God brings us to share the glory of love – John 16:12-15, Prov 8:22-31, Rom 5:1-15 (Trinity)

Trinity Sunday, Year C -- Notre Dame (Basilica of the Sacred Heart)

Before I entered seminary, I was a math teacher, which makes me wonder if that’s why they asked me to preach here 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.  When we confess God as Trinity, we are confessing the simple, delightful, death-dying truth that God is Love, and to do so grateful to theologians who have loved this God, drawn close to this God in prayer, and given us words to help us approach the awesome mystery.

Jesus dwells with us ever more openly – John 14:23-29, Rev 21:10-14, 22-23

Easter, Year C, Week 6; FWSB TV Mass for the homebound and incarcerated.

I used to be really jealous of the people who had known Jesus during his earthly ministry; the zeroth generation of disciples, if you like.  The fact that they got to walk and talk with Jesus, to converse, to eat, to hunger… to interact with him in the same way as we interact when presented with any other regular living human.  But, as time has gone on, I’ve become more and more appreciative of living in this time, the time of the first, second, third… whatever number generation we’re on of being disciples, the time of the church. 

Jesus renews our love – John 121:31-35, Rev 21:1-5a

5th Sunday of Easter, Yr C; St. Mary's Convent / ND (Farley).

“Don’t let them in, don’t let them see / Be the good girl you always have to be. // Conceal, don’t feel, put on a show / Make one wrong move and everyone will know.”  So sings Queen Elsa, hiding behind her locked bedroom door out of fear, early on in Disney’s Frozen.  Scared of opening the door, of ungloving a hand; scared of loving.  And she’s already virtuous enough that she’s not scared of getting hurt, but she’s scared of hurting others, so she maintains her voluntary imprisonment as long as she can.

Jesus gives us the gift of being givers – John 21:1-14, Rev 5:11-14

Easter, Week 3 (Year C); Notre Dame (Keenan / Howard)

When I was in my first semester of the MDiv degree here at Notre Dame, I was rather surprised to get an email from one of our professors asking, “Can I keep a copy of this paper?”  It was a class in which we had to write a bunch of short papers over the semester, and after turning in about half of them, she would contact me to ask if she could keep a copy.  At first I thought it was a little strange, mainly because I didn’t really see why she felt the need to ask, but also because these weren’t papers that had really contained a lot of original research on my part, I’m sure I hadn’t told her something she didn’t already know in them, they were really just processing and reflecting on the readings that she had already given us.  But, then I remembered she was a scholar and a teacher.  She had chosen to dedicate her life to theological scholarship because she loved to read good theological writing, and apparently, I was producing something at least approaching that.  And, as a teacher, she needed to teach me that I was doing that, and asking permission to keep a copy of something she had a right to anyway, something that I could only have produced with her help and at her command; that was how she went about that.  In her deigning to receive my work as a gift, she nourished my scholarly zeal.  In deigning to receive my work as a gift, she gave me a gift in addition to the teaching she had already given; she gave me the gift of being a giver.

Jesus refuses goodbye – John 20:1-9

Easter Sunday; Notre Dame (Basilica of the Sacred Heart).  Video.

I don’t really like goodbyes.  I’m generally one of those people who tends to quietly slip away from a party, rather than going round bidding farewell to everyone I know.  And with casual acquaintances, or good friends we’ll only briefly be separated from, that’s OK (even if it verges on unconscionable for some of my more extroverted friends).  But the dearer the friend and the more remote the absence or uncertain the possibility of renewed contact, the more important the goodbye is.  And the harder it is.  So, I really don’t like those goodbyes, and still less final goodbyes, as much as I still cling to them as precious.

Jesus constantly desires closeness – Luke 22:14-23:56

Palm Sunday (Year C); Notre Dame (Lewis Hall)

How might we have responded to Jesus’ Passion at the time?  How are we responding now?  How are we responding to Christ’s suffering lived out in the suffering of our sisters and brothers and of ourselves?  How are we responding to Christ’s sacrifice, re-presented on every altar at every Mass, that we might be fed?

God sends us to the goal of glory – John 8:1-11, Isa 43:16-21, Phil 3:8-14

Lent, Yr C, Wk 5; Basilica of the Sacred Heart (ND).

The saddest thing about this gospel is that they walked away, these people with stones in their hands.  And there’s pretty stiff competition for the saddest thing about this gospel.  There’s the fact that there were going to stone a woman to death.  There’s their desire to test Jesus.  There’s the possibility that an act of adultery had been occurring, and we have to stand back and also be just as saddened, nay outraged, that we don’t know who consented to what in this encounter.  There is a lot to lament in this Gospel, about this happening retold to us, and about people and events in our lives whose memories it evokes.  But, I still contend that the saddest thing about this gospel is that they walked away, these people with stones in their hands.