter; we hear about Priscilla and Aquilla, a married couple who were missionaries, and who instructed Apollos, another missionary. And there was Lydia, a businesswoman who opened her home to Paul, making it the locus of one of the first Christian communities in Europe. In the greetings at the end of the Epistle to the Philippians, Paul mentions by name his co-workers, many of who are women. When Jesus told Martha that Mary had chosen the better part, he really started a revolution, which by fits and starts has proceeded down to today. Jesus, you see, does not see the kitchen as women's work, or what passed for scholarship in those days as men's work. This passage is revolutionary.

And at the same time, to get back to my mother's objection, Jesus is not demeaning the kitchen work, the work that seems to fall on women even today, even in our enlightened country. We need both, we need Martha to bake the Eucharistic bread and clean the church and wash the altar clothes and we need Mary to contemplate the words of the Lord and seek that inner transformation that can only happen when we sit at his feet.

No, Jesus is not demeaning Martha's work, or elevating Mary's choosing the better part. He says, “You are worried and upset about many things, but few are needed, and indeed, only one.” Jesus concern is for Martha's fragmentation, for her focusing on herself, for her refusing to accept his love, for her projecting her frustration on her sister. “Lord,” she says, “do you not care?” Lord, she might as well have said, don't you love me like you love Mary and those apostles you are sitting with? “Lord, tell my sister to help me!” she says. She might have said, “If you care about me please ruin her day.” And that is what Jesus is concerned about; Martha, in her frustration, in the context of the pressure she finds herself in, has forgotten the most important thing right now, the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, the Savior of the World, the Messiah, is in her house and she is not paying attention.

And while this little story was probably the beginning of the feminist movement and the start of the slow and steady erosion of the patriarchal culture that had existed for most of the history of the human race, the real point is that we are all Marthas, who forget that Jesus is not just here on the altar on Sunday, but he is in his people, he is moving among us, he is wherever Christians gather together, he is always with us as he promised to be – and we are out in the kitchen banging pots and pans and resenting the fact that no one seems to want to come to our aid. And it is then that we have to realize that only one thing is important, that we kneel at Jesus' feet and listen to his words and feel his love. And that was why our brother Tony persisted in his lonely ministry – because he was always aware of the one thing that mattered, that he was faithful to his calling.

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 10:25 – 37

We've heard the parable of the Good Samaritan so often that we probably figure we understand it – your neighbor is whoever needs something you can give him or her. That's probably not wrong, but it's only scratching the surface. There are several interesting things in this story that bear looking at. First, when the scholar of the law asks Jesus what seems to be a perfectly reasonable question, we almost overlook the fact that Luke says he did this to test Jesus. And to emphasize that, the scholar calls Jesus “Teacher” which is what others call him when they are about to test him; it's sarcasm. The scholar of the law knows the answer to the question he is asking; after all, we just heard Moses tell the Israelites that they know how to please God – keep his commandments and statutes. And when Jesus asks the scholar how he reads the law, the scholar gives the answer any good Jew would give, and any religious Jew today would say in his prayers – Love God with your whole heart, being, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. He knows the answer to his question, and Jesus agrees. The hostile lawyer, however, now reaches the point where he thinks he's going to trap Jesus. He asks, “Who is my neighbor?” Notice that almost any answer Jesus gives could be met with an objection. If Jesus says 'everyone” well, big deal. That doesn't help in a practical way. If Jesus says “Jews”, well the Israelites were commanded to treat aliens living among them no different than their fellow Jews. I think you ca see that if Jesus selects a category of people who qualify as neighbor, the lawyer, who knows the scriptures backwards and forwards, can object and so prove that Jesus is not much of a teacher. And that's why Jesus tells the story.

Who do you identify with? Not the priest, not the Levite; most of us see ourselves as the Samaritan. We mostly believe that if we were walking along that road, we'd stop to help. But it doesn't take much to realize that's not what we do in real life; we do cross the road when we see a homeless person coming toward us pushing a shopping cart. We turn our eyes away from the man with the cardboard sign standing on the street corner, and drive off feeling a little guilty. We'd like to be the Samaritan, but most of the time, we are not.

