Trinity Sunday, 2010

Proverbs 8: 22-31

Wisdom’s Part in Creation

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths, I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth—when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

The Trinity: such a mystery. So many theologians have tried to explain the Trinity and some, like St. Patrick with the shamrock, have made it somewhat clearer but really, the only thing you can do with mystery is be immersed in it and trust in it with faith - because you’ll never completely understand it. So, how do we immerse ourselves in the mystery of the Trinity?  It’s not like the mystery of the Eucharist where Christ left us with tangible means to enter in through the reception of bread and wine, his body and blood. The Trinity is just kind of…out there. Most of us only pay real attention to it about once a year on the feast of the Trinity. Well, actually, that’s not true. Every time you pray, every time you seek the Lord and every time you have an encounter with him, you are petitioning, seeking and experiencing Trinity but it's natural and human to envision and relate to one of the Three at a time.

This week I’m focusing on the first reading, not only because it’s so darn wonderful but also because it shows us so beautifully the very nature of this elusive idea of Trinity and offers us a place to jump out of our cramped ideas of God into the wide adventure of mystery. The two words that sum it all up are: Wisdom and Delight.

In the first line it says, “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,” Another translation says, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.” Before everything else, the Lord brought his wisdom into being – into a Being. This was the moment of conception, birth and rebirth. Was Wisdom his Holy Spirit? Was Wisdom his Son? Did he speak the Word, which was his Son and create Wisdom, his Spirit? We will never know for sure will we? It’s a mystery.

Scripture says, “In the beginning was the Word (Jesus) and the Word was God and the Word was with God.” We also read that the Holy Spirit hovered over the chaos and prepared it to receive the Word. But we shouldn’t try to pin this all down to a time line like the old conundrum ‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’ because God can’t be diminished into time lines and sequences. In any case, it doesn’t matter. The part of the mystery that concerns us is what was born out of the existence of the Trinity.

Creativity and delight.

How long has it been since creativity and delight have been in the forefront of your spiritual ponderings? When you think of God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit, are ‘creativity and delight’ the first things that pop to mind? Probably not, yet these two words embody the whole nature of the mystery of Trinity. When the Three get together, that’s all that happens – wild creativity and absolute delight. They can’t help it. They are so in love with each other and so delighted with each other that their love and delight becomes creative energy and whatever flows from that creative energy totally delights them causing them to love each other even more, if that was possible, which exacerbates their delight and from that amazing things and people are created…and on we go. Once again, I’m making it all a time line of ‘this causes that which causes this’, which is nonsense, but we can’t even begin to comprehend it any other way. I think the Trinity is just delighted that we are trying to comprehend it at all.

Wisdom, Creativity and Delight - what an amazing vision of the Lord. No frown lines, just laughter wrinkles. The wonder of it all is that we are invited to participate in the Trinitarian…energy. I don’t really like the word ‘energy’. It’s over used and doesn’t mean much any more, so I went to my thesaurus to look up another word. I’m going to use them all.

The wonder of it all is that we are invited to participate in the Trinitarian (take a breath) vitality, vigor, life, liveliness, animation, vivacity, spirit, spiritedness, verve, enthusiasm, zest, vibrancy, spark, sparkle, effervescence, ebullience, exuberance, buoyancy, sprightliness, strength, stamina, forcefulness, power, dynamism, drive, fire, passion, ardor and zeal.

We are invited and called to enter into all this because each one of us is a creation, a lovely consequence, of the circle of the Trinity. In love, wisdom and delight we were conceived and now, as manifestations of this circle of creative power, the Trinity delights in each one of us. “I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” We are called to be involved in that love, creativity and delight which means loving and delighting in ourselves and in others. There’s a tendency to think that before we can delight in ourselves, if we feel that’s allowed at all, we need to clean up and shape up. So, we spend our lives struggling with all we feel is wrong with ourselves and we believe that all that we see as wrong is what God sees as wrong. We spend our energies in fixing the creation without really knowing what is broken. We can’t do that. You can’t do that. It’s all backwards. In order for what is broken to be fixed you need to be immersed in the mystery of the understanding that you are an amazing consequence of the Trinitarian love circle. You need to enter into and stay within the delight the Trinity has in you. As you immerse yourself in the delight flowing over you, new creation is the result – what’s broken gets fixed in his time and wisdom. “Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth.”   Not only do you open yourself to be continuously created and renewed but you also begin to discover your own gifts of creativity, wisdom and passion, a discovery that creates in you a deeper love for the Lord and a greater delight in his creation. This is the circle in which we are called to participate; it is the expanding circle of creative life, not the restrictive cycle of despondent failure and inadequacy.

