A
blessed Memorial Day weekend. Monday we remember over 1.2 million
men and women who died in the wars of our country and honor them for
sacrificing their lives so that we can enjoy our freedoms.
I invite all of us to pause for a moment of silence to pray for these
brave men and women who gave “the last full measure of their
devotion" to the cause of freedom, to quote Lincoln's
Gettysburg address.
Last
week, I met a couple married sixty-some years. I asked, “What’s
the secret to such a marriage?” The wife answered, “Each
week, we go to an upscale restaurant for a delicious meal, fine wine,
a little dancing, and then a slow walk back home.” Then she added,
“He goes on Tuesdays. I go Fridays.”
Which reminds me,
while out sipping wine with a friend, I noticed that whenever he put
the glass to his mouth, he would close his eyes. I finally asked,
“Why do you do that?” He replied that the last time he had a
medical checkup, the doctor told him never look at a drink again.
Today
we celebrate the awesome mystery of the
triune God,
a fundamental truth of Christianity: one God in three; a God
completely beyond us yet a God completely within
us.
To put this mystery simply: the
God of the universe
became
flesh in Jesus
(the incarnation) and is alive among
us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, one God in three distinctive movements: Father, Son and Spirit.
One
of my favorite Broadway plays was Godspell. Especially the song: “O
dear Lord three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, love thee
more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, day by day. ”
A
powerful prayer in an age when many people live as though there's no
God. I of course think Blaise Pascal, a 17th
century mathematician/philosopher, got it right with his famous wager
or bet. Pascal's
Wager is this:
One does not know whether God
exists;
not
believing in God is bad
for one's eternal soul if God does exist;
believing
in God is of no
consequence
if God does
not
exist;
therefore
it is
in one's interest to believe in God.
The
19th
century novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, if there's no God, everything
is permissible.
Think about it!
In
our better moments, or
when some crisis
may begin to overwhelm us, we may think about fundamental questions
such as: what is the meaning of life? What's
my purpose?
Surely, we can't be content with the pedestrian adage “eat, drink
and be merry.” An orderly universe presupposes an order-er, just as
a watch presupposes a watchmaker. The will to live presupposes some
purpose for living.
I
would argue, as Pascal did, that within each one of us is a
space which “can
be only filled with ....God
himself.”
(Pensées
VII)
Pascal
likely read Saint Augustine who wrote in his autobiographical
Confessions,
“You have formed
us for Yourself,
O God, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.”
Yes, we were born to live in relationship with God--the triune
God--and that's what today's feast highlights.
The
word of God takes us back to Moses who poses a series of rhetorical
questions about God to his fellow Hebrews in the wilderness of Sinai.
God,
Moses says, has appeared to the Hebrews, as a creator, a worker of
signs and wonders and a loving parent. And this God promises peace
and prosperity if the Hebrews will be faithful to the covenant God
made with them. We might ask ourselves: how
faithful are we
in our relationships and in our responsibilities.
Paul
in his letter to the Romans speaks about our new relationship with
God through Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit: we are adopted
sons and daughters of God and co-heirs to his kingdom. Paul might ask
you and me: Do we try to live as best we can in light of our status
as sons and daughters of God.
In
the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus sends us forth by the power of
the Spirit to continue
the saving work of Jesus Christ:
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit.”
The
mystery of the triune God--a God utterly beyond us and yet utterly
within us, a God who is one
as well as diverse,
a God of distinctive relationships--invites us to ask ourselves: What
kind of a relationship do we have with God?
Most
people, I think, have a relationship with God, perhaps more
subconscious than conscious. Why do I say this? Because we are
forever trying to find answers
to those fundamental questions of human life
that people often ask in moments of crises, for example, the sudden
death of a loved one, a life-threatening illness, a broken marriage,
the loss of a job or savings, misunderstandings and so forth. In
moments such as these, people often do ask questions such as: What is
the purpose of life? Where's my life going? Does
anyone care what happens to me?
These are religious questions, questions we cannot help but answer by
the way we live.
As we grow old, we may wonder: what was my life all
about? We appear to have accomplished so little and now it is almost
over.
Moreover, life seems to be filled with so many
tragedies— senseless murders in our cities, mindless violence in
the middle east, and natural disasters closer to home.
But
we also have occasional experiences that shake us out of our dull
routine—moments of awe and wonder, and not necessarily a
spectacular experience like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls.
Perhaps it’s a glorious sunset, or the joy of a friendship, or the
accomplishment of a goal. Such experiences can lift us out of
ourselves into the presence of a power beyond us. We begin to
experience the transcendent
dimension
of our own lives.
Yes,
we say, there must be an
awesome power beyond us,
a purposeful, gracious and compassionate God who is responsible not
only for this incredible universe but also for our own very lives.
Catholic Christianity says that
our God is indeed an all-good, merciful God who can heal the brokenness of human
life. This God became flesh in Jesus and is alive among us by the
power of the Spirit. That is the mystery of the triune God: Father,
Son and Spirit.
This
is the same God who freed the Hebrews from their oppressors in
Ancient Egypt, who renewed His covenant with them at Sinai. This God
showed his face to us in Jesus of Nazareth. Through
Him, with Him and in Him,
we live in God’s triune life and the
triune God lives in us.
This
triune God, the archetype or model of self-giving love, empowers us
to reach out in love to one another with compassion, forgiveness, a
smile, a kind word, a helping hand.
And
in reaching out to one another in love, we become like the triune God
in self-giving love.
Yes,
today's Gospel proclaims that God so loved us that he promised to be
“with
you always, until the end of the age."
So,
I come back to the play Godspell: dear Lord three things I pray: to
see thee more clearly; to love thee more dearly; and follow thee more
nearly, day by day. Let us pray on this feast that God will grace us
so that we cano see this God more
clearly,
love him more dearly, and follow this God more nearly, day by day.
Amen.