Now you all know that Samaritans and Jews were enemies. They disliked each other even more than Nancy Pelosi dislikes Donald Trump. They couldn't see anything good about the other person. And at the end of the story, when the lawyer is forced to admit that the Samaritan is the neighbor, he can't even say the word. And I think Jesus wants us to see ourselves not in the Samaritan, but perhaps in the person by the side of the road, the one who has been beaten and robbed and left for dead. We don't know if that person is Jewish or Samaritan or pagan, we know nothing except that he is in desperate need. And if it were you and I we would not ask whether our helper was a supporter of Trump or a member if ISIS or a man who liked to dress up in women's clothing. We'd take the help from anyone who would reach out.

The other thing about this story is what the Samaritan does. Obviously, he binds up the wounds and renders first aid and transports the person on his own animal. That's good. But the Greek, as I learned when I studied this parable, says that he takes the man to a five star hotel. That's what the word “Inn” means here – it's different from the “inn” that Jesus' parents were turned away from, which was sort of a motel 6. And the people listening to Jesus would marvel at that and the fact that the inn keeper was given two silver coins and the promise of more; two silver coins were basically two day's wages, which would be the equivalent of 240 dollars if you were making 15 dollars an hour, and most of us here make more than that. So the Samaritan not only saves the man, but goes way beyond the minimum; as one commentator said about the Samaritan, “he preferred the stranger to himself”.

The priest and the Levite look at the man in the ditch and say to themselves, “If I stop to help, what might happen to me?” And they had a legitimate concern. Because one of the tricks then and now if you want to rob someone out walking on a country path or driving down a side road is to create a scene that looks like someone is in distress; and when someone stops to help, rush out and beat them up and take their stuff. It still happens. And another legitimate concern is that the priest and the Levite would become ritually unclean by stopping and rendering aid, and they had things to do in Jerusalem and probably that was on their mind as well. But the third thing is that they probably said to themselves that there was probably someone coming along on this busy road who wouldn't have all these obligations; maybe there was a group of people traveling together – I say that sometimes when I see a homeless person or a beggar on the street corner. Aren't there plenty of places they could go and get some food and a shower and basically a new start in life? After all, I am always being asked to contribute to this place or that place, this ministry or that one.

But the Samaritan asks a different question. If I don't stop to help, what will happen to him? And I think that's the last point to make out of this story. If I am the person on the side of the road, desperate for someone to come along and aid me, the one who comes along is Jesus Christ, who goes far beyond the bare minimum, who looks at me with compassion and trades his life for mine. The people who heard the story of the Good Samaritan from Jesus' lips may not have thought of this at the time He told the story, but I suspect they may have seen the story as prophetic later on. We are all the helpless victim by the side of the road, and Jesus is the Good Samaritan.

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 10:1 – 12; 17 – 20

We recently got back from our annual family reunion in Ocean City, Maryland. Twenty-eight of us occupied seven adjacent rooms in a beach front hotel for four days. We all brought stuff from home, in addition to several changes of clothing. We brought frozen food, some kitchen utensils, lots of paper products; The rest of the family did likewise. One son in law even bought one of those platforms that inserts into a trailer hitch so that he would have extra room to transport stuff. And yet, Ocean City has a Walmart and a full service grocery store; and in fact there is a large outlet mall there, in case you forgot to bring something. We all came very well prepared.

Today we hear about Jesus sending out the seventy two disciples. He sends them out two by two; he knows that there is a better chance they will stick to the message this way, and he knows that if he sends them out in threes, two will bond, and the third will be the odd man out. That's just the way people are. But if you were a first century Palestinian what would really be odd would be his instructions: no money bag, no sandals, no staff. Because without money, you are entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers; without sandals, you need to watch where you put your feet because the ground is full of stones; and without a staff you have no way to fend off animals or the occasional thief. He isn't kidding when he says he is sending them like lambs among wolves.

And you greet no one along the way. There was a certain protocol when you met a stranger or even someone you hadn't seen in a long time. You would ask about his health, his family, his business, and listen patiently to the replies; you would then have to answer his questions. These greetings, especially if they involved more than a few people, could take up a good part of an hour or so. Jesus knew his time was limited and did not want the disciples to get distracted from their mission.

