Trinity Sunday

Romans 11:33-36 / Matthew 28:18-20

A nationally-syndicated advice columnist received a letter from a distraught man about a birthday cake. It seems as though every year is mother would invite friends and family over for her son's birthday, and every year she would bake for him a chocolate cake. All of the invitees had come to expect and look forward to their piece of the hostess' now famous chocolate cake, a cake she made precisely to please her son. All of the invitees, that is, except for one — her son. The son, who had written the columnist his letter, loathes chocolate in general, and chocolate cake in particular. He hated it as a child, and he continues to hate it as an adult. He told his mother in his childhood, and had continued to tell her to the present day, of his dislike for chocolate cake, and has pleaded with her to make another cake. She, however, either cannot or will not hear his pleas, and so he passes every birthday presented with a gift odious to him.

While the columnist's advice here is beside the point (I believe it was to make his own cake to bring to the party, an unsatisfactory solution at best), the scenario highlights crucial truths about loving relationships, namely that there is no real love where there is no true knowledge, and that there is no real knowledge where there is no authentically loving response. The mother would certainly protest that she had made the cake out of love, but in the face of his clear revelation of his actual desires, what sort of love would refuse to take them into account? Indeed, even had he kept silent, the fact that she did not know what sort of cake would make him happy would itself be a barrier to actually pleasing her son, however sincere her attempt to do so.

The example is of course trivial, but it might help us recall why God has chosen to reveal to us the mystery of his triune life. While profession of the Trinity permeates the life of every one of the Catholic faithful, with signs of the cross in the name of the Three Persons, the doxologies repeated in every recitation of the rosary or the Psalms, the conclusions of the collects at Mass or blessings at meals, we could be tempted to wonder what difference the mystery of the Trinity makes in the life of faith. We wonder, that is, whether getting the Trinity "right" helps us to live a better life, to love neighbor, or even God with any greater intensity than a more confused or even unexamined acceptance of Father, Son and Spirit. We may also consider our Jewish and Muslim neighbors, and perhaps even our Latter-Day Saint, Sikh, or Unitarian neighbors, who all in their own way insist that they, too, worship the one, true God. Do they fail to worship God in truth because they deny the Trinitarian confession of faith revealed in Jesus Christ? If they do not worship the true God for this reason, whom do they worship? If the fruits of the Spirit seem more evident in them than in our Christian brothers and sisters who confess the Holy and Undivided Trinity, does Trinitarian faith make all that much difference?

The reason that God revealed himself as Trinity, the reason that this revelation is the most fundamental of the whole Christian faith to which all other mysteries — Incarnation, Redemption, Resurrection, Eucharist, the sending of the Spirit — lead and from which they flow, is that God wants us to know who he is. He wants us to know who he is so that we can love him and out of that love and knowledge to live not simply as he commands, but enlivened by and participating in that interpersonal love which is the very divine essence. Not to care who God actually is, to think our natural intimations or incomplete revelations of him sufficient, is no different than trying to please one's son and refusing to take into account who he actually is and what he actually desires, but on a scale more fundamental, more essential to our very lives. The fact is we do not love God, cannot love him, apart from knowing who he is. Neither do any of our claims to know him have the slightest weight if we, in our thoughts and actions, do what he hates.

The mystery of the Trinity, then, is an invitation to know God that we might love him. It is the beginning and end of all that it means to share in eternal life. It is the heart of the Gospel because it is the heart, source, and summit of all that was, is and ever shall be. Blessed be God the Father and the Only-begotten Son of God, and also the Holy Spirit; because he has shown His mercy toward us.

Coming soon to a theater near you!

Well, not a theater, but this site. My life took a rather heavy and occupied turn after Easter, and while I still have a full summer, I hope to get back on track posting more homilies for what I trust may be a modicum of edification.

Thank you for your patience in the meantime!

Easter Sunday

1 Corinthians 5:7-8 / Mark 16:1-7

The trumpets blare, the bells have peeled from the heights of the church, and the music of the organ has shaken it to its foundations. We sing out with full voice, and repeat again and again as though we cannot say it often enough — Alleluia! Christ our Passover is sacrificed! Alleluia! This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad therein! Alleluia! Christos anesti, alithos anesti! Alleluia! Alleluia! Death and life, we proclaim, fought bitterly, and the Prince of life, who died, reigns glorified! Before and unbelieving world, we dare to speak the unspeakable, to believe the unbelievable. Death and Hell, Spite and Sin have done their worst, but the victory of Life and Love is complete and irrevocable. Death has forever lost its sting. From now on, it is Life who has the last word. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!

