Corpus Christ: what it means to "offer it up"

Exodus 24:3-8, Hebrews 9:11-15, Mark 14:12-26 (Corpus Christi, year B)

During my second year at university I was going through a tough time, feeling overburdened with assignments and exams. I was stressed out and burnt out. In the midst of this, I sat down for coffee with a friend of mine. I vented to him for a half hour about the struggles I was facing. I was looking for a sympathetic ear and to receive some encouragement. After I finished speaking, my friend, who was quite a bit more religious than I was at the time, simply said “you need to offer it up”. Offer it up?! This was not what I wanted to hear. I felt like my friend had ruined my pity party. So, rather maturely, I responded (or perhaps shouted) back to him “why don’t you offer it up?!”

At this very moment each of us carries different struggles and burdens. An illness we are coping with. Stress related to financial uncertainty or difficulties with work or school. The pain of a relationship that seems broken beyond repair. Today I am going to suggest that we do as my friend advised me some years ago: offer it up. More than this, I will suggest we offer up whatever burden we carry whenever we are at Mass. Before you have the chance to respond strongly to my suggestion, as I did to my friend’s, I want to give some rationale supporting it.

Jesus was crucified on Calvary, in the shadow of the Temple. Early Christians explained that we cannot appreciate the significance of Jesus’ death on the Cross, unless we understand its connection to the Temple. For the 1st century Jew, the Temple was the epicenter of their religious life. It was the place where people came to encounter God and perform the central act in their religion: offering sacrifice. Sacrifices of grain and  and animals were continuously offered in the Temple. For us, the idea of sacrifice can seem foreign, barbaric even. It is as though sacrifices are meant to appease the hunger of some brutal deity. Jews viewed the idea of sacrifice very differently. They understood that in offering sacrifice they were taking a small piece of God’s creation and returning it back to Him. It was an act of thanksgiving. In the first reading, which describes the sacrifice offered by Moses, we see another purpose of sacrifice. Moses took the blood of the sacrifice and placed half on the altar and half on the people. This action was meant to unite God and the people. Sin separates us from God. In offering sacrifice the people tried to restore their relationship with God. As the author to the Hebrews makes clear, however, countless animal sacrifices could not achieve this task. All the sacrifices offered in the Temple find its fulfillment in Jesus’ offering of Himself on the Cross. The blood of Jesus does what the blood of animal sacrifices could never fully accomplish: it definatively re-unifies humanity with God.

Jesus gave us the Eucharist so that we would have a way to stay connected to the sacrifice He offered once and for all on Calvary. When we read the accounts of Jesus instituting the Eucharist at the Last Supper, we find that they are filled with the language of sacrifice. Take it; this is my body. This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many. Jesus is using Temple talk. He is making an explicit link between the Eucharist and His death on the Cross. Whenever we are at Mass, we are connected to Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. The question is how? The answer is found in Jesus in other words at the Last Supper: “do this in memory of me”. To appreciate this phrase, we need to realize that Jesus and His followers had a radically different conception of “remembrance” than us.  If I look at a picture from an old holiday, I “remember” the experience by thinking about where I was and who was with me. The memory may evoke a certain emotion.  For Jews at the time of Christ, “remembering” meant much more. It was a very loaded term.  For example, at each Passover, the Jews remembered the Exodus, when God freed them from slavery in Egypt.  When Jews “remembered” the Exodus, they did not simply understand that they were thinking about it and celebrating the event.  They believed that they were actually made present at the Exodus; through remembrance, they really participated in an event that occurred over 1000 years before.

When Jesus said “do this in memory of me”, He meant it in the Jewish sense of the term.  Jesus followers understood that when they “did this in memory of Jesus”, when they celebrated the Mass, they were really present again at the Passion and Death of Jesus.   Because of this, when we do “this in remembrance of Jesus” He really becomes present in our midst.  At the moment of the consecration, the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus. At every Mass, we believe that we are really made present at the one sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary nearly 2000 years ago.

We are not, however, mere spectators to Christ’s self offering. The Mass allows us to participate in this sacrifice.  Any offering or sacrifice that we make to God on our own is just like the grain and animal sacrifices offered in the Temple. They are well intentioned but ultimately ineffective. The incredible thing about the Eucharist is that it joins us to Jesus. When we eat food, that food is digested and becomes a part of our body. With the Eucharist, it is just the opposite. The Eucharist is food which transforms us into itself. Whenever we receive Communion we are joined to Jesus. Because of this, when we offer our sacrifices at Mass, we offer them in union with Jesus. This gives our sacrifices value and makes them effective. Our sacrifices become true acts of thanksgiving which are able to really help others, bringing them closer to God. Together with Jesus, our sacrifices help to reunite humanity and divinity.

Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to almighty God, the almighty Father.  We hear these words each Mass but they often go in one ear and out the other. We miss an incredible opportunity. Each one of us in meant to bring our own personal sacrifice to the Mass, during which it is joined to the sacrifice of Jesus and so given meaning and made fruitful. What will your sacrifice be today? What suffering, challenge, inconvenience, or pain do you carry today? Offer it up. Allow God to use your sacrifice to help save the world.

Trinity Sunday: a preacher's nightmare

Trinity Sunday, year B

Trinity Sunday has often been called a “ preacher’s nightmare”.  What can we possibly say about the Trinity, the single greatest mystery of our faith? When we do pluck up the courage to say something about the Trinity, we easily risk falling into some heresy or another. Though I feel some of this pressure, I personally enjoy preaching on Trinity Sunday for one simple reason: I am a nerd. My preaching professor always told us that we should keep our homilies practical and down to earth. We were told to avoid Churchy and theological talk. But today, Trinity Sunday, is an exception. Today we get to be nerds! So let’s talk Trinity theology today.

If we want to talk about the Trinity we need to start with Jesus. Though you will not find the word “Trinity” in the Bible, it is Jesus who revealed to us this belief. During His ministry, Jesus was clear that He had been sent by the Father. This assertion did not differentiate Him from any other prophet like Moses or Isaiah. Jesus, however, went further. With His words and actions He claimed to be God. He forgave sins, something only God could do. He felt at liberty to add to the Law. God alone is the lawgiver. He said that He and the Father are one. After His Ascension, Jesus promised that He and the Father would send the Holy Spirit, who was not just a gift from God but was in fact God Himself. During His life, therefore, Jesus revealed to us our belief in the Trinity: God is only one, but He exists in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ revelation of the Trinity, which we take for granted today, was extremely controversial among His contemporaries. His words were met with confusion and open hostility. For Jews, the single most important thing that they believed was that God is one. This is expressed in the Shema, the famous Jewish credal formula:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the Lord is one. And thou shalt love the LORD they God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. (Deut 6:4-5)

1st century Jews were their guard against any teaching that took away from the unity of God. Jesus’ words would have seemed like blasphemy to them.

For this reason, early Christians - most of whom were Jews - struggled to comprehend the Trinity. How could God be one and three? Reflection on this is already present in the New Testament. An incredible insight into this mystery is found in 1 John: God is love (1 John 4:8). It does not say that God, like us, loves or is lovable, but that He is love. From all eternity, before anything was even created, God is love. In order for God to be love, we should find in God, and in fact do find, a communion of persons: lover (Father), beloved (Son) and bond of love (Holy Spirit).

After the New Testament came into being, the greatest minds of the Church continued grappling with the mystery of the Trinity. St. Augustine of Hippo came up with one of the most helpful ways to understand this mystery, something we call the Psychological Analogy for the Trinity. Augustine’s starting point is how we are built as human beings. Since we are created in God’s image, we can learn about who God is by observing human nature. As human beings, we have two main abilities: thinking and loving. We find that every human being is able to create a mental image of himself or herself. We do this whenever we try to answer the question “who am I”? In answering this question, you create an idea of who you are. What you look like. How you speak. How you act. Though we may not be happy with all its aspects, hopefully on the whole we love this self image. After all, Jesus calls us to “love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:31). We are all, therefore, able to both create a mental image of ourselves and also to love this image. Augustine explains that when we consider God doing the same thing, we better understand how the Trinity arises. When God the Father thinks about Himself, His self-image is so perfect that it is not just an idea but actually a person, God the Son. God the Father, aware of this image of Himself, loves it perfectly. This perfect love is the Holy Spirit. We can therefore understand the Trinity by considering God thinking about and loving Himself.The Son comes about when God the Father thinks about Himself. The Holy Spirit comes about when the Father loves the Son, His perfect self image.

For over 300 years the Church discussed and struggled to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity. During this time, individuals often made mistakes in trying to explain the Trinity. Some would overemphasize the unity of God, neglecting that God is three persons. Others would overemphasize that God is three persons, downplaying the unity of God. Perhaps the greatest challenge to our belief in the Trinity came about in the fourth century. At this time, the teaching of a particular priest from Alexandria named Arius became very popular. In order to protect the fact that God is one, Arius downplayed the Divinity of the Son. Arius claimed the Son was not the same nature as the Father. The Son was the first of all creatures, ranking high above any other created thing. He was worthy of great respect, yet He was not God. This teaching of Arius became very popular and many Bishops believed it. It threatened to tear the Church apart. In order to head off the problem, the Emperor Constantine called a council in order to settle the matter. This council was held in Nicaea in the year 325. There, the Bishops of the Church resoundingly denounced the teaching of Arius, affirming that Jesus was indeed God. If Jesus was not God, His death on the Cross could not save us. The Council of Constantinople in 381 later reaffirmed the Divinity of the Holy Spirit. From these two great councils we derive one of the creeds we say at Mass, often called the Nicene Creed. The language of this creed defends our belief that Jesus is indeed God, one of the persons of the Trinity:

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the Only Begotten Son of God,

born of the Father before all ages.

