God’s love overflows for us –Prov 8:22-31, Rom 5:1-15 (Trinity)

Trinity Sunday, Year C; St. Adalbert's and St. Casimir's parishes.

Before I entered seminary, I was a math teacher, which some people might think would give me an advantage in preaching on Trinity Sunday.  But, no amount of mathematical trickery can magically make ‘sense’ of the 3-in-1, because the Trinity is not a puzzle to be solved, but someone to adore.  We’re not here to ‘make sense’ of the Trinity, because sense is fundamentally the wrong thing to try to make out of Love.  Love is the thing to make out of Love: wonder, love, awe, praise and adoration.  Love is the heart of our belief in God as a Trinitarian God. Because if there wasn’t more than one person in the Godhead, God wouldn’t have been able to love before He created us. That would mean that God would have created us out of a neediness, a need to have someone to love. And it would mean that love is kind of an add-on to God, an optional extra He chose to take on at the dawn of time.

God pulls us up by the flame of the Spirit – Acts 2:1-11, Gen 11:1-9

Pentecost; St Adalbert's and Casimir's parishes.

[Acts 2 is read on Sunday and Gen 11 is an option for the Vigil. As I had a Vigil and Sunday morning Mass, I varied the below homily by giving reminders of the reading they hadn't heard proclaimed.]

Fire fascinates us.  I was just out at a retreat center this week with some of my brothers in Holy Cross, and for some of our small group sessions, my group happened to in a room with a gas fire-place. It wasn’t particularly cold, but I noticed that almost instinctively one of the members of my group turned the fire on whenever we went into the room. I guess it’s similar to how we light candles even though the electric lights here work perfectly well. Fire captures our gaze and delights us.  This is as true with how a fire place makes a space feel more humane, more conducive to reflection, to when we gaze up at those firey dots in the night’s sky, or think about some campfire conversations maybe you’ve had.  Fire not just warms us, it lights up our world, it cooks our food, it fascinates us and attracts our gaze.

God shows us what yet another facet of love looks like – Acts 1:1-11, Luke 24:46-52

Ascension, Year C; St. Adalbert's and St. Stanislaus parish.

Some people say that Ascension is the hardest feast of the Church year to preach on.  Not Trinity Sunday, not Good Friday, not a funeral: the Ascension.  And I’m not making excuses here, but it’s the only feast on which the primary action of God, in Christ, that we celebrate seems to be him moving away from us.  We’re on earth, and he ascends: to heaven.  And that’s not the primary movement given to us to proclaim at any other time: the Christian story is consistently one of God reaching out to us, God coming to visit and redeem his people, of us turning away, but of God’s grace eventually conquering our stubbornness and repentance moving us to accept the glorious eternal embrace offered.  Except today: when the movement is of Christ ascending.