We say it, but can we really mean it? Do we dare to believe? Do we dare risk believing it is true?

When Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went out that cold morning, early on the first day of the week ... when the sun had just risen, their eyes red and bleary from the hour and excess of tears, what did they expect to see? Certainly not what their eyes beheld! The great stone, rolled away. The tomb, empty. And upon the stone at the entrance of that empty tomb, a figure at once glorious and terrifying, clothed in dazzling white, a figure not of this world nor among the sons of Adam.

What had drawn them to the tomb at the hour was love, of course, but also the cold hard logic of the world — the body needed to be anointed, lest his decay fill the tomb with the stench of death. In a way, it is easy for us to yield to the logic of the world as well. Christ indeed from death is risen we sing, and then we read of piracy on the high seas, or another murder in Iraq or only blocks away from where we live. In our prayer we proclaim that on this day the Only-begotten Son overcame death and opened for us the gates of everlasting life, but are we wise to leave our door unlocked at night? Can we walk down lonely streets whose old warehouses we only hope are unoccupied without a sense of relief to have left them far behind?

Even so, we ring the bells, we let the trumpets blast, we sing our joyful Alleluia! We have seen the empty tomb, we have seen the angelic witness, and we dare to believe the unbelievable. For we have worked at jobs whose wages never seem enough to meet our growing expenses, we have known the death of loved ones with whom we never spent enough time, we have broken faith with those who rely on our trust with envious gossip and a lying word.

But, day after day, week after week, year after year, we return. Perhaps only since yesterday, or perhaps after many years' absence, we return. After a long life of service, or newly washed with water and anointed with chrism, we return. We return to the empty tomb. We see, and believe.

For we have looked beyond the stony logic of the grave, beyond the deadly certainties of pain and loss, fear and sorrow, and without blinking, without denying their power, we have exchanged the cold hard cash of the wisdom of this world to plant the few seeds of our faith, and climbing the Vine which grows up from the deepest place of our lives, reaching far beyond our sight into the heavens, we have found that there are indeed castles among the clouds. We have been enchanted by the deeper magic from before the dawn of time and proclaim to the world without shame, without embarrassment, that death itself can work backwards and spring forth in new life.

Brothers and sisters, JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN! This is our faith. This is the Easter faith of the Church, and we are proud to profess it! It is amazing, it is outlandish, it is incredible, and it is altogether true! We are not called upon to work it out or to adapt it, to fret over how well we have prepared for it, where we may have tripped over it or lost our fervor for it. We have only to be glad and rejoice — for this is indeed the day the Lord has made!

Christ our Passover is sacrificed! Alleluia! Let us feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Christ is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia!

Holy Saturday

Genesis 1:1-31; 2:1-2 / Exodus 14:24-31; 15:1 / Isaiah 4:2-6 / Isaiah 54:18; 55:1-11 / Colossians 3:1-4 / Matthew 28:1-7

We want to be able to go back again. We have seen the devastation wrought by our misdeeds, by our ill-placed words, by our callous indifference, by our numberless offenses and omissions. We long for a salvation that lets us start from the very beginning, to wash all things new. It is a great hope to begin again when things are fresh, when the burdens and cares, the aches and pains, of a lived lived poorly can be traded in for a repetition, a restoration of its pristine innocence. After all, who hearing God's litany at the beginning of all things, when the almighty said again and again Fiat, and saw that it was good, would not trade anything to walk again with that first man and first woman, God's very image and likeness, unsullied by years of misspent energy? Who would not gladly hand back the life he has led if he could begin again in that primal greening of the earth, breathe in the life-giving coolness of that first breeze, hear for the first time the happy chrips, bleatings, roars and howls of beasts who gleefully attend to us as their lords and masters, sharing with us the unbloodied food of plant and fruit?

But, God's way is not the way of erasing the past, the waters of Baptism are not the Fountain of Youth. We have in Christ's victory not a return to our first birth so as to live our life over again, but the promise, and indeed the fulfillment of a new birth, for we have died and our life is hidden with Christ in God.

This has ever been God's way with the world. When the primal goodness of Eden was poisoned by sin, God sent us not a new world, but a new covenant with Noah and his descendants. When the peaceful wanderings of the patriarchs in Canaan was traded for slavery in Egypt, God did not simply return his people, but placed them under the sweet yoke of the Law. When the judges proved distasteful to Israel, God raised up not new judges, but kings, for weal and for woe. In calling his people back from Babylon, God did not restore the glories of David and Solomon, but promised new hearts and new spirits. When the Word came to his own and his own received him not, he gave his chosen people, and all peoples of the world besides, a share in the very life of God.