And the last issue; when they arrive they are to offer peace to this household. Remember that the disciples are being sent to villages Jesus wants to visit. Villages usually consisted of several people who were related to each other. Generally there was a village chief who resolved conflicts and made decisions. He would be the one who would reply to the offer of peace. These chiefs would also be the ones who would decide whether the village should offer hospitality or reject the visitor. The disciples were entirely at the mercy of these chiefs as to whether they got fed or got a roof over their heads.

Now I guess the question is, why did we go so well prepared to Ocean City, in contrast to the disciples of Jesus going so poorly prepared? What is Jesus teaching? I think when we went to Ocean City, we did not want any surprises; we wanted to control everything we could control. And perhaps what Jesus was teaching his disciples is that if you are carrying out a mission for God, you can only do this if you let God lead you, let God take care of things. That, after wall was the real sin of Adam and Eve; they did not trust God who had told them of the consequences of disobeying his one commandment.

And the surprising thing is that everything worked out – wonderfully, in fact, because not only did they return to Jesus intact and well fed, but they had healed people, preached the kingdom, and driven out demons, something that showed they had tapped into the power of God Himself. No wonder that they were elated.

You and I as Christians are supposed to be on mission. We are supposed to be consciously trying to influence those around us – Christian or not – to draw closer to God, to change their hearts, to wake up to two things: the fact that Jesus out of love is always inviting them to follow him more closely; and the fact that because God has given us freedom, we can choose to reject that invitation and the consequences might very well be an eternity without God, which is hell. Jesus is telling you and I in this gospel example that the task is urgent and cannot wait for tomorrow; and if we simply take him at his word and begin the process, he will give us the power we need to preach and heal and drive out demons.

And that's a real challenge for those of us who are control freaks. Because the message of Jesus is that we are not doing this on our own – rather, we are instruments that God uses for his own purposes, and in order to be instruments we need to let go of our need to control things.

So perhaps we should ask three questions today. First, are we actually on mission? Who are we trying to bring closer to Jesus? Because we should be doing that every day. Second, how are we doing mission? Are we praying for that person specifically? Are we looking for opportunities to preach the kingdom by word and by example? Do we invite, because unless we make the first move, no move will be made. And if we invite, we know we might be rejected, and that's fine, because we've done our part. And third, are we working on becoming better missionaries? Because if you notice, the kind of life-style Jesus is proposing for his disciples is basically the way Jesus lived during those years of his own mission, a life detached from a place to live, detached from accumulation of possessions, and open to whoever he met on the way – a blind man calling out from the side of the road, a woman with a twelve year hemorrhage, a little girl who just died – Jesus allows the Father to set the agenda as he goes from town to town. So let us go about with simplicity and humility, allowing the Father to show us the work that we are to do, because we have been sent.

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 9:51 - 62

When I lived in Buffalo, I had a friend who was a Presbyterian minister. Now there really aren't a lot of Presbyterians outside of the big cities; here in New England they are quite rare, because way back the Congregationalists and Presbyterians decided that they were so similar that the Congregationalists would work in the Northeast and the Presbyterians everywhere else. However, given the fact that both the Baptists and Methodists greatly outnumber the Presbyterians, this strategy was not successful. And the reason, according to my friend, was that the Methodists and Baptists could hop on a horse with a bible in their pocket and preach the gospel anywhere, whereas the Presbyterians had to wait until there was a railroad, because the ministers carried around trunk loads of books.

Today Jesus is proving once again that he isn't very good at public relations. He's been on the road, preaching, working miracles, gathering followers, many of whom have heard him say things like “The Son of Man must suffer and die, and rise again”. And they wondered what this meant. And finally Jesus, in the fullness of time resolutely determines (an older translation says “set his face like flint”) to go to Jerusalem, where everyone knew he would risking his life.

