Homily for Sunday, 15 June 2014‒ Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Readings of the day: Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9; Responsorial Canticle: Deuteronomy 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18

Have any of us ever experienced the extraordinary ability of some children to grasp and express in basic terms what is mysterious to many if not all adults? The Most Holy Trinity that we celebrate today is one of these mysterious beliefs of our Christian faith; a truth that defies our words and our images.

This solemnity we celebrate today reminds me of my time as a children’s sacramental catechist in Toronto while I was in seminary. One day, a seven-year-old child was asking me deep questions like, “How can there be only one God, and yet we talk about God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?” In preparation for the following week’s class, I asked the children to draw on a blank sheet of paper the first thing that came to mind when they thought of the Father. Then, they were to draw the first thing that came to mind when they thought of the Son, and then repeat this activity when they thought of the Spirit.

The children presented their drawings the next week. Most of the children had drawn an old man surrounded by clouds (maybe on a fancy throne in the sky) to represent the Father. Then, most drew a young, handsome bearded man on land as the Son, and then a dove, flames, or cartoonlike lines of wind to represent the Spirit. Then, one child sheepishly carried up to me a still-blank sheet of paper. He gave the paper to me saying, “I don’t get this!” Instead of scolding this child for not doing the activity I had assigned, I consoled him, saying that he probably had a better understanding of the Trinity than me or than his parents. In fact, his blank page is still the best answer to this activity I have ever seen!

The Most Holy Trinity‒ one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit‒ defies our words and images. And yet we experience God both as one and as three persons: Father; Son; Spirit. How can this be?

We experience God as a God of relationship; a God of mercy and a God of love. This was Moses’ experience of God that we hear about in our first reading from Exodus. God, the Book of Exodus says, first “came down” to Moses “in a cloud.” God then “proclaimed his name to Moses: “LORD.” In this encounter and in this name, “LORD,” somehow Moses understood that the one God is a God of relationship; a God of love; a God of mercy.

Our God is not a God who sits on a distant throne in heaven and says, “You’re on your own.” Our God is not a God who, when we encounter him, condemns us for our sin, who scolds us for being a “stiff-necked people” who cannot grasp just who our God is; a God who would say, “That picture you drew in First Communion preparation looks nothing like me!”

No, when Moses pleads with God for his wayward people; when we draw near to God in prayer; when we worship as one faith community at Mass; when we act with love and mercy toward one another, God receives us “as his own.” God receives us into relationship with him. God strengthens our relationships with one another. Our God of relationships; our God of love; our God of mercy is marvellous in this way, but it remains a mystery as to how God can be both three and one.

In Exodus, Moses experiences God as one. Moses describes God in a variety of ways: “a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” But for Moses our God has just one name: “LORD.”

In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul, too, first describes what God is before doing his best to name who God is, one God and yet three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. Paul describes God as “the God of love and peace.” What, then, are the values and actions of a God of love and peace that Paul encourages us to live out? Paul writes: “Rejoice. Mend your ways” that are not of God; that do not respect human dignity and community. “Encourage one another; agree with one another; live in peace” Paul continues… “Greet one another with a holy kiss” of peace. But then who is this God of love and peace who invites us to take up these values and actions? God is identified in many ways. Moses’ one name for God, “LORD,” becomes for us a threefold name for our one God: “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” From St. Paul we have a greeting in the one name of the Trinity that is often used to begin our Mass: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

St. Paul invites us through his writings and through this greeting to act in ways that strengthen relationship, not only because we are, as human, relational creatures, but because God, in God’s oneness is also mysteriously a God of relationship; a God in relationship with us as well as a “God of love and peace” among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Because our “God of love and peace” is a God of relationship, both among the three persons of the Trinity and with us, that love and peace must be directed toward another; toward the world; toward us. God does not keep God’s love and peace to himself; God is experienced by us, a creature capable of experiencing relationship with God and with one another. Is this not extraordinary, even if it defies explanation; words; images?

We experience God as simply “LORD.” We experience God as “the God of love and peace.” We experience God as three distinct yet inseparable persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We experience God, as our Gospel from John says, as the God who “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” God’s Son, the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, became a relational human being like us, to save us but also to relate to us both as divine and now as human.

This is our God, love at its fullest. This is our God, the Father who gives us his only Son for our salvation and then fills and makes holy our world with God’s Holy Spirit. This mystery defies our words and images. We are left, like children, in awe with a blank page at the God who is beyond our grasp but in relationship with us always. We believe in this mystery; this truth because we experience God as one and as three; singular yet in relationship. This, our Most Holy Trinity, our God, is indeed a most extraordinary mystery; a most extraordinary relationship; the most extraordinary love.

