When the Special Time runs back into Ordinary Time. Post Holy Trinity time.
Homily 2024
Happy Holy Trinity Sunday. When we reach this feast on the Church calendar, then we know that we’reback into “ordinary time” for the church and that we’re headed towards summer season. You’ll see the green decorations are up behind me in the sanctuary. On last Monday we transitioned back into the 34 weeks of the Church that’s called ordinary time, meaning that we are NOT in Advent, Christmas, Lent nor Easter anymore. “Ordinary time” really means “ordinal time” which is counting 1-2-3-4-5 and all the way up to 34 weeks of our usual Catholic calendar year. The other weeks of a 52-week year are for those other special times of Lent, Easter, Advent and Christmas..
Some people kid with the title of ordinary time as if it means for us to just go drag along then in ordinariness, for a dull routine, and blah, blah, blah, the same ol’ same ol’ right now. That kidding is worth a chuckle, but it’s not really what Ordinary Time is about. !
In the Gospel today of Matthew 28, Jesus declares that what the apostles had ahead of them was an ongoing experience of God with them, in the “I AM with you always” mode, says the Lord Jesus. So no day need be drab, or routine—because He would be with us and in us from then on in.
Thus, whether in a sacred season or in an ordinary time on that Church calendar, we are Catholic believers 24/7 and for all 365 days of a year, with all weeks or days counting for much in our living. “Ordinary Time” is actually meaning “Ordinal Time” because it is based on ordinal numbers (a first week of the Church, then a second, a third, and then all the way up to a thirty-fourth week. etc.). Look at the free Catholic calendars we gave out in January and it will confirm that this actually is the 8th week of Ordinary time. We did the other 7 weeks of Ordinary time from after Christmas season up to Ash Wednesday. Now we are back to Ordinary Time. Do you see?
Looking a little deeper, though, calling these many weeks ahead of summer and fall as “ordinary time” is not so bad, after all.
Don’t we spend most of our lives in ordinary time? I would guess that life can’t always be special or extra for us— There’s got to be some ordinary experiences to make the special ones as special. No matter how spontaneous we may think we are and how much we may enjoy variety, most of our time is spent following an ordinary routine. That is what gets us through the day. For example, many of us enjoy travel. Visiting friends and family can be refreshing; seeing new places can be enlivening; but hardly anyone wants to be traveling all the time. If we did, then you’d get homesick.
Like a famous character once said, the worst part of being a star person who travels (as does an entertainer as he) is living in hotel rooms too much of the time.
So we have Easter and Christmas seasons, and the hype of Advent, and the special disciplines and attentions at Lent, but ordinary time is needed. Much of the real self comes out in the average, everyday life.
Jesus said that He would be our daily bread, or nourishment for the every-day living. He told us to pray to the Father to give us the Christ (or the Pure and True Bread) as our daily nourishment. So He notices we have more regular days than special days to cover in life, and God will put life into that daily walk for us. He’ll give us the reason for living. Any ‘ol day.
I looked for an example of everyday Christian living. I saw one in the Hyde Park area of Chicago in St. Thomas parish. I was there on Thursday and Friday. In the morning, I said what looked to be a routine of moms with strollers and carriages meeting in the park for time together and rolling a convoy of children around the good natural setting of the big city park. Evidently, some woman took it upon herself to organize this group. It started likely from the parish or parish school. Now an ordinary weekday can be a gathering of moms and kids. Co-support for adults; playmates for the lil’ tots. We have a group of Wednesdays here like that one. It is called MOPS. Mothers of Pre-Schoolers. It is neighborhood moms that use our church and halls and classrooms and playground for their regular gathering. That’s a matching routine that makes a day go better. I thank the Catholic moms here who got that going on here.
Christmas and Easter times can have lots of appeal and wonder, and we are glad for them each year. But going into this present ordinary time can be pretty good, too.
The color of Ordinary Time is green. It is also the color of nature this time of year. When the world is green, stuff is growing. Look ahead to this time as time to grow. You can grow a lot if you pray daily. Put that in your plans for Summer and Fall. Also, take time to ask God for gifts like noticing ways to love others or to be loved, or for regularly looking for something of wonder to take in. Life has them for those who look for it. Then you won’t pass by your rainbows or butterflies now nor the golden leaves later of fall. Ask God to help you notice the things going on in your life as actually connected or of His providence.