This gospel passage tells us several things. First, Jesus invites us on his journey – a journey that Thomas recognizes when he tells the other apostles, “Let us go down with him and die.” Dietrich Bonhoffer said something similar – Christ invites us to go to Jerusalem and die with him. If we are followers of Christ, that is our goal because it's the only way to resurrection. Jesus wants to minister to the Samaritans, who reject him. James and John offer to call down fire from heaven and wipe them off the face of the earth. Sometimes that's our reaction when we meet someone who doesn't think like us. We don't mind if they disagree, just so it doesn't affect us, and often, it doesn't. It's hard not to get mad at a politician who has held his finger to the wind and decided to vote for assisted suicide, unrestricted taxpayer funded access to abortion, open borders, allowing men who identify as women to compete in women's sports, and the list goes on. And I am tempted to get angry when I hear someone who claims to be Catholic advocating these positions. But Jesus models for us that it is not out place to destroy those who oppose us; even when it takes everything we have, our job is to continue to love them, never compromising on our values, but never forgetting that God loves them just as much as he loves me, and indeed, just as much as he loves the Blessed Mother. And maybe it is here that some of us will be called to go down to Jerusalem and die with him.

Even after all this, there are some fools that still want to follow Jesus. One promises to go wherever he goes. In those days students of rabbis would live with the rabbi while learning; they would take care of the rabbi's needs in exchange. That's what this man is doing. Jesus says that he doesn't have a place like that; if you choose to follow Jesus, expect that life will not be that comfortable. Following Jesus means that if we have two cloaks and our neighbor has none, we are to give him one of our cloaks. Following Jesus means that when we see a hungry crowd, we don't dismiss them; we give them food. Following Jesus means that we stop and bind up the wounds of the one lying by the side of the road. But most of us are more concerned with making sure we have two cars that run, several changes of clothing, a place where we can spread out, a color television, cable, and I could go on and on. Following Jesus to the point where we are not comfortable may be how some of us will go to Jerusalem and die with him.

Let the dead bury the dead, he says to another. Sometimes following Jesus means that we will go against the expectations of society, even of our families. There was a time when every Catholic mother and not a few Catholic fathers rejoiced when one of their children chose to become a priest or a brother or a nun. Now not only do Catholic parents not even suggest such things to their children, but when the child comes to such a decision on his or her own terms, they actively discourage them. And when a Catholic couple face the choice of having more than two children, it's the rare couple who chooses to serve God by raising a large family. Sometimes going to Jerusalem to die with Jesus means that we will disappoint or even anger those we love.

A third person promises to follow Jesus, but first to go home and say goodbye to his family. After all, Elisha did exactly that when summoned by Elijah. But Jesus is not Elijah. Once you've decided to follow Jesus, he will never take second place. And how guilty am I of this, because I can always think of reasons that I should do something else first; we all have long lists of things to do, and when they all get done, then we can turn our undivided attention to Jesus. And for some of us, saying goodbye to not only family, but all those things that occupy our days and are so familiar and pleasant, is the way we will go to Jerusalem with Him and die.

This is one of those passages in the gospels that makes me feel guilty and it should make you feel that way as well. This Jesus is not warm and cuddly, He is not the one who looks on my selfish ways like a tolerant old grandfather looks upon his three year old grandchild. Jesus is talking to people who want to follow him, who perhaps have already made that cholce, and he is saying that following him means that your every waking moment must be proclaiming God's kingdom with your whole being. Otherwise you aren't worthy of the kingdom of heaven.

Are you and I willing to go down to Jerusalem and die with him? If I'm honest, the answer is a shaky, sad “no”. And my hope is that I'm a little better than I was ten years ago, and that there will be mercy, even for people like me who aren't willing.

The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ

Corpus Christi cycle C, 2019

When I was growing up, my church was the Cathedral of Saint Helena, the church of the Diocese of Helena, Montana. It was and still is a magnificent building, deliberately modeled on a famous European church. A gold miner named Thomas Meagher struck it rich and told the powers that be that if they built the Cathedral in Helena, rather than in the town of Anaconda as had been planned, he would pay for it. And in one of his travels in Europe he had fallen in love with the Votivkirche in Vienna, Austria, and arranged for the Cathedral to be modeled after it. So that was where I learned to be an altar server.

We altar servers had a lot of responsibilities. We had to speak the responses to the priest in Latin, and we weren't just parrots; we had to know what the responses meant. We had to know when to kneel and stand and ring bells, all punctuating the mass; because the priest could only speak the latin words and never ad lib and say things like, “please kneel”. And his back was turned to the people, so he couldn't even gesture at them.

