Community in Mission

OK, so the title asks two focal questions plainly enough. Let’s begin with the first,  “Is the Church a clubhouse or a lighthouse?”

Many, it would seem, want the Church just to be a friendly place where people can gather. Many of these same people get angry when the Church shines the light of truth on something. They declare that the Church should just be open and inviting. They object when She is challenging and points to the demands of the Gospel.

But the Church has to be more than a clubhouse otherwise She is no different from a bowling league or the Moose Lodge. She is most certainly meant to be a lighthouse, a warning of danger giving light to those in darkness. But in doing so, She is also risking that some who are accustomed to the darkness will complain of the Light of Christ She reflects.

Here then is a focal question: clubhouse or lighthouse? Of course there does not need to be a radical dichotomy here. There are surely social aspects of the Church wherein She builds community. But mission needs to be first and it is our mission to be light that actually builds community since we are focused on one goal, not merely individual interests.

Another and even more provocative image is in the video below from Ignitermedia.com, which asks if the Church is a cruise ship or a battleship.

Many, it would seem, surely think of the Church as more of a cruise ship: one that exists for my pleasure and entertainment. “Peel me a grape!” seems to be the attitude that some bring to Church.  The video does a good job of pointing out how many think of the Church as a cruise ship by listing the questions many ask of a luxury cruise liner.

1. Do I like the music they play in the ballroom?
2. Do I like the captain and his crew?
3. Is the service good?
4. Am I well fed?
5. Are my needs met promptly?
6. Is the cruise pleasant?
7. Am I comfortable?
8. Will I cruise with them again?

It is true that our parishes ought to work very hard to make sure the faithful are effectively served and helped to find God. Good sermons, excellent and obedient liturgy (including good music), a beautiful Church, and dedicated clergy and lay staff are all important. God deserves the very best and so do His people.

However, it also follows that the world does not exist merely to please me. No parish we attend will ever be exactly the way we want it. No priest preaches perfectly every Sunday. The choir does not always sing my favorites.

Some people stay away from Mass calling it “boring,” or saying they aren’t being fed. But in the end, it’s not about you! We go to Mass to worship God because God is worthy, because God deserves our praise, and because He has commanded us to be there. God has something important to say to us whether we want to hear it or not. He directs us to eat his flesh and drink his blood whether we like it or not. We must eat or we will die. Holy Mass is about God and what He is saying and doing.

The video goes on to suggest a better image for the Church—a battleship. I was less impressed with the questions given in the video comparing the Church and a battleship, so I’ve added my some of my own as well.

1. Is the ship on a clear and noble mission?
2. Is the ship able to endure storms at sea?
3. Does the captain submit to a higher authority?
4. Are the tactics and moves of the enemy well understood by bridge crew?
5. Does the bridge crew have proper training and experience?
6. Are the general crew members equipped to succeed?
7.  Is the general crew well trained in the available weaponry?
8. Does the general crew cooperate with the captain?
9. Are they taught to be disciplined and vigilant?
10. Are they rooted in (naval) tradition yet well aware of current circumstances?
11. Are they at their posts?
12. Do they take the battle seriously?
13. Does the ship have adequate first aid and medical help?
14. Is the crew properly fed?

Some dislike any military imagery in reference to the faith. But pugna spiritalis (spiritual battle) is a simple fact. We are besieged by the world, the flesh, and the devil. We are called to engage in the battle and, by God’s grace, to persevere through to victory.  Our weapons are the Word of God, the Teachings of the Church, the Sacraments, and prayer. We cannot win on our own; we must work together under the authority of the Church, which is Herself under God’s care and authority. We are rooted in the wisdom of tradition and, guided by the Pope and Bishops, we are to apply that wisdom and our training to these current times. Peter’s Barque has endured many storms yet has never sunk. She is a sure, steady ship on a clear and noble mission.

One of the more underreported sins is greed. Too easily do we conclude that greed is always about “that other person over there,” who appears to have a little more than I do. Yes, that rich guy over there, the one who earns a dollar more per hour than I do; he is greedy, but I’m not.

But honestly, for all of us, when do we ever come to a place in our life when we say, “I’m earning more than enough money, I’ll just give the rest away to the poor, or to some worthy cause.” Do most people ever come to that point? Not on your life! Consider a man who earns a million dollars a year. When does he ever say, “Honestly, I really only need about $200,000 a year to live very well; I think I’ll just give the other $800,000 away”?

Almost never would such a thought even occur to the average person. Instead, most of us just expand our lifestyle and go on complaining that we still don’t have enough. Yet somewhere along the line, we ought to admit that we do cross over into greed.

What is greed? Greed is the insatiable desire for more. It is a deep drive in us that, no matter how much we have, makes us think it’s not enough. We still want more. And then we get more and we still want more. And the cycle continues. This is the experience of greed.

But, familiar though this is, too few of us are willing to consider that greed is really a problem we can have. Greed is always something that other guy has.

Of course it doesn’t help that we live in a culture of consumption, which constantly tells us we don’t have enough. The car we’re driving isn’t as good as this other car we could be driving (according to the commercial). And so even though we have a perfectly good car: one that has four wheels, a working engine, and probably even air-conditioning, it still it isn’t good enough, and we are actually drawn to feeling deprived by the clever marketing experts of Madison Avenue. So it is with almost every other product or amenity that is sold to us on a daily basis. Therefore it almost never occurs to most of us that we may have crossed the line somewhere into greed. Despite having even six- and seven-figure incomes, many still feel deprived.

