Sunday, May 30, 2010

Homily – May 30, 2010 – Trinity Sunday

+ Today is "summary Sunday" – that is: S U M M A R Y, as well as "summery Sunday" S U M M E R Y as we celebrate also Memorial Day and the beginning of the "summer season" here in Vacationland – the beautiful state of Maine. We welcome any visitors from out of town! "Welcome to you all!"

First we consider S U M M A R Y: on this solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity we celebrate really ONE AMAZING FACT: that God who is a dynamic loving relationship within himself – One Relationship of Three Distinct, Real and Interrelated Persons – not by any necessity at all - chose to share "personhood" with other created creatures with whom they could enter into a very special, dynamic and familial, filial, relationship. God the Father wanted not only one Son, in the Word, but also many sons and daughters who would participate in a family relationship the only way they could really do it: by spiritual adoption. Only Jesus is Son of God by nature; God predestined and calls everyone else to family life with him, with and in Jesus, by adoption: that can only be accessed by Baptism, strengthened by the sacrament of Confirmation and nurtured daily by the Eucharist – the very bread of Divine Life for our spiritually starving souls!

THIS IS ASTOUNDING! When we are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit we instantaneously become forgiven "children of God," brothers and sisters of Jesus and one another, and heirs with Jesus of eternal life! WOW! God is very clear – his creatures, born into the world with Adam's sin attached to them, must in some way, shape or form be baptized in order to become forgiven children and family members of his. The pouring of water and saying the words is the ordinary means, but there are other legitimate means that the Church allows for and are enumerated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

That's really all there is to it! And we have just taken six months to explain in great detail the process of how this salvation came about: how the plan of transforming the sin of Adam into the grace of eternal life began with a babe at Bethlehem, continued with a man who revealed everything there is to know about God, including the nature of total self-gift to the point of self-sacrificial death on a Cross, and whose resurrection from the dead into a newness of life was the great break-though event that made Jesus unlike any other human being in history. That newness he made available to any who would believe in him, and in his Father and in their Spirit.

Last week we celebrated the great Gift of the Father and the Son: the Holy Spirit: who not only was sent to affirm and confirm everything that Jesus ever said and did, but was also to be the continued presence and source of spiritual power in the community of believers that became the Church, upon his arrival: a source for Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist – and the rest of the sacraments, as well as the entire life of the Church that we are so privileged to be a part of! No matter what human inadequacies infect the Church with scandal and veritable hypocrisy: the Church is still and will always be DIVINE in its source, its root and its very life! There is every reason to cling to it, as if to a floating timber in the great rough sea of life!

May we now meditate upon our amazing membership in God's own family: we, being his children, he being OUR FATHER: a title which God delights in hearing us call him: Jesus told us to call him OUR FATHER!!! ABBA!!! DADDY!!! because he likes it, he deserves it and nothing else suffices to describe the precise and exact nature of the relationship – and may we affirm our faith in the works and working of the Most Blessed Trinity by answering the following questions?

Priest: (PLEASE RESPOND "I DO BELIEVE," if indeed you do believe)! Do you believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen?

Do you believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father? Do you believe that through him all things were made? Do you believe that for us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven? Do you believe that it was by the power of the Holy Spirit that he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man?

Do you believe that for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was buried? Do you believe that on the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father? Do you believe he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end?

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son? Do you believe that with the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified? Do you believe that he has spoken through the Prophets? Do you believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church? Do you acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sin? Do you look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come?

This is our faith! This is the faith of the Church! We are proud to profess it in Christ Jesus our Lord! AMEN!

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