But perhaps the biggest job we had was to convey by our actions and demeanor that we knew what the Eucharist was all about. We were told never to touch the sacred vessels; only the priest could do that because his hands had been consecrated. We had to learn a whole protocol regarding the possibility of dropping a sacred host on the ground. It involved putting a little fence around the host, so that after the Mass the priest could properly deal with it. He would never just reach down and pick it up, because after he had washed his hands he held his thumb and index fingers together, opening them only to touch the Sacred Host or the Chalice. And we held patens. They were like little plates with handles, and we held them under the chins of the people receiving communion, which of course was on the tongue. And the laity never touched the sacred blood, because that multiplied the risk of dropping it.

And it was drummed into the core of our souls that we would genuflect when we passed in front of the tabernacle, and never, ever talked in church, except in a whisper when you were going to confession.

I'm glad some of these practices have changed. But one of the things that they did was remind us over and over again that this bread and wine was not ordinary food; this was Jesus Christ himself. And Catholics were conscious of that in other ways; I doubt that my mother or father ever committed a mortal sin, but if they missed their monthly visit to the confessional, they would not receive the Eucharist till they had gone. My grandmother would go to confession weekly, and reverently receive communion the next morning on Sunday. And there were many people who would come to Mass but refrain from receiving the Eucharist. We didn't ask why.

Saint Paul talks about the possibility of receiving the Eucharist unworthily. No one quite knows what he meant, but he did say that you were risking your soul if you did so. Jesus himself pointed out that unless you ate his body and drank his blood, you could not have life everlasting. And he put this in more positive terms; those who ate his body and drank his blood would have eternal life.

We human beings need a sense of reverence. I think that's one of the motives of the people who seek to return to the mass in the Tridentine rite, the old Latin mass. And there a few people around, one of my deacon friends comes to mind, who have switched rites from the casual Novus Ordum rite of the Latin church to a much more solemn rite – in his case, the Maronite rite. And I wonder how many people have left the Church because they have not cultivated a sense of reverence, a sense of the great mystery which is the Eucharist?

Saint John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, said, “If God could have given us a greater gift than the Eucharist, he would have.” And yet sometimes we – and I include myself – receive this gift with our minds a mile away, like three year olds ripping through their birthday presents without so much as a thank you. For three year olds, it's understandable; but for us much less so.

The Feast we celebrate today came about because a priest, otherwise pious and hard working, had trouble believing that the bread and wine really became the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. One day while celebrating Mass, as he said the words of consecration the Host began to bleed. After nearly dying of shock, he reported it to his bishop, who in turn told the pope, who was traveling through the area. The pope witnessed the miracle, and shortly afterwards created the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, to be celebrated throughout the Church. The stained cloth which contains the blood from the miracle is still exhibited in a chapel in Italy.

We are invited today to think about the great gift we have been given. Jesus gave his body and blood, his whole life, for us, He continues in this sacrament to unite us with the moment so long ago when he redeemed the human race by his death. We Catholics believe in the real presence. Together with other Christians we try to follow Jesus' example, we turn to God in prayer, we worship together – but for us the central fact, the most important thing, is that Jesus is uniquely present to us; Jesus is the Father's gift to us, day after day, week after week, in the Eucharist.

Trinity Sunday, 2019

John 16:12-15

Today is Trinity Sunday. I was planning to explain the Trinity to you, but I realized that whatever I said, it would be heresy. If I said that the Trinity is like a shamrock – three leaves in one plant, that's the heresy of partialism. If I say that the Trinity is like water, which can be ice or liquid or steam, that's trimodalism. If I say that it's like me being a father, a son and a husband, that's functionalism. If I say that it's like the Father is the Creator, the Son is the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit is the sanctifier, I am getting dangerously close to tritheism. The point is that there is nothing in all of creation remotely like the Trinity. All we can say for certain was said by Saint Augustine: The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; the Father is not the Son or the Spirit, the Son is not the Father or the Spirit; the Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. From the scriptures we can deduce that The Father generates the Son, and the Father and the Son breathe forth the Spirit.

But so what? Why do we Christians have this mind-blowing doctrine about God, when everything would be so much simpler if we were Muslims or Jews and fogot this three persons in one God thing? I think most of us kind of think like that anyway.