But this is all the more reason that we should spend some time reflecting on the nature of greed. Greed is a deep drive of sin, one of the deadly sins, and it brings with it a kind of blindness and illusion that causes us to mistake mere wants for true needs. And as we entertain the illusion that mere wants are actually serious needs, there’s very little to trigger in us the thought that we actually have more than enough. There is very little to cause me to say, “Gee, I’ve gotten greedy” or to work to curb the insatiable desire for more that we call greed.

Once again, it’s the other guy that’s greedy; I’m not. It’s a problem that those nasty rich and powerful people have. Never mind that I’m pretty darned rich myself, living in a home with running water, air conditioning, and amenities like granite countertops and widescreen TVs.

Frankly, when was the last time you heard a sermon on greed? And if you did, it was probably the priest talking about some abstract group of people (not present, of course) who probably also hold the “wrong” political opinions, etc. Yes, greed is always somebody else’s problem.

But when do I honestly look at myself and wonder if I am greedy? When do I ever conclude, on a very personal level, that I have more than enough and that I need to be a lot more generous with what has become excessive in my life? When do I ever apply the old precept that if I have two coats, one of them belongs to the poor? And yes, I understand that it’s good to have something laid up for a rainy day. But when do I ever ask myself if I’m really trusting in God, or just trusting in my rainy day fund? When do I ever wonder if I’ve crossed the line?

I realize that some of you who read this post will find it disturbing. Let me assure you, so do I. These are uncomfortable questions.

Let me also assure you that I do not write this post from a political perspective. I do not want the government mandating how much I can or should earn, and how much I can or should give away. I speak here of a very personal moral assessment that we all should make.

I also do not write as an economist. I realize that market-based economies are complex, and that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with meeting people’s needs with products and services. I am also aware that markets supply jobs. But here again I must insist that somewhere we all ought to ask some personal questions about limits. We cannot simply conclude that greed is always the other guy’s problem.

Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, and so we ought to take it more seriously than many of us do. Yes, somewhere there’s room for most of us to reflect on one of the most underreported sins: greed.

Every sermon ought to answer three questions: “What?”, “So what?”, and “Now what?”  There is a danger that on the feast of the Holy Trinity we could seek merely to describe the mystery and then sit down. But if so, there would still remain the question of what this mystery has to do with me (other than that I should think rightly about God). With some effort to apply the mystery to us and the issues of our day, I would like to present a written version of the second half of my sermon from yesterday. It is my hope to answer the questions “So what?” and “Now what?” The recorded version can be heard by clicking the video below.

So you may wonder what all this high doctrine has to do with you and your life. Actually it has a lot to do with us.

I. You and I are said to be made in the image and likeness of God. But if God is not all by himself and exists in a communion of three persons, then we ourselves are also called to live that way, since we are made in the image and likeness of God.

You know, every now and again I hear people speak of the “self-made man.” Please! Where does such arrogance come from? Did you cause yourself to be born? Who changed your diapers? Who fed you when you didn’t even know what food was? Who taught you to read, walk, and talk, and paid your bills for all those years? Who paved the roads you drive on and built the infrastructure you depend on? And yet some folks walk around as if they did all that by themselves. Hmm… There is no such thing as the self-made-man. I need you; you need me. We’re all part of God’s body.

We are individuals. I am not you and you are not I. But I cannot exist or survive without you. I am made to be in communion with you and you with me.

And there is something almost trinitarian about us. I’ll say of myself,

For you, I am your (spiritual) father; with you I am your bother; from you I am your son.

I have been twenty-five years a priest, but almost twenty of those years have been spent right here with you (my congregation of Holy Comforter). I am the man I am today from you. You’ve prayed with me and for me; you’ve given example; you’ve lifted me up, sung to me, and praised God with me; you’ve taught me. I am every bit your son as I strive to be your (spiritual) father. You formed me. God has created me to be the man I am, but He did it through you. This parish is the singular most important influence in my life. Yes, for you I am your spiritual father; with you I am your brother, but from you I am your son!

What I have just said to you about myself … you have those realities in your life too. You have been father or mother to some, brother or sister to others, son or daughter to others. All these things cycle in our lives and make us who we are. We are called to be in the image and likeness of God. And God is not the Father all by Himself. He is a communion of three persons sharing one substance. He is one divinity, one “family.”

So here is the first “so what” of the mystery of the Trinity: that we are made in the image of God. We are individuals, but called to live in communion  and relationship with one another. The Father is Father because He has a Son. The Son is Son because He has a Father. Yet each of them in His individuality keeps communion, a communion so deep that it is a person: the Holy Spirit. So too for us, who though individual, are meant to live in communion with God and one other and see our communion bear fruit.

II. There is another “So what?” (or “Now what?”) to consider. We are currently living in a culture in which we have seen our families go into great crisis. And part of the reason for this is that many today talk a lot about individual rights (which do exist). However, the basic unit of society is not the individual. The basic unit of society is the family.

Think of the family like the atom. What happened in the 1940s when we split the atom? Tremendous destructive forces were set loose which, if they were not controlled, would lead to utter devastation for miles around.

And so too for us, who though individuals (the way the protons, neutrons, and electrons are parts of the atom), are in the image of God and are meant to live together in families. And if our families are being split or are not strong, tremendous destructive forces are set loose in our culture. So here today, on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, I want to say that one of the most urgent needs for us is to pray for and to work for unity in our families.

