__ Click Here for Audio of Homily __
__ Click Here for Video of Mass __
●●Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40Acts
2:1-11 ●● Psalm 33 ●● Romans 8:14-17 ●● + Matthew 28:16-20 ● ●
Want to get wealthy? Rich? One way is to be there “from the beginning”
Steve Jobs is 1 of original
founders of Apple – the technology company from we have the Apple Macintosh
computer and Apple iPhone.
Perhaps, we think that Steve Jobs created Apple and took all the money for himself. He did not. There were other employees “his team” and all of them benefited financially by being at Apple from the very beginning. Even before Apple had offices, they were there - Steve Jobs and his original partner Steve Wozniak - from the beginning, working in a garage.
I just cite this as an example of “creation” from the very beginning. We are only talking about a company, but nevertheless just to emphasize that being from the beginning is something very special and powerful.
It was not always so. In the early Church, there
were many debates about the identity of Jesus who lived, suffered, died on the
Cross and rose from the dead.
One of these alternative ideas was proposed by a
priest named “Arius” – Arius said that Jesus was not the divine Son of God, but
rather simply a heroic figure, a martyr.
Arius’ point is that since God is unique and
unchangeable, God as Father cannot communicate Himself to anyone else.
We believe that God has communicated His divinity
to Jesus, thus in Matthew’s Gospel we read today that the disciples are called
to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus was there from the beginning. Jesus is
eternal. And, regardless of where we are in our faith journey, he also wants us
to be with him for eternity.
[__07__] You and I are made in the image and likeness of
God.
It
took 3 persons – F, S, HS – to create and animate the stars, planets, birds,
fish, animals and human beings.
Philosophically and theologically, Aristotle and
Thomas Aquinas asserted that God’s love is poured out on every created being.
Therefore,
it is appropriate to protect the natural world, and animals, organisms, natural
resources not only because they are finite and irreplaceable but also because
they are gifts to us from the F, S, and HS.
And,
for an even higher purpose, we are called to protect and sustain human life
because as rational free human beings, we can choose to commune or connect with
God – or not.
This
is possible because God shares His ability to know with every human person.
Also
there is the trinity of a woman, a man and God cooperating in the procreation
and creation of a child, body and soul.
[__08__] Pope
Benedict XVI wrote that: The Trinity is
love because God exists in relationship even in himself — and he created a
universe of created things, each of which reflects that “relational” dimension
of God, Benedict explained, from “our earth, the planets, the stars, the
galaxies” down to “cells, atoms, elementary particles.”
The Trinity is “imprinted” on all things “because
all that exists, down to the last particle, is in relation; in this way, we
catch a glimpse of God as relationship and, ultimately, Creator Love.”
God is inside of you – part of your interior life.
And, love can be communicated from God to you and
from you to others, even to possessions. The Trinity reminds us, however, in a
sense, that love is misguided and misplaced if it showered on material things.
Love is something that unites a person to another person.
We use the word love quite casually, quite freely,
as though LOVE could be showered on material things.
In other words, I cannot really “love” my house or
my headphones, though I might feel really attached to either one. They also
cannot love me back. Something we love and that cannot love us back would be 1
definition of an idol.
[TILE
example, husband]
[][][] I
heard this example when I was in the seminary. We there was a spiritual talk by
one of our speakers, one of our professors in the seminary he gave this example
of love. He was redoing the floor in his house, he bought tiles from Home
Depot, or Lowe's. To redo the floor in his house, he was very interested in
redoing the floor in his house, he was a bit obsessed with the floor, and the
tiles and the beauty and the arrangement and the color and everything. And this
was troublesome to his spouse to his wife that he was paying so much attention
to the floor, and not to the family. So one night he went to sleep he went to
bed as he went into the master bedroom as he usually did. And he was there by
himself. He put his hand down on his wife's pillow. And there was something
very rigid in the pillow. And there was a note on this rigid object was the top
one of the tiles from the floor and there was a note on the tile that said,
Perhaps you'd like to spend some time with the one you love the best. He got
the point, okay, but you cannot really love a tile floor.
[][][]
The Trinity reminds us that God is the source of
all true love.
This is
particularly true when we see that every child conceived and born forms a
trinity with his mother and father. The
child becomes not just a separate person with his or her own Social Security number but also part of the
mother’s and father’s existence and being, body and soul.
Is there not a “trinitarian” connection for a father
and mother, together, to experience JOY or SORROW through one of their
children? The Trinity is an image for
our relationships.
This Trinity reminds that even if 1 of the 3 – the
mother or father or child should die – they have an interior life connection
enduring because of love being eternal. Love never fails.
For Benedict, “The strongest proof that we are made
in the image of the Trinity is this: Love alone makes us happy because we live
in a relationship, and we live to love and to be loved.”
We also desire love which is eternal and we confess
our sins and turn back to God not because “deserve“ his love but because he has
created us redeemed us and believed in us even before we were born, in the name
of the F, S, and H.S..
[__end__]
No comments:
Post a Comment