Homily #32c (5pm Mass)
Homily #32a (10am Mass)
Partial Homily #32b (12pm )
(cut off due to lack of space on recorder)
HOMILY 32a-c
Most Holy Trinity: “The Love of Abba & the
Divinity of the Son and Spirit”
St. Catherine’s, Vallejo
10am, 12pm & 5pm Masses
I.
"I LOVE YOU" = "FATHER-SPIRIT-SON"
I love you. These
words are some of the most powerful words in the English language.
En Español, “te amo” is literally “you I love”.
In Vietnamese, “Anh yêu em” is “love you I”
In Tagalog, “Mahal kita” is “love I to you”.
But whether we mix the word order as in “love I you”
or “you I love”, the idea is pretty much the same. There
are 3 principles in operation, in relation to, or in communion with each other.
The first principle is “I”. The second principle is “you”. And that which connects the first principle
and the second principle is a third principle “love”. “I” and “you” are connected with “love”. They form 1 sentence.
At least in English, we say there is 1 sentence but 3 distinct words. “I love you.”
We do NOT say that there are 3 sentences and 1 word; rather, we say 3
words in 1 sentence.
[SLOW DOWN HERE]
And so, too, in God there are 3 living,
divine, co-equal Persons: The Father, Son, and Spirit.
In the Gospel of Matthew today, Jesus himself revealed
this mystery, the 3 Persons of the one Holy Trinity. We do not say there are 3 gods, but 3 Persons
in 1 one God. In the Creed, we profess
that we believe in only 1 God.
In the one Godhead, the Father loves the Son. And the Son loves the Father. And the love that unites them is the
Spirit. To use the words of the Creed
at Mass, the first principle, the Father, begets the second principle, the Son. And the Son, is begotten of the Father. And from their communion with each other, the
Holy Spirit proceeds.
The Son is NOT the Father. The Son does not beget the Father. And the Father is not begotten of the Son. Those of us men who have physical children
beget children. Children don’t beget
parents but are begotten of their parents.
Our earthly fatherhood is in the image of God the Heavenly Father since
earthly dads carry the seeds of life to beget new life.
II. THE DIVINITY OF GOD THE SON
[Light and use candle here!!]
We believe in one
Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the
Father.
Jesus is “God
from God”. Light from Light. Jesus is “true God from true God.” Jesus is “begotten, not made”. We never say that Jesus was created, but
rather that he is begotten.
And just like [this] light is of the same substance as this other
light, Jesus is of one substance with the Father. He is “consubstantial
with the Father”. One substance of light but two
distinct candles.
Through him – Jesus the Word of God – all things were made. No other founders of world religions can claim this. God speaks one Word and one Word alone. As we see in today’s Responsorial Psalm, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made; by the breath of his mouth all their host. For he spoke, and it was made; he commanded, and it stood forth” (Psalm 33).
And just as when human beings speak words, what comes
with those words? Our breath, right? Wind from our lungs. Pneuma in the Greek. (That’s where we get the word pneumonia.) When God speaks His Word, he sends Pneuma,
His Breath or His Spirit. Through this
Word, all things were made.
And
the Word became flesh!
God became one of us. In the
Creed, we profess to all the world, “For us men and for our salvation, he [–
Jesus – ] came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and
became man.”
Jesus
is God. For
a baptized person to deny this teaching is a heresy called “Arianism.” A R I A
N I S M. Arianism. Arianism denied that Jesus is God. And when a baptized person denies that Jesus
is God, then one eventually denies the Holy Trinity, too. Both mainline Protestants and Catholics
commonly believe that Jesus is God.
But there are groups (claiming to be Christian) that deny Jesus is God,
like Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons. Iglesia
ni Christo, which was founded by a human being Felix Manalo about 100 years
ago, denies Jesus’s divinity. They are
Arians. For them, Jesus is just a great
guy, a great prophet/teacher, not divine.
But Christians have always believed in the divinity of Christ and in the
Holy Trinity.
We just reflected on God the Son. Let us now reflect on God the Father. When the Apostles asked Jesus to teach them
to pray, Jesus clearly revealed God as Father or in Aramaic “Abba” which means
a very intimate “Daddy”. Or “Papa” in
Spanish or “Tatay” in Tagalog or something that shows a very close relationship,
a term of endearment.
That means that Jesus did not reveal God as mother,
even though God has motherly-like qualities, God is not God our Heavenly Mother.