Now what does that mean for you? I don’t know. But maybe it means that there is someone in your family you need to reach out to. Maybe it is a son or daughter who has become distant or alienated. Maybe it means you need to seek marriage counseling or make a Marriage Encounter weekend. Maybe family counseling is needed. Maybe there is someone you need to forgive, or someone in the family you need to ask forgiveness of. Whatever it means for you today to work for your family unity and strength, that is for you to decide. But do it. Don’t delay.

On the Feast of the Holy Trinity, remember that the basic unit of society is not the individual; it is the communion of persons we call the traditional family. And we’ve got to be very serious about working to strengthen our family life.

We’ve been through a long period during which too many walk away from family problems rather then working to resolve them or learning to live with some of them.

I am old enough to remember a time in this country when divorces were rather difficult to get. Before 1969, divorces were quite rare in part because they were difficult to get. It often took several years of legal wrangling to get one. It was so difficult that some even flew off to Mexico and lived there for a few weeks to get them.

Now there was a reason that divorces were difficult to get. It was part of the wisdom of our culture at that time that if you made a commitment you ought to stick by it and be held to it. Believe it or not, people used to think that! And second, there was an understanding that children needed stability and intact, two-parent families. I remember that my parents’ generation had an expression that even if a marriage was unhappy you ought to “stick it out for the sake of the kids.” There was a belief that children needed stable families and could trust their parents to work out their differences and be there for them, that children needed both a father and mother present to be properly formed. And thus there were all kinds of legal barriers to getting divorced easily.

And that’s just the way it was until 1969 when the first “no-fault divorce” laws began to pass and were railroaded through this country (much like the “gay” non-marriage movement of today). After this, divorces could be obtained in a matter of weeks. And so the number of divorces skyrocketed. And, as we all know, it was the children who suffered the most.

Now brethren, I know that life is complicated. I am not here to say that if you’re divorced you’re a bad person. You may have tried to save your marriage but could not do so. I am not here to make individual judgments.

But when we look at the divorce rate and the rate of single motherhood (i.e., absent fatherhood) in our culture, we can see we’re in trouble. When I was born in 1961, 80% of black children grew up in a two-parent home. Today, only 20% do. And other races are “catching up.” This is an American problem.

This isn’t good for us; it isn’t a sign of health. We are made in the image and likeness of God and we are meant to live in communion. And the fundamental communion for us that comes from God Himself is that a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh, and they bear fruit in their children. That is the fundamental unit of society. And without it, we won’t be strong. A study of anthropology will show that civilizations do not survive when their family structure goes into disarray.

So, be serious about it. Pray and work for unity in your family. I know it isn’t easy and that there may be some nuts falling from your family tree. But listen: every marriage and family has some tensions and problems. Working through these, rather than running from them, can bring us strength and wisdom.

I think one of the problems that underlies this is that we have unrealistic expectations. We want and think that everything should be “peachy.” We get all upset when things aren’t comfortable and “nice.” And we live in a consumer society that says, “You deserve to happy about everything!” But, brethren, that is not life; that is not realistic. Life is hard and has struggles. But these struggles help to make us stronger.

So if there is some tension in your family, maybe God is permitting it to help make you stronger, wiser, and more patient and merciful. Yes, there are hardships. But here is the problem: too many people expect marriage and family to be ideal, and if there is any ordeal, they want to look for a new deal. And that is not the way life works. Happiness is ultimately an “inside job.” In this world we are going to have tribulation, but with the Lord we have to learn to be strong and preserve the unity He intends for us. We are made in the image and likeness of God and are meant for the communion of the family.

Talk to your kids about this. Prepare them for faithful and lasting marriage. And don’t get all hang-dog and think you can’t talk to them about it because you yourself didn’t accomplish it perfectly. Just say, “Here’s the way—God’s way—now walk in it. “

III. And the final thing to say, here on Father’s Day, is that critical to this problem of the family is a crisis in fatherhood. Too many children are being raised without their fathers. And that has a lot of effects.

God’s will is that every child should have a father and a mother; not just a mother, or just a father, or two fathers, or two mothers; but a father and a mother. Now this makes sense psychologically. We all have one human nature, but there is a feminine and a masculine genius. My mother taught me about the feminine genius in ways that my father could not have. And my father taught me of the masculine genius in ways my mother could not have. Together they helped form my personality. And when we don’t have that, as is the case in huge numbers in our culture today, things begin to get out of balance. And thus it is critical to get fathers back with their families.

Now I am not here to make any excuses for men, but I will tell you that in our culture today there is a tendency to ridicule men. For  example, there are a huge number of what I would call the “men are stupid” commercials. The general scenario of them is some goofy man who is clueless about what to do in some situation or how to use some product. Enter the wise and all-knowing woman who sets him straight. Sometimes the children must also set him straight. But the message is that men are stupid, clueless, foolish, and are buffoons. The sitcoms also perpetuate this representation. On TV, the children are the ones who are all-wise, cool, and clued-in, while the parents are hopelessly out-of-touch and stupid. The woman or mother is often poorly portrayed, but even she looks wise and rational compared to the man, who is made out to be a total buffoon. Thus the culture presents a picture of men and fathers as stupid and clownish.  And in other situations men are depicted as often violent and unreasonable—even as sexual predators.

The “men are stupid” commercials and sitcoms are in abundance in our culture and they are affecting the way people view men and fathers. None of this helps children to respect their elders and certainly not their fathers. And this has a grave effect on the family and on our culture. Men are demonized and portrayed as useless, stupid, and foolish. And many young men who see a steady diet of this start to imitate what they see, and in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, actually become what they have seen men portrayed to be. So they act badly, play the fool, and behave irresponsibly.