Homily for Sunday, 23 March 2014

3rd Sunday in Lent

Readings of the day: Exodus 17:3-7; Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; John 4:5-42

What are some basic needs for human survival?

We need water to survive. At room temperature, without exercising, the average healthy adult human being can survive for a few days without water. We need food. The same healthy adult human being at room temperature and with minimal exercise can survive for a few weeks without food. We also need sleep…

But how often do we think of God as essential to our survival?

We encounter in our readings today several people who are concerned for their basic needs for survival. In Exodus, led by Moses and having fled slavery in Egypt, the people of Israel find themselves in the middle of a hot, dry desert. Before the story of our first reading begins, the people of Israel have run out of food. They complain, “We’re hungry,” so God gives them manna, a strange flaky food from the sky. This satisfies their hunger, but soon they are without water.

Let us imagine this, as I can having been in the Holy Land in the summer heat: The temperature is over one hundred degrees every day in the desert. A large group of people, young and old, healthy and unhealthy, have been on the move for years. They know they will survive for much less time than at a comfortable temperature and if they were not carrying loads in the heat, and so they complain to Moses again: “We’re thirsty. We’re low on manna. I’m tired. I’m too hot. I’m bored. He looked at me sideways. I need to go to the bathroom. Are we there yet?!”

“Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? … Is the LORD in our midst or not?”

Now let us imagine Moses responding to the people’s endless complaining: “Up until now you had a point. Traveling through the desert under load is hard work. We have limited food and water. It’s hot and dry. But this is better than slavery in Egypt. Remember what the LORD has done to get us this far, and please stop doubting whether the LORD is with us or not!”

At least, amid their doubt and complaining, the people Moses leads recognize their most basic need: To survive, they need God. They have this need for God in common with the Samaritan woman at the well in today’s Gospel reading. They have this need for God in common with all of us.

Yet, like the Israelites under Moses and the Samaritan woman at the well in John’s Gospel, we do not always recognize the ways in which God makes God’s self present to us; the ways in which God satisfies our need for him. To the Israelites, God is present through Moses’ leadership and through a series of signs by which God, through Moses, frees them from slavery and meets their other basic needs such as for food and water.

To the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus’ divinity is initially hidden. Jesus appears as one with basic human needs that we all share; as a weary traveler who begins by asking the Samaritan woman: “Give me a drink.”

Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman begins with this focus on the most basic of human needs. The woman can meet Jesus’ need for water. The woman’s needs are more complex. Jesus works through many layers of the woman’s need: For acceptance; for human community and relationship; for a home for worship; and ultimately for the presence of God.

How many of us have ever begun a conversation with someone, only to realize that the basic need of the other person that we have sought to meet soon leads to discovery of this person’s more complex needs? Not many of us, I imagine, would begin by saying to another, “I think your most basic need is for God,” especially if the person is not Christian or even religious. Might we begin instead with basic hospitality; offering food and drink, then a listening ear; conversation; friendship? It is wonderful to be able to identify and to meet another’s spiritual needs, but this is often only possible after more basic needs have been met.

The conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman progresses from most basic to most complex need; from the need for water to the need for God. Jesus asks the woman for water. The woman is an outcast in many ways: She is a Samaritan speaking with a Jew. She cannot worship either in Jerusalem, the Jewish center of worship, or on Mount Gerizim, the Samaritan center of worship. She has had “five husbands, and the one” she has “now is not [her] husband,” and so she is rejected in her village. She is a woman in a male-dominated society. Here she finds herself in the noontime heat in a desert, risking her life for water from Jacob’s well.

The Samaritan woman has been rejected everywhere else, and so has nothing to lose. But Jesus accepts her, even over the objection of his own disciples. Beginning with basic hospitality in spite of his own hunger and thirst, Jesus brings God’s presence to her; a spiritual home neither in Jerusalem nor on Gerizim but in him. Only then can the Samaritan woman recognize that Jesus “is truly the Savior of the world.” Only then can she bring this message back to her own village, which then welcomes Jesus.

What (or who) is at the same time the most basic yet most complex need for human survival? This need is God.

Yet it takes time, hospitality, deepening of relationship, and often the meeting of our other most basic needs‒ for water, for food, and for sleep, for example‒ for us to come to recognize our most basic and yet most complex need, without whom there is no life; the need recognized by the people of Israel led by Moses and then by the Samaritan woman at the well and the villagers of Sychar.

This need, most essential to our survival, is God and God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who “is truly the Savior of the world.”