This we must know, that each of us is placed upon this earth, indeed every created thing is called forth by the Almighty, to enrich the whole of creation with some good that it, and it alone, can give. When that good is lost, it is lost forever. Are there new goods yet to come? Undoubtedly. Are those new goods far surpassing even those that are lost? So we live in certain hope. Are there some who never have, and never will, taste joy after they have cast aside their good? Tragically, this also is true.

Even so, who would wish away Cain, if it meant never receiving the pleading of the blood of Abel? Who would desire there never was an idol, if it meant never rejoicing in the faith of Abraham? Would we have the sons of Israel stay their hand with their brother Joseph if that meant no victory over the God's of Egypt or deliverance by Moses at the Red Sea? If it meant never hearing the comforting prophecies of Isaiah, could we honestly wish away the infidelities of Israel and Judah? Indeed, would we trade that whole sad catalog of misery and wretchedness, of infidelity, cruelty, spite, and malice, of fear, jealousy, and despair which has sprung from Adam's seed if it meant never hearing the voice of the angel? Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here, for He has risen even as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord was laid. And go quickly, tell his disciples that He has risen, and behold, He goes before you into Galilee; there you shall see Him.

As it is, there is no wishing away our past, no calling back the goods we have lost from the void where they are irrevocably lost. Still, when we consider the imponderable mystery of this night, dare we believe that even this loss will be for us who have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, a source of indescribable and everlasting glory?

O certe necessarium Adae peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est! O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere redemptorem! O truly necessary sin of Adam, which the death of Christ has blotted out! O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer!

Good Friday

Hosea 6:1-6 / Exodus 12:1-11 / John 18:1-40; 19:1-42

In his Summa theologiae, Thomas Aquinas asks whether Jesus Christ suffered all sufferings in his Passion. The reason for the question is surely not hard to find. Those who suffer find a special kind of solace in knowing that the one who loves them really knows what they have endured. It is not that misery loves company, or that those who suffer envy or resent those blessed with good fortune, although this too can be true. No, even for the best and virtuous, there is something assuring about the confidence that the one who tells us that all will be well, that the suffering, pain, and loss are not the final word, that God is in the midst of it all as our Advocate and Friend — that such a comforter can be trusted because he too has suffered. So, knowing whether Jesus, the Word made flesh, knew suffering as I know suffering is a question whose answer makes all the difference in the world.

Now, good Dominican that he is, Thomas makes here an important distinction. Jesus Christ, he notes, did not, indeed could not have endured every suffering specifically. Some sufferings are incompatible, such as death by drowning and death by burning. So, if we demand a Savior who encountered every single thing that threatens to assault and assail, then we demand foolishly and in vain. But, says Thomas, Jesus did endure every kind of suffering.

Now, here is where the Angelic Doctor surprises us. We might imagine that Thomas would place the physical agony of Christ in the first place, but he does not. Nor does he place the suffering as a person first, although he has much to say here. No, the first account of suffering endured by the God-Man is social, the suffering from all kinds of men: from Jews and Gentiles, from men and women, from rulers, their servants and the mob, and (significantly) from friends and acquaintances — the betrayal of Judas and the denial of Peter. Of his personal suffering, Thomas gives a full list: the blasphemies assaulting his reputation, the mockeries and insults against his honor and glory, the taking of his sole possession in the taking of his clothing, in the sadness, weariness and fear of his soul, and in the scourging and wounds in his body. Yet, in addition to these, and at the head of the list, we find the suffering endured by Christ from having his friends abandon him. And, in enumerating the ways in which Christ suffered in his members and his senses — his head from the crown of thorns, his hands and feet from the nails, his face from blows and spittle, his whole body from lashes, his taste with vinegar and gall, his smell "by being fastened to a gibbet in a place reeking with the stench of corpses," his hearing by the cries of blasphemers and scorners — Thomas crowns the whole list with that noblest and most rational, and thus human, of senses, namely sight. And how did Christ suffer in his sight, according to Thomas? By beholding the tears of his mother and of the disciple whom he loved.

For Thomas, the worst of the Passion was not the agony of the body, although that was horrifying and enough to make even the elect give pause. It was not the assaults on one's person either, whether internally in the soul or externally in name and possessions, even though these were also cruel. No, the worst of the Passion was, according to Thomas, the assault of that communion of persons which we call friendship, that brutal tearing of the noble joining of hearts we call love. The one theme, the one lash that marks across his whole account is the suffering of Jesus Christ in the violation of what it means to be joined to another in love — in the betrayal, treason and abandonment by his most intimate friends, and in knowing and witnessing the agony suffered by those one loves above all others, aware that this suffering of theirs has come about by what he has freely chosen.