But today is also Father's day, so maybe we can talk about the Trinity from the starting point that Jesus used: God is always Father. Now you can't be a father without someone to be a father to. If the very nature of God is Father, then it follows that there has always been the Son. Now I'm a father, and many of you are fathers or mothers. Because I'm a father I like to give things to my children. If I were a perfect father, I'd give everything to them. We are always trying to pass on the little bit of wisdom we pick up; The perfect Father can give his Son everything that he has, which is of course, everything. But since God is infinite in every respect, giving the Son everything does not make the Father less. The nature of the Father is to eternally give everything to the Son, and Jesus said, “.Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”

I can remember being a son. I think I was a pretty good son in general. A good son or daughter wants to please his or her parents, especially if they are good parents. In my case I pleased them by staying out of trouble most of the time and by getting good grades in school, by obeying them when they asked something of me. In the course of being a son I gave something of myself to them; I returned their investment in me, so to speak. Some of you parents know what I mean; you are proud of your children, especially when they reflect something of your own good qualities. A perfect Son of a perfect Father will return himself to the Father; he will be the image of the Father. Saint Paul tells us, “then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.” And Jesus, of course, told Philip, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”

If God is in His very nature Father, there must be a Son who is in every respect the equal of the Father, who has existed from the beginning. But what of the Holy Spirit? Father and Son are human terms, we understand them. But we assert that the Holy Spirit is also a person, co-equal to the Father and the Son, equally God. Jesus referred to Him as “another advocate,” making him equal to Jesus; and Jesus as we hear today, promises that the Holy Spirit will guide us to the truth, and not speak on his own … and will take from what is mine and declare it to you....” The Spirit is the reason you and I and the universe are here. If there was only Perfect Father and perfect Son, what else would be needed? But we assert that the relationship between the Father and the Son is himself a Person, The Father in his nature wants more children to love; the Son in his nature wants to please the Father by bringing this about. Their love for each other spills out, creating the universe and all that is in it. In the very first book of the Bible, we meet the Spirit hovering over the waters; and when God says, “let there be light,” the Spirit brings about light. And in those wonderful lines of the first reading, we meet the Spirit: “there I was beside him as his craftsman, and I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing on the surface of his earth, and I found delight in the human race.” If the love between the Father and the Son is infinite, and it is, it spills out to create all that there is.

The Father through the Son in the Spirit creates new sons and daughters to enter into that loving relationship which is the Trinity. We are made to love. Sin is when we love something we shouldn't, because God is supposed to be the object of our love. The Father wants you and I to be his sons and daughters, just as Jesus is. Jesus wants you and I to be his brothers and sisters. The Spirit is the one who makes things Holy, which basically means to be consecrated to God. It is through the Spirit that we become sons and daughters of the Father, brothers and sisters of the Son, who said, “you have loved them even as you have loved me.”

The Trinity is a mystery that we'll never understand at least on this side of the grave. But we understand Father and we understand Son, and we understand love, which is the reason for all that is, and is the Spirit.

I've put copies of a famous icon on the bulletin boards of the entrances. The icon is a whole textbook of theology. Rublev in the fourteenth century recalled the three visitors to Abraham, who promised that Sarah would bear a son. All are wearing blue garments, the sign of divinity. The Father, on the left, has an outer garment that seems transparent; no one has seen the Father. The Son, in the middle, has a brown garment, representing earth or humanity. The Spirit, on the right wears green, representing life, representing his creative power. All three have wings and halos, because they are spiritual; all three have the same face because they are one. If they can fly, why do they have walking staffs? Because they accompany us on our journey. Beneath the bowel is a rectangle. In the original icon, Rublev had fixed a mirror so that the person observing the icon would be drawn into the scene, because the very nature of our Trinitarian God is to invite us into that relationship.

Today I invite you to experience the Trinity, the God who delights in us. Perhaps you will experience beauty, or hear a wonderful melody, or maybe your heart will be warmed by a family get together. The Father is always trying to delight us, and the Son wants what the Father wants; and the Spirit is there to bring us joy in obedience to the Father and the Son. And you and I in those moments are enfolded into the Trinity.