Homilies

From the very beginning Christians have looked upon God as three persons in one, recognizing that we don’t worship three gods but that we worship one God that has three persons, hence we see God as the Holy Trinity, a mystery we cannot fully explain but we accept as an article of faith.

That hasn’t always been the case. Prior to the time of the Israelites, every nation had many gods. We are familiar with the gods of ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece. God revealed himself to Abraham as the one and only God. As Moses pointed out to the Israelites after they had left Egypt, “Did anything so great ever happen before?”

No but something greater happened when Jesus came upon the scene, revealing to his followers God in a new light when he commissioned them to go and “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

Alas, not all believers in the early Church accepted that mandate. Some doubted this unique relationship described by Jesus. During the fourth century a popular heresy arose known as Arianism that taught Jesus was not fully God. Those who believed this heresy contended that Jesus was a creature higher than the angels but not equal to God the Father. The council of Nicea in the year 325 proclaimed that Jesus was equal to God the Father in every way. We proclaim that belief in the Creed at Mass every weekend.

Granted the Holy Trinity is a mystery; not in the sense of a crime scene when we are left pondering who is guilty, but realizing that this tenet of our faith cannot be fully explained. The Trinity can be described in different ways but each endeavor is limited. St. Patrick is renowned for using a shamrock. Another imperfect attempt would be to think of the three stages of water: ice, liquid, and steam. Liturgically, one of my seminary professors described God as creator, redeemer and sanctifier, highlighting the roles assigned to each person. Our triune God has three persons to somehow give us a glimpse of all God truly is.

However we attempt to define the Trinity, the best way is to see this as an expression of love. St. Augustine spoke of God as lover, beloved, and the love between them. I recall a painting in my cousin’s home that depicted the Father embracing the Son and the Holy Spirit was the whirlwind that bound them together. Love is the driving force behind the Trinity and our relationship with God. The very reason why there are three persons in this one God is that God is not self-centered. In one of his letters, St. John wrote the shortest sentence in scripture, “God is love.” God needs to love and be loved. Since God is love itself, wherever we find self-giving love, we find God.

Out of love, God created us to be his children. From the beginning, he gave humanity the free will to love and all that is needed to live in the midst of this beautiful creation we call earth. God is our caring, loving parent, blessing us with the intellect to make full use of our earth’s resources, inviting us to also be caring and loving toward all life from start to the finish, from conception to natural death.  

In his letter to the Romans, Paul points out that those who are baptized receive the Holy Spirit and become children of God. God becomes our father in an intimate personal way; we are enabled by the Holy Spirit to call him “Papa” and Jesus becomes our big brother.

In our everyday experience we have seen that love has the power to draw two people together and make them one in mind and heart and yet the two people retain their individuality. Likewise, the power of divine love makes Father, Son and Holy Spirit one God without destroying the distinctions between these three persons.

That divine love overflowed and created the universe. That love overflowed and created this unique planet to sustain life. That love made us, redeemed us and has repeatedly forgiven our sins. That love invites us to live this life with the goal of living eternal life by observing all that we have been commanded to do, which can be summed up as “to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and soul and to love our neighbor as ourselves.”

Think about that. God is the love we find in our own hearts. God is the love between husband and wife, between parents and their children, between siblings, between friends. God is the love we have for one another, and the love we show to the stranger and the least among us. Wherever there is charity and love, there is God.

We haven’t solved the mystery of the Trinity yet and we never will but maybe these reflections have given us something to ponder; something we can take home that can make a practical difference in our lives and our relationships with God and with one another.

Déjà vu! As the season of TV reruns begins, we are being treated to a rerun of a gospel passage we first heard on Divine Mercy Sunday, a passage worth hearing again for its message of forgiveness cannot be told often enough.

Jesus said at the Last Supper, “Peace be with you.” Alas, some people are not feeling the gift of the Lord’s peace. Instead, they are hurting or upset for any number of reasons. Whenever I hear that, I ache, wondering what the origins of that person’s hurt might be. Hurting someone is the last thing I would ever deliberately do yet I know that has happened, such as when someone is offended by what I have said in homilies dealing with social justice issues.

A painful reality for anyone in leadership is what we say is not always what is heard or understood. Many of us have probably said and done things that hurt others at home, at work, here in the parish or at school. We cannot undo all the damage on our own, but we can pray for what could be called a healing of memories.

Fr. Bob Spitzer, former president of Gonzaga, once told me about praying to the Holy Spirit when he asks for healing of hurts and memories, not just for himself, but for those whom he hurt. To illustrate, he shared how he once made an offhand remark to someone and later deeply regretted it. Unable to call the man, he went to the chapel and asked the Holy Spirit to heal any harm he had done.

A few days later, Fr. Spitzer ran into him. “You know, Father,” the man said, “I have been thinking about what you told me. At first I was kinda angry, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what you were getting at. You helped me a lot.” Fr. Spitzer didn’t give himself any credit. As he said, “It was all the Holy Spirit.”

Looking back over this most unusual year, I apologize if I have offended or hurt you during that time, as we say in the Confiteor, “in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.” I want you to experience the gift of peace that Jesus freely offers, that gift that comes to us through the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus to be an instrument of reconciliation.