Again, no excuses here, but this is part of the mix in our culture. And too many of us live unreflectively in this climate and think “That’s just how things are.” No that is NOT how things are. Scripture says that the Lord puts a Father in honor over his Children (Sirach 3:2). Now that means that a father ought to live honorably, but it also means that we have no business ridiculing men and making men and fathers out as buffoons. A mother’s authority over her children is also confirmed (Ibid). And a lot of this “youth culture” stuff seeks to undermine the authority and wisdom of parents.

Once again, all of this attacks the family. But too often we just go on living unreflectively and unresponsively to these attacks on the dignity of the family and the honor due to fathers and mothers. At some point we have to rise up and say “NO, I do not accept the ridiculing attitude and will not let it affect my thinking. I cannot let it get into my children’s thinking since it affects the way they view adults, the way they understand themselves, and the way they grow up. Our families are being threatened by this and it all has to go.”

So on this feast of the Holy Trinity I would say to you that the family is under attack. It is being threatened by distorted thinking that is not the mind of God. We need to turn a critical eye to it and expose it for the error it is. It is worth staying in the fight, working for unity in our families, repelling attacks on the dignity of the family, confronting derogation of men and attempts to demonize them, and seeking to foster traditional, biblical marriage. We are made in the image and likeness of God. We are individuals, to be sure, but we are meant to live in communion, the communion we call the family. We will not be happy, nor will we flourish or find fulfillment in any other way.

(N.B. This is part one of a sermon series wherein I explore the “why” of the Trinity. In Part Two I strive to explore the “so what” and “now what” of the teaching. Part two is here: Plain Talk about Family Life on the Feast of the Trinity).

There is an old Spiritual that says, My God is so high, you can’t get over him, he’s so low, you can’t get under him, he’s so wide you can’t get around him, you must come in, by and through the Lamb.

Not a bad way of saying that God is other; He is beyond what human words can tell or describe; He is beyond what human thoughts can conjure. And on the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity we do well to remember that we are pondering a mystery that cannot fit in our minds.

A mystery, though, is not something wholly unknown. In the Christian tradition the word “mystery” refers to something partially revealed, much more of which lies hidden. Thus, as we ponder the teaching on the Trinity, though there are some things we can know by revelation, but much more is beyond our reach or understanding.

Let’s ponder the Trinity by exploring it, seeing how it is exhibited in Scripture, and how we, who are made in God’s image, experience it.

I. The Teaching on the Trinity Explored – Perhaps we do best to begin by quoting the Catechism, which says, The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons: [Father, Son and Holy Spirit] … The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God, whole and entire (Catechism, 253).

So there is one God, and the three persons of the Trinity each possess the one Divine nature fully. The Father IS God; He is not 1/3 of God. Likewise the Son, Jesus, IS God; He is not 1/3 of God. And so too, the Holy Spirit IS God, not a mere third of God. So each of the three persons possesses the one Divine nature fully.

It is our experience that if there is only one of something, and I possess that something fully, there is nothing left for you. Yet, mysteriously, each of the Three Persons fully possesses the one and only Divine Nature fully while remaining a distinct person.

One of the great masterpieces of the Latin Liturgy is the preface for Trinity Sunday. The preface sets forth the Christian teaching on the Trinity compactly, yet clearly. The following translation of the Latin is my own:

It is truly fitting and just, right and helpful unto salvation that we should always and everywhere give thanks to you O Holy Lord, Father almighty and eternal God: who, with your only begotten Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, one Lord: not in the oneness of a single person, but in a Trinity of one substance. For that which we believe from your revelation concerning your glory, we acknowledge of your Son and the Holy Spirit without difference or distinction. Thus, in the confession of the true and eternal Godhead there is adored a distinctness of persons, a oneness in essence, and an equality in majesty, whom the angels and archangels, the Cherubim also and the Seraphim, do not cease to daily cry out with one voice saying: Holy, Holy, Holy …

Wowza! A careful and clear masterpiece, but one which baffles the mind as its words and phrases come forth. So deep is this mystery that we had to invent a paradoxical word to summarize it: Triune (or Trinity). “Triune” literally means “Three-one” (tri+unus) and “Trinity” is a conflation of “Tri-unity” meaning the “three-oneness” of God.

If all this baffles you, good! If you were to say you fully understood all this, I would have to call you a heretic. For the teaching on the Trinity, while not contrary to reason per se, does transcend it.

And here is a final picture or image before we leave our exploration stage. The picture at the upper right is an experiment I remember doing back in high school. We took three projectors, each of which projected a circle. One circle was red, another green, and another blue. As we made the three circles intersect, the color white appeared at the intersection (see above). Mysteriously, three colors are present there, but only one shows forth. There are three but there is one. This analogy for the Trinity is not perfect (no analogy is, or it wouldn’t be an analogy), because Father, Son, and Spirit do not “blend” to make God. But the analogy does manifest a mysterious “three-oneness” of the color white. Somehow in the one, three are present. (By the way, this experiment only works with light, don’t try it with paint. 🙂 )

II. The Teaching on the Trinity Exhibited – Scripture, too, presents images and pictures of the Trinity. Interestingly enough, most of  the pictures I want to present are from the Old Testament.

