Monday, June 4, 2018

Homily for May 27, 2018 (Holy Trinity Sunday)

Click here to Listen to the Homily


I get asked a lot of questions, but not the kind that you would think. Rarely does anyone ask me what happened at the Council of Ephesus in 431 or what happened at the Finance council meeting a few weeks ago. Most of the questions are pretty simple. “Does it bother you to have to wear the same thing every day? Are you ever allowed to wear regular clothes?” My favorite of these types of questions begins, “Since you only work on weekends, what do you do during the rest of the week?” But sometimes the questions are a little more pointed. Sometimes they are a little more personal. “Are you ever lonely? Do you ever feel isolated?” Those are more than questions of history or clothing. Those are questions you can’t run from too easily. Those are questions that we all have an answer to. And those are questions that we all have to answer.

Adam was alone in the Garden, but then the Lord gave him some animals to name. But Adam still felt like he was alone in the Garden, and the Lord created Eve. And at last Adam wasn’t alone.

But when Eve was alone in the Garden, the serpent came to tempt her. When King David was alone in the palace and he gazed on the rooftop of his neighbor, he embraced temptation and sin. When the Lord Jesus was alone in the desert and later in the garden, the devil came to tempt him. Temptation often finds us in isolation and loneliness.

We weren’t created for isolation and loneliness. We certainly experience them. We certainly suffer from them. Sometimes the people who were supposed to be there with us are the ones who place us in isolation and loneliness. The ones who were supposed to gather us are the ones who separate us. We experience it. We suffer from it. We fight against it. We weren’t created for isolation and loneliness. We were created for something else. We were created for something better.

God was not alone when we were created. We are not the result of the Lord God looking for company. We were not created as the answer to the question if God was lonely and isolated. From all eternity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have lived in perfect harmony, perfect blessedness, and perfect communion. Nothing is needed. Nothing is lacking. There is no loneliness. There is no isolation. Only love. And from this love, and for this love, we were created. Not needed, but wanted. Not needed, but loved. Not needed, but desired.

God created us for communion, with him, and with creation, and with each other. The tragedy of sin, the echo of the No of Adam and Eve, fractures that communion. It damages those relationships. It leaves us, at times, in isolation and loneliness. But the triumph of grace, the echo of the Yes of Mary, the ever present reality of the Yes of the Lord Jesus, the continual Yes of the Church to her Lord, my Yes and yours, draws us, bit by bit and day by day, and moment by moment, into the communion for which we were created. The Lord Jesus, who conquered sin and death by the blood of his cross, desires to conquer our loneliness and our isolation.

As he draws us now into the mystery of the Eucharist, into that Holy Communion where the choirs of Angels and the Citizens of Heaven above sing in exultation, we admit our need. We admit our loneliness and our isolation. We cast the brokenness of our hearts into the fires of his Sacred Heart. And he will say to you and he will say to me, as he said to Peter, and Andrew, and Matthew and John, “Come, Follow Me” and the Lord Jesus will lead us into that perfect Communion where he lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.