Some people use instances of hurt, especially those caused by a priest, as an excuse to leave the Church but as St. Francis de Sales cautions, to do so is to commit spiritual suicide. When we are hurting, we need God’s gift of grace and peace more than ever. To abandon what we believed in is to give into Satan’s devious temptations to lure us away from Christ.

Forgiveness of those who have harmed us is the hallmark of being a Christian and a crucial step toward peace. The first message of the risen Lord was, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.” When you think of all that happened to Jesus: Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial, abandonment by all the disciples, his greeting was quite a profound thing for Jesus to say, yet we know from our own experience that forgiveness and peace go hand in hand.

The gospel message of forgiveness isn’t reserved for just the disciples. We are reminded of this mandate to forgive each time we pray in the manner Jesus taught us. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Do as he commands and you will experience the Lord’s peace.

Do you want peace in your life? Jimi Hendrix offered this insight, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” This underlies messages in certain past homilies that some critics considered too political for their comfort zone. Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their views dismantled. That was how some reacted to John the Baptist, Jesus, and countless other prophetic voices in our Church through the ages. All of them spoke out in their quest to bring about peace in our divisive world.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with everything I say from the pulpit. However, I do hope that we can together take time to reflect on the bigger picture and apply the message of the gospel to our lives. Victor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning, observes, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

And what might that bigger picture be? Think back to what Jesus said was the greatest commandment: to love the Lord our God and our neighbor. Love is the force that overcomes the world’s ills. What will our response be to the challenges facing us in a world beset by much division?  

Peace of mind is a motivating force for many of us and if that is our goal, forgiveness becomes the vehicle to get us there by letting go of our fears, the source of our reactions to any thing that challenges us. Love, one of the gifts of the Spirit along with joy, patience, peace, kindness, generosity, self-control and gentleness, is what enables us to let go of our fears and forgive and strive to build a better world.

In the Gospel Jesus offers us profound advice, which if heeded would make this a better world. His advice? “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.” And how has he loved us? Just look at any crucifix. That is how much he has loved us, urging us to do the same. Yet Jesus isn’t imposing an impossible mission on us.

For love to happen, God gives us free will. He did not make us puppets pre-programed on how to live. He gave us the freedom to choose love. Jesus chose to lay down his life for us. This was not an easy choice for him to make, but love motivated Jesus to make the choices he did. He kept his Father’s commandments and remained in his love.

We continually have the power to choose. We choose what to wear, what to eat, how to spend our day, such as praying at Mass. We choose whom to spend time with. Many see friendship as the highest form of love. We choose to remain in love or for whatever reason, we choose not to love and end a marriage or a relationship. We choose how we will respond to every living thing that crosses our path. We have the free will to love one another or not.

Jesus also advised, “Remain in my love.”  We remain in His love if we keep His commandments. But unlike Moses who gave us the Ten Commandments, Jesus doesn’t provide a litany of commandments.  Instead he gives us one: Love one another.  Are we choosing to heed this commandment or not? To be a follower of Christ, that really matters. Love is more than a matter of affection. Love is also doing and giving. We are being urged to demonstrate our love in countless ways. Pay your love forward, befriending others in the way Jesus has loved you. When we act in love, we make God present to others.

In his letter, John pleads, “Brethren, let us love one another because love is of God.” If we truly love each other with the sacrificial love of the Lord, everything else falls into place. Consider how some have made their choices.

A young boy was sitting at his desk when he became aware that he had wet his pants. The poor guy was embarrassed; he wanted to die. This had never happened to him. He knew that he would never hear the end of their tease when the guys find out. “Please, God,” he prayed. “I’m in big trouble. I need help now.”

Looking up, he sees a classmate named Susie carrying a gold fish bowl filled with water. As she passed his desk, she dropped the bowl right into his lap. Instead of becoming the object of ridicule, he became the recipient of sympathy. The teacher rushed him to the gym to get him a pair of shorts to wear while his pants dried out.

Poor Susie became the center of scorn. “You klutz!” her classmates said, “What a dumb thing to do!” For the rest of the day, she was shunned. After school, he sees her standing alone waiting for the bus and goes up to her and whispers, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Susie whispered back, “I wet my pants once too.”

The gospel is about love, our love for one another and our love for God. It is one thing to talk about love, its quite another to put love into action. In her own way, Susie models the great love and compassion of God.

This being mother’s day, I am mindful of how so many mothers do just as Susie did, literally or figuratively, laying down their lives for others. One such mother was Princess Alice, whose mother was Queen Victoria. She had a young son who was ill with a dreaded contagious disease known as “black diphtheria.” It was the Covid-19 of that era. Alice loved her son very much but was advised not to even enter the child’s bedroom. At one point, without counting the cost, she went to his bedside and kissed him lovingly. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Alas, this turned out to be the “kiss of death.” Both mother and son were buried four months later.

Some might say she was foolish, but love is not always logical. To love as deeply as the cross, who said that would be sensible?