Now I want to say, as a disclaimer, that Scripture scholars debate the meaning of the texts I am about to present; that’s what they get paid the big bucks to do! Let me be clear in pointing out that I am reading these texts as a New Testament Christian and I am thus seeing in them a Doctrine that only later became clear. I am not getting in a time machine and trying to understand them as a Jew from the 8th Century BC might have understood them. And why should I? That’s not what I am. I am reading these texts as a Christian in the light of the New Testament, as I have a perfect right to do. You the reader, of course, are free to decide from your perspective if these texts really ARE images or hints of the Trinity. Take them or leave them. Here they are:

1. From today’s first reading: Having come down in a cloud, the Lord stood with Moses there and proclaimed his name, “LORD.” Thus the Lord passed before him and cried out, “The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” And thus we see that the LORD announces his name three times, LORD … LORD … LORD. It is not without some implied instruction that the LORD announces his name formally three times as if to say, “LORD” once for each person. Is it a coincidence or of significance? You decide.

2. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness …” (Gen 1:26). So God speaks to Himself in the plural: “let us … our …”  Some claim this is just an instance of the “royal we” being used. Perhaps, but I see an image of the Trinity. There is one (God said) but there is also a plural (us, our). Right at the very beginning in Genesis there is already a hint that God is not all by himself, but is in a communion of love.

2. Elohim?? In the quote above, the word used for God is אֱלֹהִ֔ים (Elohim). Now it is interesting that this word is in a plural form. From the viewpoint of pure grammatical form, Elohim means “Gods.”  However, the Jewish people understood the sense of the word to be singular. Now this is a much debated point and you can read something more of it from a Jewish perspective here: Elohim as Plural yet Singular. My point here is not to try to understand it as a Jew from the 8th Century B.C. or as a Jew today might understand it. Rather, what I find interesting to observe is that one of the main words for God in the Old Testament is plural yet singular, singular yet plural. It is one, yet it  is also plural. God is one, yet he is three. As a Christian noticing this about one of the main titles of God, I see an image of the Trinity.

3.  And the LORD appeared to [Abram] by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.  He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the earth,  and said, “My Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant.  Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree,  while I fetch a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on — since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” (Gen 18:1-5). Now from a purely grammatical point of view, this passage is very difficult since it switches back and forth  from singular references to plural ones. Note first that the Lord (singular) appeared to Abram. (In this case יְהוָ֔ה Yahweh  (YHWH) is the name used for God). And yet what Abram sees is three men. Some have said that this is just God and two angels. But I see the Trinity being alluded to here. But then Abram addresses “them” saying, “My Lord” (singular). The “tortured” grammar continues as Abram asks that water be fetched so that he can “wash your feet” (singular) and that the “LORD” (singular) can rest yourselves (plural). The same thing happens in the next sentence in which Abram wants to fetch bread that you (singular) may refresh yourselves (plural). In the end, the LORD (singular) gives answer, but it is rendered: “So they said.”  Plural, singular … which is it? Both. God is one; God is three. For me as a Christian, this is a picture of the Trinity. Since the reality of God cannot be reduced to words, we have here a grammatically difficult passage. But I “see” what is going on. God is one and God is three; He is singular and yet He is plural.

4.  In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the Seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Is 6:1-3). God is Holy, Holy, and yet again, Holy. Some say this is just a Jewish way of saying “very Holy,” but as Christian, I see more. I see a reference to each of the Three Persons. Perfect praise here requires three “holys”—why? Omni Trinum Perfectum (all things are perfect in threes), but why? So as a Christian, I see the angels not just using the superlative but also praising each of the Three persons. God is three (Holy, Holy, Holy) and God is one. And so the text says, “Holy IS the Lord.” Three declarations of “Holy”—coincidence or of significance? You decide.

5. In the New Testament there are obviously many references, but let me make note here of just three. Jesus says, The Father and I are one (Jn 10:30). He says again, To have seen me is to have seen the Father (Jn. 14:9). And, have you ever noticed that in  the baptismal formula Jesus uses “bad” grammar? He says, Baptize them in the Name (not names as it “should” be) of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19). God is One (name) and God is Three (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

Thus Scripture exhibits the teaching of the Trinity, even going back to the beginning.

III. The Teaching of the Trinity Experienced – We who are made in the image and likeness of God ought to experience something of the mystery of the Trinity within us. And sure enough, we do.

For it is clear that we are all distinct individuals. I am not you, and you are not I. Yet it is also true that we are made for communion. As humans, we cannot exist apart from one another. Obviously we depend on our parents, through whom God made us. But even beyond physical descent, we need one another for completion.

Despite what old songs say, no man is a rock or an island. There is no such thing as a self-made man. Even the private business owner needs customers, suppliers, shippers, and other middlemen. He uses roads he did not build, has electricity supplied to him over lines he did not string, and speaks a language to his customers that he did not create. Further, whatever the product he makes, he is likely the beneficiary of technologies and processes he did not invent. The list could go on and on.

We are individual, but we are social. We are one, but linked to many. Clearly we do not possess the kind of unity God does, but the “three-oneness” of God echoes in us. We are one, yet we are many.

We have entered into perilous times in which our interdependence and communal influence are underappreciated. That attitude that prevails today is one of rather extreme individualism: “I can do as I please.” There is a reduced recognition of how our individual choices affect the whole of the community, Church, or nation. That I am an individual is true, but it is also true that I live in communion with others and must respect that dimension of who I am. I exist not only for me, but for others. And what I do affects others, for good or ill.

The “It’s none of my business what others do” attitude also needs some attention. Privacy and discretion have important places in our life, but so does having concern for what others do and think, the choices they make, and the effects that such things have on others. A common moral and religious vision is an important thing to cultivate. It is important what others think and do, and we should care about fundamental things like respect for life, love, care for the poor, education, marriage, and family. Indeed marriage and family are fundamental to the community, the nation, and the Church. I am one, but I am also in communion with others and they with me.