How do you begin to participate? With gratitude: gratitude for the mystery of the Lord’s love and gratitude for the mystery of yourself. 

Cardinal Suenens in his book “A New Pentecost” writes, “For my own part, as the years go by, I become increasingly aware of God’s wonderfully active presence in my life and of my own poor correspondence to his many graces. The revelation of his unfailing concern, which finds no detail too small, awakes within me a hymn of joyful praise whose refrain could be from one of our glorious antiphons at Christmastide: ‘O Wisdom, you reach from beginning to end, ordering all things with strength and sweetness.’"

Trinity: the mystery of coming full circle; the mystery of coming home.

Pentecost Sunday, 2010

John 14:15-26

‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever.

‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

‘I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

Quick review: The new covenant between God and his people is a relationship of agreement. This means there is agreement on both sides. Just as in marriage there is an agreement of intent and responsibility between two people, in our relationship with the Father, there is not only commitment on our side but there is also commitment on his side. 

As God's people, we tend to forget that. We forget that this is a two-sided relationship and that the Father never meant it to be any other way. He always wanted relationship – a two-way commitment between himself and each of us.

God desiring a relationship with a human is somewhat like one of us deciding that we want a relationship with a dog. The dog could be quite willing to have a relationship in its own eager way but real communication and understanding is going to be a problem. Even if a puppy learns in a very limited way the things it should or should not do in order to please us, learns to obey our commands and even learns to read some of our facial expressions etc. the degree of relationship is going to be restricted by the dog’s natural incapacity to feel, think, envision, plan and respond the way we do. The relationship between a dog and its master or mistress is not a bad relationship but it’s not a full one.

What God wanted and wants with us is a full relationship. In order to make that possible he sent Jesus, who came to save us, give us free access to his Father and give us a true vision of who the Father really is. Through Jesus, we were given a picture of the Father. “The Father and I are one,” said Jesus. “If you’ve seen me, you have seen the Father.” But God knew that we would need more than that in order to enter into a full and developing relationship with him. He knew we would need continued supernatural help in order to be able to share in his heart and participate in his ways. So, he sent the Holy Spirit.

The point of this reflection is not that God sent the Holy Spirit to help us or that without the Holy Spirit we would be incapable of having a relationship with God; all that is true but the point of this reflection is that having sent the Holy Spirit, God's deep desire is to enter into a Covenant Relationship with each one of us, a relationship of two way commitment. He has pledged himself to each one of us and communicates this commitment through his Holy Spirit. This means he has, in truth, committed himself to certain actions and responsibilities within the covenant. He didn’t have to do that. He didn’t need to do that. He desired to do that. He desired relationship and if there is anyone who really understands how relationship must work, it’s God.

 He could have just demanded that we follow and obey like dogs. He would have been completely within his rights as our creator and Lord of the universe to just be a master dictator who gives orders and punishes the rebel and that’s that. But, no. He wants to have a love communion with us and he wants us to know, love and trust him in the same way his Son knew him, loved him and trusted him.The Holy Spirit is vital to the Covenant relationship between God and each one of his people.

‘Suscipe’ (pronounced sus chee pay) is a Latin word that means ‘receive’. It is also the name of a prayer attributed to St. Ignatius with which you may be familiar. It goes:

“Take, Lord, receive, all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will. All I have and possess, you have given to me; now, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; dispose of it wholly according to your will. Give me only your love and your grace. That is enough for me.”

