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.