Finally there is a rather remarkable conclusion that some have drawn: the best image of God in us is not a man alone, or a woman alone, but rather a man and a woman together in a lasting and fruitful relationship we call marriage. For when God said, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26) the text goes on to say, “Male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). And God says to them, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28). So the image of God (as God sets it forth most perfectly) is the married and fruitful couple.

Here of course we must be careful to understand that what we manifest sexually, God manifests spiritually. For God is not male or female in His essence. Thus we may say, The First Person loves the Second Person and the Second Person loves the First Person. And so real is that love that it bears fruit in the Third Person. In this way the married couple images God, for the husband loves his wife and the wife loves her husband, and their love bears fruit in their children. [1]

So today, as we extol the great mystery of the Trinity, we look not merely outward and upward to understand, but also inward to discover that mystery at work in us, who are made in the image and likeness of God.

Radical atheists love to ridicule believers. They mock our “talking snake” in Genesis but really show their own lack of sophistication in understanding the nature of allegory or symbol in human language. But since I do understand allegory I will let them off the hook when it comes to their own “God particle” and the language of “blind evolution” (as if a process could have eyes and see or not see).” For unlike some (not all) of them, I attended high school grammar class and understand the nature of allegory, symbol, hyperbole, and metaphor when it comes to human parlance.

But I do have this question: “Why is it more rational to believe the universe created itself than to believe God created the universe?”

To quote my own brother, George, who is a smart fellow, “I’ve always been puzzled why most atheists seem hostile to religion. I guess I would expect more an attitude of condescension or superiority because they’re ‘not so stupid as to believe in God.’ And yet they usually feel threatened by religion which usually provides a civilizing aspect they should appreciate.” Well said, Brother George. Religion has its place in human culture, whether nonbelievers like to admit it or not. It is true that religion has not been without its sins (after all, human beings are involved), but so has atheist materialism had its sins and bloodbaths (e.g., Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and others who had “unpleasant” materialist escapades).

Can we agree that sin is the universal condition of fallen humanity and move beyond silly “blame game” when in fact we are all responsible?

Back to the question: “Why is it more rational to believe the universe created itself than to believe God created the universe?” Am I not being asked to ascribe to dumb luck a world that shows forth multivariate, multilevel, and intricate order? Am I not being asked to “believe” that a tornado or some other chance event just happened to tear through the “junk yard” of the world’s elements and produced a fully functioning (at every level all at once) universe with all its moving parts? Why is this more “rational” than to believe that an intelligence (we call “God”) deliberately ordered all this matter? Why is it more rational to believe the universe created itself than to believe God created the universe?

I would ask for concise responses from any atheists who choose to answer. I realize that science cannot “prove God” using its physical tools. Fine. But why must materialists refute God, a position that cannot be verified using the scientific method? Again the question: “Why is it more rational to believe the universe created itself than to believe God created the universe?”

Remember, the key word is “rational,” a word of which atheists do not have full ownership. Stephen Colbert humorously notes that atheists, too, can have rather irrational reactions to religion in this world. To our atheist interlocutors I pose just this one question: “Why is this more ‘rational’ than to believe that an intelligence (we call “God”) purposefully ordered all this matter?”

Here is a funny video by Colbert showing that irrationality is not the exclusive province of “believers.”

For many years when I was growing up,  the image I had of St. Paul was of a bold evangelist who went from town to town teaching and preaching about Christ in powerful fashion. I imagined people mesmerized as he preached and took on his opponents.

Recently, though, I have altered my view just a bit based on Scriptural descriptions of Paul I have read. I have no doubt that he was a brilliant theologian. Paul was reputed to have been one of the greatest students of one of the greatest rabbis of that time, Gamaliel (Acts 22:3). I have no doubt as to his zeal for Christ, and I imagine that this fervor was reflected on his face as he preached and taught. But it would seem that Paul was not in fact recognized as a particularly gifted preacher. Consider the following texts from Scripture along with some commentary by me in red.

1. Now I myself, Paul, urge you through the gentleness and clemency of Christ, I who (you say) am humble when present in your midst, but bold toward you when absent … (2 Cor 10:1). The key element to glean from this passage is that people regarded Paul as rather humble and quiet in person but in contrast quite bold and assertive in his letters. This does not paint the picture of a fearsome and bold preacher.
2. For someone will say, “His [Paul’s] letters are severe and forceful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.” (2 Cor 10:10).  Here is even clearer evidence that some (though surely not all or even most) thought of Paul’s presence and preaching as weak and of no account. The Greek phrase λόγος  ἐξουθενημένος  (logos exouthenhmenos),  translated here as “speech contemptible,”  can also be translated as “words or speech of no account,” or “a word or speech  to be despised.”  Now, of course, since it is Paul himself who is reporting this, he may well be overstating the perception of his preaching out of a kind of humility. But here again is more evidence that Paul may not have been a highly gifted or bold preacher,  at least from a worldly perspective.
3. For I think that I am not in any way inferior to these “superapostles.” Even if I am untrained in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; in every way we have made this plain to you in all things (2 Cor 11:5-6). The exact identity of the “superapostles” is debated, but there is wide consensus that Paul does not mean here the Apostles chosen by Christ. Rather he likely refers to itinerant preachers who were well known for their oratorical skills. Some of them may have been Judaizers who opposed Paul. But it would seem that these skilled orators could draw a crowd. Perhaps they are somewhat like the revivalists of today. Here too is more evidence that Paul was not possessed of great oratorical skill. He seems to admit this freely, but refuses to concede that he is inferior to anyone in the knowledge of the faith.
4. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with the cleverness of human eloquence, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning … (1 Cor 1:17). Again, Paul claims no clever oratorical skill but actually underscores his lack of eloquence to emphasize that the power is in the Cross of Christ.
5. On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight … Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” Then he went upstairs again and broke bread (Acts 20:7-11).  🙂 Note that Luke describes Paul as preaching “on and on.” The sermon seems to have put the young Eutychus right to sleep and the young man, sitting on a window sill, falls three flights to his death. Paul then runs down and raises him from the dead. (All in a night’s work, I guess!)  Finally, Paul returns to complete the Mass. It is a humorous and touching anecdote in many ways, but it is also a story that illustrates that Paul could be somewhat soporific.