Our Lord and Savior died from friendship abused for a friendship surpassing all of our wildest hopes. He hung on the cross by the iron nails of love betrayed with a love so hot it could leave the whole world in ash if he would unleash the slightest spark. Or, in the word of the great English poet Mitlon: O unexampl'd love, / Love nowhere to be found less than Divine! / Hail Son of God, Saviour of Men, thy Name / Shall be the copious matter of my Song / Henceforth, and never shall my Harp thy praise / Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin.

Maundy Thursday

1 Corinthians 11:20-32 / John 13:1-15

If I do not wash you, you shall have no part with me.

We have all seen him, the little boy who struggles and strains against his mother's daring attempt to straighten out an unruly lock of hair on his head, to adjust a tie a little too askew, to wipe with a bit of spit and a handkerchief the spot of jelly stubbornly clinging to his face. He protests. He pouts. He squirms. He may even, if his temper is foul enough, or if the Evil One has inclined him to rebel against the fourth commandment even at his tender age, speak in ill and unkind ways to the woman who bore him. Like most mothers, she will know how to bear this unkindness with grace, but it is unkindness all the same.

Psychologically speaking, we can understand the child's behavior. In a way, it is not unlike the sullen, cold wars declared between teenaged daughters and their mothers or the testing of limits of fathers by their teenaged sons. It is the desire of a child to be his own person, to move from being simply an appendage of his family and of its dominant figures to being an agent in his own right, and actor, someone with thoughts, hopes and dreams of his own. It can be, when experienced without malice, an important part of the path to maturity, to a rich and full adult life. Indeed, on the other side of it all, it might yield a happier relationship between the parents and their now wiser, independent, and thus more authentically loving adult children.

Yet, quite often things do not turn out this way. The healthy manifestation of the self can be all to easily linked with a perverse, even unholy assertion of radical autonomy. We can come to resent any kindness done on our behalf. Even people otherwise generous themselves, willing to come to the aid of others, indeed sometimes especially those people whose lives are dedicated to meeting others' needs — doctors, priests, parents — find it more than a little difficult to receive the ministrations of others. Perhaps they have come to see their worth in the good they do for others, and the fact of receiving help worries them that they are no longer of value, no longer the self-sufficient source of largesse. Perhaps they convince themselves that they have no needs, no demands, no claims on the time and lives of others, that they can pass through life leaving it virtually untouched, unwounded by their wants and desires. Perhaps they just do not want to be infantilized.

Whatever the worry, to refuse to acknowledge to good we need and long for, to refuse to admit that we cannot attain it on our own, to refuse to receive it from the one hand willing to offer it — in short, to refuse to have the Lord wash our feet is to refuse communion with the Lord. To have a part with the Lord Jesus Christ means precisely to love him, to see him as the source of our joy and our life, and thus to take him not as we would have him be, but as he has graciously chosen to be for us. Jesus has come to be the our Lord and Master to be sure, but a Lord and Master who washes our feet. He has come to be our life, indeed, but our life under the appearances of bread broken and wine poured out, at the hands of men altogether unworthy of the task, but men who have been bathed in the sacramental grace of Order, even if they need some washing.

The priesthood and the Eucharist — these are the ways Jesus has chosen to minister his saving life to us. We can demand if we will that he do it another way, and then have no part with him. Or, we can swallow our pride, send the unruly child in our soul away, the child that wants things his way with no help from anyone, and embrace with love the simple, seemingly feeble, yet incomparably glorious gifts of the Lord's ministry to us.

Triduum & Easter Sunday Schedule (St Dominic Priory, St Louis, Missouri)

I don't imagine many of you few but proud readers are resident in the Gateway to the West. However, for those who are, or who wish to join my community in spirit, here are the times for prayer during the sacred Triduum and Easter Sunday at St Dominic Priory in St Louis, Missouri, beginning Thursday evening.

Maundy Thursday

7:30 pm Mass of the Lord's Supper
10:00 pm Compline

Good Friday

8:00 am Matins & Lauds
11:45 am Midday Prayer
3:00 pm Celebration of the Lord's Passion
9:00 pm Compline

Holy Saturday

8:00 am Matins & Lauds
11:45 am Midday Prayer
5:00 pm Vespers
[The friars celebrate the solemn Easter Vigil in local churches of St Louis.]

Easter Sunday

9:00 am Lauds & Mass
4:00 pm Vespers

Oremus pro invicem!