Our daily living has a story in it, God’s story of living with us. Invite God to use you in His plans for the day in this area of planet earth. You heard last week from a parishioner that recently took notice of a need to replace trees in our lot and fully beautify it, by seeing how we need to rally in putting in new trees in those earth islands out there. It was a creation call to serve God and for her to invite others into the good project. She said she just noticed it while out there—God got her attention on it. Now we have a program going on it.
Happy Holy Trinity Sunday, that time of transition from special to normal or “ordinary” time in the Church calendar.
HOMILY FROM A PRIOR YEAR ON HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY TAKING A DIVE INTO TRINITARIAN BELIEF
On today’s Holy Trinity Feast, we delve again into the Mystery of God with an effort of describing or defining God, Who exists beyond any full description, since God is eternal, and we start our figuring at an earthly and temporal side of things. The attempts to define The Holy Trinity always fall short, of our grasping of God, and yet, we seek for some understanding, for God has shed some revelation to help our understanding.
Today in our Bible texts for Mass, we read a portion from Hebrews, which is a reference back to the Genesis story for an introduction of God to us. As the Creation account is referenced, it tells how God is not just there as Maker of everything, but in or by Whom through it was all made. This personally connects with the reader who would knows The Logos or Word, that Eternal action of a Word being spoken that brought forth life. This Scripture also tells of Divine Action, that the Creator did something, which was the Spirit Who breathed on us and brings forth humanity and other created things naturally alive.
In fact, all three Persons of God are even in the Genesis revelation and its Creation Story, as it curiously describes God as in the plural, saying “Let us make humankind in our own image.”
Some people thought that the Trinity concept of God was a New Testament thing, but God has been an “us” (communion of Persons) at earth’s first glimpse of things.
In the Christian Revelation, it affirms also an Old Testament Psalm of The Lord speaking to the Lord, One being on earth and Another in Heaven. This divine connection between them also communicates the Holy Spirit. So, as in places like John’s Gospel, that we heard today proclaimed, the text has Jesus talking of Himself as God, though also clearly in talking above to Another Who He refers to as “Father.” In a related text, Jesus would also explain of this Other Person: “I and the Father are one.” Then, in another gospel text, Jesus is speaking of Another Person, Whom He names the Spirit—which is this love connection of the Father and Son, Who is the Third Person of a Blessed Trinity.
He says that the Father and the Spirit and He have all pre-existed together, too. He explained to a Jewish scholar, that “before Abraham, I AM.”
The Bible is full of these references to the Trinity of Persons, and it is why we have a Creed of Faith that specifically mentions Them. It is why all our Catholic Prayers are “In the Name of The Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” We baptize in this tri-une formula.
How do we know the Holy Trinity? We know Them in only what we can find in God’s revelation to us.
In a full circle, the Father Almighty lives and creates people and things to live under Him. He sends the Blessed Son to help the fallen and separated (or broken) creatures and things to help us to live under The Father’s Reign again (or His Kingdom come, on earth, as it is in Heaven). Then, the Spirit Who breathed things into being naturally, now breathes on us to help us become super-natural, or better described, spiritual children of God again, and be living in the world, but while awaiting full redemption to a kingdom of Heaven—our home.
That’s a quick review of The Holy Trinity. Theologians and Church Fathers have taught much on the matter….
When the Church surfaced to headquarter in Rome, post empire days, some 16-17 centuries ago, the early Church Fathers had councils and creeds and core beliefs to be clarified, as Christianity faced a confusing cackle of differing views of herself, and there were those who would depart into a divided understanding, by confused teachers like Arius, Nestorius, and Montanus, to name three. The Church would name what teachers or teachings were in error, and show clarity in the Truth of Christ Jesus, and what we are to believe. She did what Jesus asked in His final directives: “Teach others all that I have commanded you…. baptize them into that Truth.”
While we believe in the Holy Trinity, it also means that we believe in One God. It is affirmed by a Gospel moment of Jesus in fine clarity.
Mark 12:29-34 —And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.. And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other … and from our love of God we are to love our neighbor as like we do to ourselves, and if we do so, that would be valued by God more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices we make here. . And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, =He said to him, happily, you, sir, are not far from the kingdom of God.
Let’s hope that we are headed clearly into the Kingdom of God, as in living in Jesus Christ. Happy Holy Trinity Sunday.