So it would seem that Paul was not possessed of great oratorical skill. This may surprise us given his astonishing missionary accomplishments. But we must avoid superficiality in understanding the power of God’s Word. The power is in God. The battle is the Lord’s. We may all prefer to listen to great orators who can bring the house down. But God can write straight with crooked lines. He can make a way out of no way. If God could speak through Balaam’s donkey (cf Num 22:21), maybe He can speak through me, too. And maybe He can speak through you as well.

Avoiding Superficiality – As a priest, I work very hard to develop my preaching skills. I think the people of God deserve this. But in the end, none of us should ignore the fact that God can speak in and through the humblest of people and circumstances. Paul may not have had all the rhetorical skills we think he should have had, but he was possessed of many other gifts. He was a brilliant theologian, had amazing zeal and energy, and was committed to walk thousands of miles and endure horrible sufferings so that he could proclaim Christ crucified and risen. Paul was also a natural leader and one of the most fruitful evangelizers the Church has ever known. We tend to prize oratorical skill and personality rather highly, but there is obviously more to evangelizing effectively than eloquence and charisma.

Our TV-based, media-centered culture has come to focus primarily on personal magnetism and the ability to “turn a phrase.” The ability to communicate well is surely a great gift, but there are many others as well. In valuing certain gifts over others we risk superficiality and injustice. The Church needs all our gifts.

What gifts do you have that God can use?

This song says, “If you can use anything Lord, you can use me.”

We live in times that tend to emphasize the physical and the material. And this affects even those of us who strive to have a spiritual life. Too easily we assess our blessings in ways that emphasize the material more so than the spiritual. We feel blessed if our income is good and our physical health intact, but many seem to have little esteem for spiritual gifts like wisdom (which often comes from suffering), knowledge of the truth, and fortitude or courage.

Our prayers often skew heavily toward asking God to improve our finances, mend our health, or alleviate some discomfort in this world. While it is not wrong to pray for these sorts of things, at times it almost sounds as though we are saying to God, “Make this world comfortable enough for me and I’ll just stay here forever.” We’re a little bit like the older son in the story of the Prodigal Son, who wants a kid goat so he can celebrate with his friends rather than to go into the party and celebrate with his father (Luke 15).

But the true goal in life is not to celebrate with our friends, it is to celebrate with the Father! Yet you’d never know it from the way many pray. “King Jesus is a-listening” all day long just to hear some sinner pray for wisdom, greater love for God, deeper prayer, greater longing for spiritual things, chastity, generosity, proper priorities, and so forth.

We also see something of this in the first temptation in the desert: Satan tries to tempt the hungry Jesus to turn stones into bread. Satan’s goal is to try to distract Jesus from His fundamental mission as Redeemer and to have Him use His power to satisfy His own physical hunger rather than to liberate souls.

In and of itself, satisfying hunger is not evil. We all need to eat in order to have the strength to do what God asks. But Jesus, of course, had gone into the desert to fast as a way to strengthen His soul and prepare for His mission.

There are things that are simply more important than bodily hunger and other physical needs. Ultimately, the needs of our soul are more important than those of our body. And thus if food or drink or sex, while not evil in themselves, endanger our soul or hinder our spiritual mission, they should be refused.

Jesus counters Satan by saying that “man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Bread alone, the physical world alone, does not satisfy our needs. Man’s life does not consist in possessions (Lk 12:15). We are not only physical beings; we have a soul that it has its hungers, and the Word of God must answer these hungers.

This is balanced. But Satan would have us off balance; he would have us overly concerned—even obsessed with—the needs of the body and other worldly concerns.

Parents, for example, often pay close attention to the academic grades of their children, but many show little concern for the spiritual lives of their children or important aspects of their moral lives. Our culture shows great concern for overcoming physical maladies such as heart disease, AIDS, cancer, and so forth, but there’s little attention paid to the spiritual and moral maladies that often underlie many of our social ills and even contribute to our physical illnesses.

Jesus does not deny that there is a place for bread and the physical needs and daily life that the bread symbolizes. He merely says that man does not live by bread alone, and that the Word of God, the truth of God, the beauty, the holiness, and the glory of God, is also to be food for our soul.

Father Livio Fanzaga has eloquently written,

With the cutting sword of the Word of God, Jesus removes the mask of one of the most current and devastating Satanic lies. Man is not an animal trapped in the short-term cycle of matter. He is a spiritual being who needs to find divine truth even before material food. Never before as in our time Satan has taken succeeded in promising happiness through material good … Man is reduced to the hungers of his body … [And thus] the liar succeeds in depriving man of his dignity, his beauty, his greatness, and his immortal and divine destiny (The Deceiver, p. 118-119).