Rather, as we see in the liturgy, the priest says, “At the Savior’s
command, and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say”, we dare
and confidently and boldly call God Father / Abba / Daddy. As we heard in the Second Reading from St.
Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Paul says that we cry out “Abba, Father!”
I myself didn’t really get this point about God and
our loving Father for many years until I heard renowned biblical scholar Dr.
Scott Hahn who was a Protestant minister that became Catholic by studying the
Bible. He once had a conversation with a
fellow scholar that was Muslim. And in
that conversation, Scott Hahn said, “You mean you don’t refer to God as a
loving Father?” The Muslim said, “No, Muslims do not believe God is Father. Because when you say that God is Father, that
means that he has children. And for
Muslim, we do not believe that God has a Son or children. It is an insult to us. God is Allah, which means “submission.”
Scott Hahn asked, “What do you mean submission?” The Muslim scholar said, “If my dog does not
obey me, then take it outside and shoot my dog.” My brothers and sisters in Christ, in my 25
years of teaching the Catholic Faith, I’ve had handful of good Muslim
students. Whenever I asked my Muslim students if this story is true about not
calling God a loving Father, all my Muslim students would always say yes.
[SLOW DOWN!] For us Christians, God is a loving Father that will
not take us outside and shoot us like a dog.
Rather, He runs to us!! He takes in His arms around us and He kisses
us and He hugs us!! And like a daddy
holding his baby daughter trying to smother her with love and tickle her, Our
loving Heavenly Father comes to us ALL THE MORE when we mess up!! The words of St. Paul hit home today, “For you
did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear (and terror),
but you received a Spirit of adoption,
through whom we cry, “Abba, Father, Daddy”.
You are an adopted daughter of God; you are an adopted son of God. And if you are a child of God, then you are
joint heirs with Christ our Brother inheriting eternal life. So when we pray the Our Father, let’s pray
the Our Father with all our whole heart and ponder deeply the love of the
heavenly Father as revealed by His Son for you (and me).
IV. THE GIFT OF GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT
One brief point about the Holy Spirit since we already
celebrated the Person of the Holy Spirit last week at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is God. The Spirit is not an impersonal Force;
rather, as we profess in the Creed, the Spirit of God is the Lord and
Life-Giver. He, the Spirit, is adored
and glorified equally with the other persons of the Holy Trinity.
So, you may sit there and say, this is fine, Deacon, you
preached about the Son, the Father, and Holy Spirit, but what does the Holy
Trinity mean for me now? Well, if we
are in the image and likeness of God, then that means that human beings have
dignity and are in the image and likeness of the Persons of the Holy
Trinity. Just as the Persons of the
Trinity are in communion with each other and give themselves totally to other in
the service of each other in a sacrificial way, so too, we human beings should
be in communion with each other. Here
are two practical ways to live this out.
First, for the nuclear family, the family is in the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity. Daddy loves Mommy, and Mommy loves Daddy, and
from their love, in time, proceeds a third person, new life. And then in our parish community, we are called to be in communion with
each other with the Holy Eucharist as the source of our unity. The devil today seeks to mock the
Trinity and the family and divide parishioners.
The devil wants to set up a false image of the family, an anti-Trinity
and an anti-family lifestyle that is diabolical. But the
future of the Church and a healthy society passes by way of the family in the
image of the Trinity. Just as the
persons of the Trinity selflessly give themselves to the other, so too the
family must be in communion with each other (not this perpetual class warfare)
as a community of life and love. It is
the family, not the state, not the individual, that is the basis for a healthy
society.
And this leads to the second practical point about the
Holy Trinity. The Trinitarian model is
the foundation of Catholic social teaching, justice and action. When the family is in communion, then the
city will be healthy. And when cities
are healthy and in communion, then states and counties are in harmony. And when nations, and diverse cultures, races
and countries are in harmony, and in communion, living out the image and
likeness of the Holy Trinity, then there will be peace not war and suffering. The
international community cannot have peace without God!
On this Holy Trinity Sunday, let us reflect on God the Father who is our loving Abba,
the divinity of God the Son, and the gift of God the Spirit. We close with the words from the First
Reading in the Book of Deuteronomy.
“This is why you must now know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is
God…and that there is no other. You must keep his statues and
commandments…that you and your children may prosper...and have long life on the
land the Lord your God is giving you forever and ever. Amen.
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