And so it goes. A mother responds to her child’s cry. A nurse gently bathes a patient’s bedsores. A youth listens to a friend coping with depression. A retired person helps out at a local thrift store. A mechanic fixes a traveler’s car after hours. Volunteers prepare and deliver meals to the homebound.

Ordinary things happen every day prompted by our choice to love. You could say these good people laid down their lives. They loved as Jesus did giving of their time and talent to make this a better world for someone. Real love is costly yet done freely. We have the choice to love as Jesus loved.

Unfortunately, we can also choose not to love. Many who claim to be followers of Christ live with disregard for others, spewing out hatred instead of love. Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, “Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds and unites; hate tears down and destroys.” Jesus chose us “to go and bear fruit that will remain.” May the choices we make with loving words and deeds enable others to see that God is very much present in our midst.

I am not a green thumb so pruning is an art I do not fully understand. To the ignorant, the notion of pruning sounds so strange. Cutting away branches will make a plant bigger? Years ago at my former parish an energetic gardener pruned the rhododendrons on the parish grounds. I wasn’t the only one who thought she had scalped them, yet she assured me that good pruning would make them more vibrant. Her efforts indeed paid off. When you cut off its longer branches, shrubs will grow even thicker. Experienced gardeners learn that pruning makes already fruitful branches even more fruitful.

But Jesus isn’t sharing this message to provide a lesson in horticulture 101. Rather he is giving us a lesson to make our faith more fruitful. Just as a branch cannot survive on its own apart from the vine, we cannot survive apart from Jesus. “Remain in me, as I remain in you.” We need him for our spiritual life and he needs us to proclaim the good news.

Pruning needs to be done in our lives if we want to have a vibrant prayerful relationship with Jesus. Otherwise, we could find ourselves saying prayers without really praying. I heard of one woman who prayed the rosary daily while watching TV. She said her prayers, all right, but was she really praying? I suspect few of us spend as much time in prayer as we need to for the sake of growing closer to Christ.

If we want our faith to remain or become vibrant, we cannot ignore what Jesus is saying here. Apart from him, we cannot thrive. A relevant question for us to ponder is, “What is hindering me from really knowing Jesus Christ?”

Examples of those branches that need to be pruned include the capital sins: avarice, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and anger. They prevent us from loving others in deed and truth as John in his letter urges us to. The same could be said of self-centered addictions such as drug or alcohol abuse, surfing the internet and pornography, they distance us from others and from God. Other branches we may need to prune include prejudices that hinder our love for others.

If our spirituality is drooping with little enthusiasm, then we need to cut back on those things that are keeping us apart from Christ. Blow the dust off your bible and spend some time deepening your relationship with the Lord. It takes more than coming to or watching the Sunday Mass to remain on the vine and really know Christ and his ways. Jesus tells us that we are already pruned “because of the word that I spoke to you.” Of course, that depends on if we are listening to him.

To remain on the vine, disciples must live their lives in Christ. They must trust the Lord and his commandments in order to observe them in their daily lives. Sometimes we rebel at a certain commandment or teaching of our Church because we don’t understand them and we protest, “Tell me why I should follow it before I am willing to do so.” The reality is we won’t understand the why behind a commandment or teaching until we do the “do.” For example, St. Paul often urges us, “Pray without ceasing,” and yet until we do, we won’t understand why this commandment is worth following.  

Over the years, I have seen people protest when I address a certain social justice issue, based on church teachings or the commandment to love. I have poked their conscience but have they used the occasion to better understand why the Lord is calling us to observe a certain commandment or teaching that they have issue with? Instead of rebelling, we need to learn to trust the Lord, to trust his word, to have faith. Not a blind faith, but an inquisitive faith that seeks to better understand what he is asking of us. By following his way, we can understand the merit of his commandments. Other wise, we may never understand and thus bear fruit.

If we remain in Christ and observe his commandments, he will give us his life in return and we will bear much fruit, fruit that makes our world a better place, fruit that glorifies God: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Last weekend we began our ACA campaign. The Catholic community of Western Washington brings the Word of God to life by supporting the 63 programs and services that touch the lives of many. Much of the funding for these ministries comes from the ACA. Your participation is an act of love that is demonstrated many times over.

Your pledge provides for quality education for children who will become tomorrow’s leaders. When you make a pledge, you are saying “thank you” to our retired nuns and priests who have served us in the past. Your pledge is also an investment in today’s seminarians who will serve our church for years to come.

Perhaps you have recently received a letter from the Archbishop. I know we are in tough times economically, but your generosity last year enabled us once again to surpass our goal. 172 pledges raised $56 K. Our goal this year is $46,450. We as Catholics are generous people. Our support of the ACA brings God’s love and compassion to those in need of God’s love in many ways. Thank you for making this a reality. In addition to meeting our goal, we hope to raise another $10K to install a bigger generator and to rewire the church so that we can use LED lights and be more energy efficient. Our rebate last year helped pay unexpected bills.

It is truly amazing what we can accomplish when we share our gifts. I join Archbishop Etienne in thanking you for your past support and urging you to join me in making another pledge this year. Next Sunday is commitment Sunday, so please return your pledge or mail your pledge. For your data to be safe, use the security envelopes that are provided. The last page of the bulletin may answer questions that you have about the ACA.