Only Love - Trinity Sunday

This is the first Mass homily I preached, on May 27, 2018, at my home parish, St. Anthony in Columbus, NE.  It was Trinity Sunday, and as the title of this blog may indicate, the Trinity is a central theme for my own spiritual life.  I post this now in the midst of the tremendous scandals in our Church.  During our recent day of recollection, I was praying about what might be the overall cause for all of the brokenness and corruption, and what the Lord led me to conclude is that all of this can happen when we as a Church don't fall in love with Him, when we don't enter into His communion of love, which frees us from sin, brings about redemption, and leads to freedom in the Holy Spirit.  So this is my attempt to articulate what falling into this love means; I pray that it is a reminder for all of us to trust in the Lord's love, which promises to continually redeem our Church and world and manifest God's glory. 

Mass readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/052718.cfm

“Loneliness and all.  I was stuck to the spot without a friend.  Alone again.  And I hunger and I thirst for some shiver, for some whispered words and the promise to come.”  These opening lyrics are from the song “Only Love” by the modern-day poets Mumford & Sons, and I think they accurately describe the anguish that we can often feel in our lives: the experience of loneliness.  Whether it’s being physically alone or spiritually alone, how painful and excruciating this can be.

Loneliness is something I’ve often encountered, and I know it’s something that will continue to occur at times.  I remember being in junior high and high school and having many times of loneliness, wishing I could be with others but unsure how to get there.  Even at times during seminary, I wondered: who are my true friends?  Why do I feel ignored or on the outside?  This made me wonder: am I really able to have friendships?  Am I worth loving?  Am I doomed to this loneliness forever?

However, what I’ve experienced is that today’s feast day combats these lies of loneliness.  This is Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter.  At first, it just seems like a great mystery: three Persons in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we can be content to just think of the shamrock and move on with our lives.  In fact, I’ve heard that a good number of priests shudder at the thought of having to preach today, so having to give my very first Mass homily for Trinity Sunday may seem like a cruel joke.  Yet, I’m ecstatic at the opportunity to preach for today, and here’s why: the Trinity shows us that we are made for an eternal communion of love.

It took saints and theologians a few centuries to articulate the mystery of the Trinity, but the roots of this mystery are found in the first letter of St. John, chapter 4, where John makes a striking statement: “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.”  God is love – this is in essence a definition of God.  But what does love require?  Can a single person in a room by himself be said to be “love”?  No, because love is the gift of oneself to another.  To have love, we need a lover who gives oneself to another, the beloved, forming a bond of love between the two.  The lover, the beloved, and the love itself.  We see this in marriage – the man who gives himself in love to the woman, who receives his love and returns it, and this love is so powerful that it leads to fruitfulness, to a child, a third person.  So if God is love, what must He be?  He can’t just be an old man in the sky, like we sometimes think of Him as.  The Father eternally pours Himself out in love and begets, or gives birth to, the Son, and the Son eternally receives this love without beginning or end and returns it to the Father, and this love is so powerful that it is the third Person, the Holy Spirit.  This is the mystery we say in the creed every Sunday, where we describe Jesus Christ as “the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages” and the Holy Spirit “who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” 

This means that God is never “lonely” – He is the perfect eternal communion of love.  Therefore, He did not need to create the world, to create us.  Why did He create us then?  In order that we may share His eternal love!  Genesis 1 says that man and woman are created in the image of God, and we can take this further, saying that we are created in the image of the Trinity.  When we see who God is as Trinity, as the eternal communion of love, we begin to understand who we are, that we find fulfillment not in accomplishments, wealth, fame, or pleasure, but in loving and being loved.

I know that this is hard to believe in our times of loneliness, in feeling distant from all others.  But what I learned in the difficult times I’ve had in the past is that God still remains present as love, that just as God is never “alone,” I am never alone.  And God wanted to show us this love so much that His Son took our sufferings and loneliness upon Him on the cross.  When we experience the cross of suffering and forsakenness in our own lives, Jesus shows us that we are not alone even in this suffering – He has suffered with us.  This is how the Lord led me through the difficult times of loneliness in my own life, and I know that I can always run to the cross in future sufferings. 

And this becomes our mission: Jesus tells us in the Gospel: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.”  He’s saying: go and introduce others into this communion of love!  Tell the world that we are made to share in the love of the Trinity, love others as I have loved you, and do so particularly in the sacraments and teaching.  I look out today and see so many of you who have fulfilled this mission for me, who have helped me grow, taught me about the world and our faith, and welcomed me into friendship, and I thank you so much for this.  Your own love and community has shown me Christ’s love, just as Jesus assures us, each one of us personally, “Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” 

That’s why I’m so excited about today, because the Trinity promises to bring us from our isolation into eternal communion with Him.  There’s one particular moment in the Mass that illustrates this beautifully.  We know that when we bring the gifts up, the bread and wine, they represent our lives, everything that we are and that we’re going through.  The priest receives these gifts, and through the words of consecration, the gifts are transformed into Christ Himself, his Body and Blood.  And then at the end of the Eucharistic prayer, the priest holds up the hosts, and I, for the first time here as a deacon, will raise up the chalice, and the priest says, referring to Jesus, “Through him, with him, and in him, O God almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor are Yours, forever and ever.”  Jesus lifts us up with Him to the Father, united in the Holy Spirit, and we are united with the Trinity, as is made clear when we receive this Eucharist.  So at this moment in the Mass, let us bring to Jesus all of our feelings of loneliness, fear, and isolation, allowing Jesus to lift us up into this eternal love.

The Trinity continually saves us from our loneliness, and that’s why I rejoice in this mystery of faith.  The song from Mumford & Sons may have begun with loneliness, but it ends with this joyful realization, “And you saw me low, alone again.  Didn’t we say that only love will win in the end?”  Only love, only the God who is love, wins in the end, so may we share in this victory with the Trinity both now and in eternity.