This prayer has also been called the Radical Prayer and, truly, it can be a little scary to pray that prayer and mean it. I first heard this prayer as a song and it immediately captivated me. That was the Holy Spirit in action. He comes and opens doors into the heart of God. Any desire I felt to be able to pray that prayer - and mean it - had its source in the desire God has to have a relationship with me. I was experiencing God’s desire and was being allowed to participate in it. Still, I hesitated. It was such a demanding prayer, such a prayer of total commitment and abandonment. This was a serious prayer! The Spirit put this question to me: "Can anyone be a committed Christian, and not pray this prayer??" 

 As I was reading over the prayer, longing to have that depth of courage and commitment to wholeheartedly pray it, the Holy Spirit moved again. The last two sentences jumped out as if they had suddenly been bolded. “Give me only your love and your grace. That is enough for me.”

I immediately understood that, yes, God was asking for my commitment to relationship but also that he had a huge part he was committed to in this relationship. He was committed to providing me with Love and Grace. The Holy Spirit communicated to me the reality and truth of what it means to be in a relationship with God. The Holy Spirit was the bridge between small insignificant me and God, the Incomprehensible, God, the Almighty. The Holy Spirit opened me up to the truth that God’s love and grace was indeed enough for me.

On my own, I could not have come to that revelation because in the natural none of us have anything on which to base our understanding of a relationship where we are given all that we need to exist as full human beings. In natural relationships, if we depend on another to give us everything we need we will always be totally disappointed, let down, betrayed and left with inadequate resources. And in the same way, if anyone depended on any one of us to be everything they needed we would totally disappoint, let down, betray and give inadequately to them. So, the impact of God committing his all in all to us is beyond our capacity to comprehend. We desperately need the Holy Spirit to bring us knowledge, insight and understanding of all that is unknowable, unseen and incomprehensible.

It is a wonderful thing when we commit ourselves to the Lord. We actually couldn’t do that without the power of the Spirit or without his opening our spirits to want to be connected with God. He is the one who stirs our hearts, blows gently on the dieing coals and creates new fires within. He is the cause and we are the effect. We can only reflect the desire God has for us. However, we can forget to ponder on the fact that as we are moved by the Holy Spirit to a relationship of commitment to the Lord, we can also depend on the fact that God has made a commitment to us. We can call on the Advocate to remind us of who God is and all that he committed to us: his Love, his Grace, his Son, his very Word.

We are human, limited and forgetful; we need to ask the Holy Spirit to open us up to and remind us of the loving power of a Father who is utterly committed to us so that we can pray wholeheartedly without doubt or fear, “Give me only your love and your grace, then I am rich enough and need ask for nothing more.”

Sixth Sunday of Easter, 2010

John 14: 23-29

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.


‘I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.’

Do you go through rough times when, no matter how much you pray and how much you try to believe and trust in order to not let your heart be troubled, you are still disturbed and anxious? It’s not that you don’t believe the Lord is in control of your life but it’s so difficult to bring your emotions in line with your beliefs. Well, don’t feel too badly. In this week’s gospel, the disciples are told by Jesus himself, face to face and in the flesh, not to let their hearts be troubled yet we know that the disciples not only continued to be deeply troubled and distressed but, as events unfolded, they became absolutely terrified. Even though Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” peace was the last thing the disciples experienced throughout the crucifixion and the days leading up to Pentecost. After the crucifixion, even though they knew Jesus had risen, had seen him and spoken with him, Pentecost still found them hiding out for fear of the authorities.

If the disciples, who knew Jesus intimately, had trouble grasping and holding onto peace and courage, then perhaps we shouldn’t feel so guilty and upset with ourselves when our hearts are anxious. Anxiety is hard enough. We don’t need to be anxious about being anxious on top of it. What we need is to understand a little more about the peace Jesus is speaking about.

“Not as the world gives do I give.” When you think of the word ‘peace’, what comes into your mind? What images are there? It will be something a little different for each of us but, in essence, we all have visions of a place or state with no worries. And, of course, in order for there to be no worries we would have to find resolutions to all the things that make us worry: lack of money, illness, broken relationships, unrealized desires, unmet needs…the list is long, so long that most of us could spend the rest of our lives trying to find solutions to everything that’s broken or is going to be broken.

