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Homily for Trinity Sunday
(Scriptures for today's Mass)
Audio for homily
To be
noticed, as one special among all the others...
to be
recognized, for who you are... to be known, by your own name...
to be
accepted, with open arms...
to be forgiven, fully and freely...
to be
embraced, warmly... to be
loved, unconditionally...
Who among us
doesn’t desire all of these things?
In different
ways, sometimes obvious but usually more subtle,
we all
desire and seek these things, thirst for them, drink them in,
and savor
and treasure them when they come our way,
always
seeking more of the same, again and again,
searching
for the one whose arms will hold us always
and never
let us go...
But even the
strongest embrace of a faithful friend or a longed-for lover
knows
moments of weakness, forgetfulness
-- even letting go --
all, except the embrace of the One whose strength never tires,
whose love
knows no end, who never forgets us,
whose love
is more than we can dream or desire:
the embrace
of God’s love for us.
Every
healing embrace our aching hearts know
is but a
shadow of the love we seek again and again
until
finally we fall into the arms of the One who will hold us forever
in the
deepest of all embraces:
God’s
embrace of our lives, our hearts and our desire.
Or as St.
Augustine put it:
Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you...
It’s Trinity
Sunday,
a day to
celebrate how we believe about God,
God, for
whom our restless hearts are always longing:
one God in
three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We don’t
understand all of that – it’s a mystery.
Because we can’t
fully understand who God is
we might
sometimes begin to think that God is beyond our reach
and end up
leaving God in the margins of our lives and awareness,
calling on
the divine only at holiday times
or when we
really need something.
But God
keeps no such distance from you and me.
God is here and not just vaguely all around us.
God is here
and not just
because we happen to be in church at the moment.
God is here,
God is within you, living deep within your humanity.
God was in
you as you slept last night
and God was
in you when you woke this morning
and God will
be in you all day long.
In fact, you
might say that we are hard-wired,
hard-wired
for God, for relationship with God.
Everything
about us as human beings
(our bodies
and souls, our minds, intellects, and imaginations,
our urges,
desires, drives, appetites and longings,
our needs,
joys and sorrows):
everything
about us as human beings is given to us
precisely to
draw us more deeply into the mystery of God.
God, in
whose image, in whose likeness you and I were created:
each of us,
a unique mirror of our Maker.
• I have
been given a mind:
that I might
come to know and understand
God who
loves me.
• I have
been given imagination:
that I might
see more than my eyes can behold,
that I might
see even as God sees: seeing what is not yet – but can be.
• All my
desires and appetites serve to remind me
that I
thirst and hunger always for a life and for love
deeper,
greater and more faithful
than any
love I might now know - or hope to
have.
• All of my
physical and emotional yearning to be with someone,
to be one
with another, my very desire to make love --
is my body
and soul showing me from the inside out
that I am
made for love, for union,
we are made
for sharing all we are with a beloved
-and
ultimately, with God who desires us,
who wants to
be with us, who wants to be one with us,
who wants to
draw us into the depths of his own heart.
So much in
our world, our culture, our politics and our art
would have
us believe that human experience is an end in itself
-and is,
thus, its own authority.
That is the
definition of godlessness.
And there’s
a lot of that around.
To celebrate
Trinity Sunday is to remember
that God
himself is a union of relationships,
a triune of intimate personal
relationships:
Father, Son
and Spirit,
and to
remember
that God is
not only the source of all human desire and experience,
but is also
its sustenance - and its ultimate fulfillment.
And yet another relationship draws many of you
here today:
your
relationship with the boys and girls
receiving
First Communion.
These
children were born of you and your love,
even as all
of us are born of God and his love.
You have
nurtured these children with your love
as God
nurtures each of us with his.
And today
you lead these children
to the Table
of the Trinity where,
in the power
of the Holy Spirit, we give thanks to God the Father
and are fed
with the Body and Blood of Christ, our Lord,
God’s Son,
our Brother.
And so today
these children, as young as they are,
enter more
deeply into the mystery of God
and they
join us in our life-long restless searching for
love that
does not leave us, love that does not perish,
love that
never fails us.
Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you…
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