LO, I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS

A SERMON FOR TRINITY SUNDAY

So far, the year of our Lord 2020 hasn’t gone too well.  First, the Coronavirus.  Then, no sooner do we open our doors to catch a breath of fresh air and enjoy the sunshine, than we’re greeted by gangs of looters and organized rioters intent on taking the nation to an even lower level than the one from which we’re trying to emerge.  Psychologically, it has all been a bit much, and its no wonder that everyone’s nerves are totally frazzled.

Being in such a state of frazzlement, of course doesn’t help.  When we all get up-tight, when we’re all constantly on the verge of snapping, how can we expect a highly charged situation like the current crisis to de-escalate and go back to normal?  It requires cool heads and even tempers by all our citizens.  Those who use the crisis as an excuse to attack our legitimate authorities politically, to defund the police or get rid of them altogether, to normalize groups like “Black Lives Matter”—these people are just as guilty as those who are robbing liquor stores and throwing bricks at our law enforcement.  We have come to expect such insane rhetoric from our liberal media, our so-called Hollywood celebrities, and the former hippies who now run our universities.  We now see the same language coming out of the mouths of Protestant and Catholic bishops, who have shown themselves more upset that the President should visit their churches than that an out-of-control mob tried to burn them down.  Where, oh where, is sanity in the midst of all this?

So we look around for cool heads to prevail.  And so far, it seems that we look in vain.

We can’t look to our political governors to maintain control.  We can’t even look to to our church leaders.  Community organizers are too busy arranging demonstrations, while our medical profession just want us all to go back home and lock ourselves in again.  And I hate to say it, but aren’t some people on the right perhaps in danger of being bated into over-reacting against the demonstrators so that the left can use their cell phone videos as tools to further incite the mob and create even more mayhem?  So where do we need to look?

It reminds some of the older people amongst us of the days back in the 1960s when this kind of lunacy was born.  One thing the hippies used to say back then, in answer to this question of where to find sanity, was right, even though they didn’t understand why.  They came up with a song: “The answer, my friend is blowing in the wind.”  It’s just one week since our attention was drawn, to the “sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where [the apostles] were sitting.  And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” 

Here is our answer to all the current problems, whether they be on the scale of national crisis or just our own psychological fragility.  God is with us.  Beginning with Pentecost last week, continuing today with the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, and then with Corpus Christi on Thursday, we celebrate one after the other in quick succession, each Person of the Blessed Trinity, separately and together.  The God who is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, the God who changeth never.  When all else around us is chaos and tumult, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

Our responsibility in this world of madness is to live that truth ourselves, and then bring it to our neighbor.  We must remain firmly implanted in the presence of that God who does not change, of that Faith that does not change.  We must remain true to that worship of God, the Holy Apostolic Mass, that does not change.  As Catholics who remain true to tradition, we have been given the greatest gift of all, the stability of knowing that we have something worth clinging on to.  All men yearn for this stability because it is the only thing that can give inner peace.  Whether consciously or not, everyone seeks this inner peace, but they don’t all know how or where to find it.  We who know must share that gift with them.  Because today, they need it more than ever.  And only in God will we find the unity that needs to replace all these increasing divisions between black and white, liberals and conservatives, criminals and law enforcement. 

I don’t like using clichés, but this one originated in the words of our divine Saviour himself: “The truth shall set you free.”  The context of these words was when our Lord was speaking to those Jews who believed in him, and he told them “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”  This is what we need to do in these difficult times—continue in his words.  Keep his commandments, maintain the eternal truths that are being disturbed, preserve what is good and discard only what is truly bad.

And our reward is to enjoy the consoling peace that the Word of God speaks to us today: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”  God is with us.  As God the Father, he is the great Divine Being, omnipresent, surrounding us with his paternal care and guidance.  As God the Son, he is present physically in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, always ready to come into our very souls and bodies in Holy Communion.  And as God the Holy Ghost he dwells within us and we are his temples.  God is with us always.  It’s that easy.  Cling to this one, simple truth and pray for calm on the troubled waters of our nation and our soul.  Then pray for the strength to transmit God’s truths, his love and his peace to others.  Whether we realize it or not, God is with us.  It’s up to us to stay close to him!  Let’s make it our constant prayer, the words of the hymn: “O Lord that changeth not, abide with me.”

ALL CREATURES THAT ON EARTH DO DWELL

A HYMN FOR TRINITY SUNDAY

By William Kethe, d. 1594 All people that on earth do dwell, Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice, Him serve with fear, His praise forthtell; Come ye before Him and rejoice. The Lord, ye know, is God indeed; Without our aid He did us make. We are His folk, He doth us feed, And for His sheep He doth us take.

Oh, enter, then, His gates with praise,

Approach with joy His courts unto;

Praise, laud, and bless His name always.

For it is seemly so to do.

For why? The Lord, our God, is good;

His mercy is forever sure.

His truth at all times firmly stood

And shall from age to age endure.

To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,

To God whom heaven and earth adore,

From men and from the angel host

Be praise and glory evermore.  Amen.

E PLURIBUS UNUM

A REFLECTION FOR TRINITY SUNDAY

After the thirteen original colonies broke away from their King back in 1776, the Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum soon became an official motto of the revolutionaries, and they included it in the new nation’s official seal in 1782.  The idea was, of course, that out of the union of these thirteen colonies there had arisen one single nation, the United States of America.  And the fact that the motto itself was composed of thirteen letters certainly added to the power of its symbolism.

The idea of unity being forged from diversity, however, did not originate with the good old US of A.  Other countries had already come together to form a larger united nation.  Before the ninth century, for example, England had been comprised of seven distinct independent kingdoms.  And before that we can’t forget the Roman Empire that unified almost all the known world at the time, as did Alexander the Great before that.

In short, mankind strives naturally for unity.  It does so because we were all created in the same image and likeness of God.  And God, as we all know, is three Persons in one God—the Most Holy Trinity.  One God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.  In the majestic words of the Athanasian Creed, we acknowledge that “in this Trinity none is afore or after another, none is greater or less than another: but the whole three Persons are co-eternal together, and co-equal.”

And we are made in the image and likeness of this God.  In the sight of God, all men are created equal, at least in the sense that they have mortal bodies and immortal souls.  We are all subject to the same laws of God and nature.  We enjoy the same pleasures, suffer the same pain, and will be subject to the same judgment for our behavior.  We are one in our humanity.

And yet, we are diverse.  We are one mankind in many different forms.  We differ in racial characteristics like hair and skin color, language, culture, and a host of other ways.  This diversity also reflects God, the aspect of Trinity in God.  It is certainly no coincidence that there are three general racial classifications on this planet, Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid.  Together, we form a living, breathing reflection of God’s triune nature, three races that form one humanity.

While the three races may be equal in the eyes of God, we are sadly, not necessarily equal in each other’s eyes.  Diversity has led not to unity in the case of man, but to inequality and even persecution and hatred between us.  While it is evident that the natural (and sometimes man-made) differences in our history, environment and ability to form civilizations may have had unfortunate consequences in our dealings with each other, it is incumbent on us as Catholics to recognize the underlying and inherent equality which makes us all brothers—children of the same God.  The answer to today’s problems lies in the Holy Trinity.  Diversity should not be abused, but rather encouraged where it adds to the richness of Creation.  And true unity is never going to be the fruit of violent change or some kind of artificial globalism, but rather in the common recognition of these three Persons in one God.  It used to be called Christendom.  Our prayer today must be that all men may find their common destiny in their union in the one true Church, in the one true Faith, and with the same one true God.  E Pluribus Unum!