Every once in a while we get exactly what we want in the way that we want it but most of the time it feels like there’s always something or someone else in control dictating how things go. When we do get what we want in the way we want it, are we happy? Certainly. For a while. Then gradually another crisis pops up and something else needs to be gotten under control. If we become too closely attentive to the world’s idea of peace, we start to feel that life is lacking in inner calmness and confidence and this, in itself, makes our spirits feel disordered and faulty.

We can’t really be blamed for perceiving peace in this way. From the moment of birth, we are immersed in the world’s attitudes and perceptions about how to find peace. Not all solutions that the world proposes as answers to our anxieties are evil or false but what the world gives are surface solutions. Many problems may be cleared up and lots of difficulties may be successfully resolved by following the world’s wisdom and intelligence but as we face continual challenges that spark anxiety and stress, we suspect that finding solutions does not necessarily mean finding peace.

“Not as the world gives do I give.” How does the world give? By convincing us that it is our right to be completely in control and by promising us the opportunity to attain complete control. Think about it for a moment. Think of anything society values as good for the individual. Now see if you can pin point how ‘being in control’ is a part of the process of making that desired goal a reality. There’s actually nothing wrong with being in control of our lives as we endeavor to make healthy, balanced and wise decisions and follow through on them. As followers of Jesus, we are indeed called to exercise wise control - without being controlling of everyone and everything around us. The mistake we make is in thinking that if we are in complete control, we will be peaceful. Life can become a scramble of trying to bring into control all that is out of control.

Jesus didn’t say, “I give you a life that’s completely in control.” He said, “I give you peace.” We subconsciously think both are the same because that’s the world’s perception of peace and it’s very difficult to disentangle ourselves from that idea. The beginning of disentanglement is to learn and accept Jesus’ definition of peace. It obviously does not mean that we are never in pain, confusion or anxiety. What it does mean is that when we are in pain, confusion and anxiety, we can know that this is all right and we are not failures or inadequate in our spirituality.

Most of us have no idea how much of our inner turmoil is not only coming from outer circumstances that are out of our control but also from the free floating anxiety of feeling we should be more in control or more confident as good Christians. Sometimes this translates into us having conscious thoughts that maybe we should try to change things through aggressive stubbornness and manipulative willpower but not always; often it means that we feel we have not prayed right, haven’t trusted enough, haven’t learned the spiritual lessons we should have learned, haven’t been as good as we should have been or have made wrong choices when we were trying very hard to make good choices. We feel like it’s our fault that peaceful feelings elude us; if we were more spiritual we wouldn’t feel so tense and distressed. These inner anxieties arise especially when we can see that we have no capability of controlling circumstances but our prayers aren’t effectively procuring our desired results either. We feel as though it has to be our fault. We must have done something wrong or are particularly dense. We feel like we’re deaf and blind to God with no idea how to make ourselves see and hear.

“Not as the world gives do I give.” The peace of Christ is the peace of not having to be in control all the time. The peace of Christ is the peace of knowing that in spite of what we suffer from being brokenly human in a broken human world, he will bring us through. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t or won’t suffer fear and uncertainty when things are difficult. Certainly, there are times when God will grace you with ‘peace that passes understanding’, a sheer gift based on nothing that you have done but in other circumstances, you might find yourself in deep turmoil in spite of all your prayers and sincere attempts to trust in God.

This too is gift.

Neither state is better than the other spiritually. Each state is given in God’s wisdom and each state can cause us to grow in the ways we need to grow. Our response is to be present to him, to be honest about our fears and uncertainties, to seek him constantly and to offer sacrifices of praise and gratitude. That’s why it’s called “a sacrifice of praise”. It’s sacrificial because it’s hard. It’s painful to give praise when you’re not in control. You’d rather feel in control first – then praise him.

Jesus also said in this week’s gospel: “I am coming to you.” He is coming to you. He is coming to me. The peace of this knowledge is always with us; if it suddenly left us, then we would really know what it means to have no peace.

That in itself is enough for gratitude for a lifetime.


*Note: there will most likely be no blog next week as we will be on the road for a few days.
         J