For the Church, too, there are great temptations in this materialistic time. Great esteem is given to the corporal works of mercy such as feeding the sick, clothing the naked, and so forth. It is clear that these are important, necessary, and glorious works without which we cannot be saved (Matt 25:31ff). And yet, seldom are the Spiritual Works of Mercy mentioned today in Church settings. But they are essential and, frankly, foundational to the corporal works of mercy.

Here too, Father Fanzaga has much wisdom for us:

Satan’s temptation to turn stones into bread quote is a permanent temptation for the Church until the end of time. The Church is certainly placed in this world and shares its joys and sufferings, hopes and defeats … The Church has always promoted the human growth of society, but her ends are the eternal salvation of souls. The temptation to secularize the Church, orienting her towards human promotion and removing her from her supernatural objectives, is among the most subtle and insidious. This temptation has led many parishes and religious communities to abandon prayer, catechesis, sacrifice and the supernatural means of the apostolate, involving themselves in social activities that empty the Christian presence of its meaning … [It is an] earthly messianism, a Christianity reduced to humanitarian religion, a Church that becomes a sort of Red Cross of the world (The Deceiver, p 117).

It is the subtle purpose of Satan to distract the Church from her primary mission so that he can continue to wreak spiritual havoc while the Church’s attention is directed elsewhere.

It is a kind of food fight: Bread for the body rather than the Bread of Life unto eternal salvation. Matter is all that matters. Satan does not trap us with evil, but with what is good yet out of proportion. Bread … bread … bread! Bread is all that matters. Meanwhile the famished soul is neglected.

Jesus rebuked the men of his day who sought him out for another free meal of multiplied loaves: Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs [to have faith], but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.” (Jn 6:27).

The bread had become their idol, for they valued it more than the very God who stood before them and provided it in the first place. They had no faith for Jesus, only desire for bread. Properly understood, their desire could have led them to Jesus, but they could not see past the bread to the Bread of Life who stood before them. Indeed not by bread alone, but by every Word from the mouth of God, by the Word made flesh, are we to live.

I know, I made the word up: “minificence.” I’ll define it in a moment. But first, I want to ponder with you the awesome mystery of size and numbers as we look out and as we look in.

Outer Space: As we look out on God’s Universe we cannot even fathom how huge, how magnificent is the size of the universe. We cannot comprehend such immensity. If we were to make a scale model of the Milky Way galaxy and reduce each star to the size of a grain of sugar, it would be two thousand miles wide and a thousand miles high. And that’s just one galaxy! There are billions of galaxies in the universe, which is expanding rapidly outward. Even the nearest star is over 25 trillion miles away.

And we are whirling around and outward! The earth rotates at a speed of about 1000 miles per hour (at the equator) while the earth itself revolves at roughly 67,000 miles per hour around the sun. And our entire solar system is also rotating around the center of the Milky Way galaxy at over 500,000 miles per hour. And the Milky Way galaxy is also flying outward and away (according to Doppler shift) at 1.3 million miles per hour!

Inner Space: But what is equally amazing is how vast a universe exists, hidden from the naked eye, in what we might call “inner space”: that tiny, almost invisible world of microbiology. In just a drop of pond water may exist hundreds of thousands of bacteria and microorganisms, a veritable universe unto itself. Indeed in every human body exist trillions of microorganisms in a kind of microbial fauna. Eighty different types of microorganisms live in the mouth alone. Every square centimeter of the human bowel contains as many as ten billion organisms. Every square centimeter of our skin contains about ten million individual bacteria. Even on our eyelashes are colonies of helpful bacteria and microorganisms that help keep harmful bacteria away. These massively numbered civilizations—universes really—of microorganisms are only recently known to us with the invention of powerful microscopes. And to those in this “micro-world,” our bodies must seem as massive as the universe of outer space seems to us. If a microorganism could think, it would consider our bodies a vast universe too large to comprehend. Just as there are trillions of stars, there are trillions of microorganisms. And to a microbe on an eyelash, a bacterium on the toe seems light-years away.

“Minificence” and Magnificence! If outer space is magnificent (from the Latin magnus meaning large or great) then inner space is (according to me) “minificent” (from the Latin minimus meaning small or tiny). The abundance of life in these tiny worlds boggles the mind. To the microorganisms that accompany me, I am a universe too vast to comprehend. But I am just one of over seven billion human beings on this planet. And I, even we collectively, am not large at all. I am an infinitesimally small speck, on a slightly larger but still tiny speck of dust, rotating around a fiery spark called the Sun, in a galaxy of over 200 billion other fiery sparks. And this is just one galaxy (about 100 million light-years in diameter) of over 125 billion galaxies in the known universe.

Time for wonder and awe! We’ve moved from contemplating inner space to outer space in a matter of moments but we really cannot comprehend numbers like these. It’s time for wonder and awe. God does all this with a simple word, and it is so. He knows the depths of our souls and the tiniest forms of life that cling to us. Every hair of our head is numbered and known to Him. He knows the farthest fringes of the universe. He made the stars and calls them by name. Ah, the Lord!

He who dismisses the light, and it departs, calls it, and it obeys him trembling; Before whom the stars at their posts shine and rejoice; When he calls them, they answer, “Here we are!” shining with joy for their Maker (Baruch 3:33-35).

One of the great hymns says, O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder; Consider all the works Thy hands have made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee; How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

Do not forget to meditate on God’s wonders. It is a great antidote to pride. God has done indescribable and marvelous things. And more is unseen than seen.

The book of Sirach says, Beyond these, many things lie hid; only a few of his works have we seen (Sirach 43:34).