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;

through him all things were made.

Thanks to the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, our belief that the one God exists in three persons was defended.

We may be tempted to think that the doctrine of the Trinity has no practical application to our life. It is a discussion for Catholic nerds alone. Nothing, however, could be further from the fact. We believe that we are made in the image of the Trinity. Therefore, in order to understand how we are to live as human beings, we must understand the Trinity. Here are just a few of the practical consequences of our belief in the Trinity.

• The Trinity is our origin and our final destination. We have been created out of the overflow of love in the Trinity. The end goal of our life in union with the Trinity.
• In our culture we place a great value on independence and on self sufficiency. God however, is not self sufficient nor forever on His own. God is a communion of persons united in a perfect relationship of love. We, therefore, are built to live in relationship with others, being interdependent on them. We are not truly human unless we are in loving relationships with others.
• In a special way, the family forms an image of the Trinity. Just as the love between Father and Son bring forth the Holy Spirit, the love between husband and wife becomes fruitful in the generation of children.
• In our spiritual life, we are able to relate in a personal way to each of the three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We cannot possibly overstate how central the Trinity is to our life. In addition to being theology nerds for a Sunday, Trinity Sunday is an opportunity to remind ourselves of this truth that we too easily forget. Everyday we make the sign of the Cross, an expression of our belief in a Triune God. Often we do this carelessly. When you make the sign of the Cross today, take a moment to pay reverence to the great mystery of the Holy Trinity.

How we use the Gift of Tongues

Acts 2:1-11, John 20:19-23 (Pentecost, year B)

And they were all filled with the Holy Spiritand began to speak in different tongues,as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem.At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd,but they were confusedbecause each one heard them speaking in his own language.

Whenever I hear this passage, taken from the account of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles, I always think of the science fiction story, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. In this novel, the diverse inhabitants of the galaxy are able to communicate with one another thanks to a universal translator called a “babel fish”, which allows the user to understand and speak any language imaginable. The disciples’ ability to speak different languages is one of the most striking details of Pentecost. It is as though the disciples each received a complimentary “babel fish” along with the the gift of the Holy Spirit! Their newfound linguistic prowess had an obvious practical advantages: it aided them in their mission to preach the Gospel to all nations. In addition to its practical utility, the gift of tongues has a deeper meaning which reveals the significance of Pentecost in the history of salvation.

A primary consequence of sin is division among people. In fact, the English word “sin” comes from the German word for sin, “Sünde”.  From this, we also derive the word “sunder”, which means to tear apart or separate. Origen, one of the Church Fathers, explained simply, “where there is division, there is sin”. Disunity among people is marked by a breakdown of communication. The ancient story of the Tower of Babel powerfully illustrates this (Gen. 11:4-9). After the great flood, all humanity was unified in speaking a single language. Their unity was demonstrated by their ability to communicate freely. This all changed when the people decided to build a tower that reached into heaven. In doing this, the people sinned because they tried to put themselves - quite literally - on the same level as God. Because of this sin, the unity of the people was broken. Their languages became confused and they could no longer communicate. In our own lives we experience that sin brings about division. When someone hurts us, we pull back from communion with them. We no longer want to communicate with them as before. Sin causes division.

A primary consequence of the Holy Spirit is unity among people. The Holy Spirit is the perfect bond of love between the Father and the Son in the Trinity. Therefore, wherever the Holy Spirit is there is communion. Unity is achieved when there is affective communication. Some years ago I did some mission work in Tijuana, Mexico. When I first moved there I spoke no Spanish. Because I was unable to communicate with the people I was supposed to serving, I felt cut off from them. My inability to speak their language language meant that I couldn’t enter their world. I tried to be friendly and smile a lot but I could not get to the know the people and they could not get to know me. When my Spanish became good enough to have a proper conversation, everything changed. It was a wonderful experience. Walls were torn down. There was a greater trust and the people opened up to me. I got to know what they were thinking, what was important to them, what gave them hope and what they feared. I learned about their culture in a way that would never have been possible if I had not learned the language. Our ability to communicate brought about unity. Since communion is achieved through communication, it is understandable that one of the first gifts given to the disciples at Pentecost is the gift of tongues, the ability to make themselves understood. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit overcame the division caused by sin at the Tower of Babel. Humanity was once again able to communicate freely. Unity in any group, whether it be our family or parish community, is a sure sign the Holy Spirit is present.

We live Pentecost in our own lives when we become agents of unity. When we reach out to others and communicate with them, bringing them into communion, we are carrying out the work of the Holy Spirit. Pope Francis does this in a very simple, practical way: he often picks up the phone and calls people in order to enter into closer union with them. When Pope Francis receives a letter from someone who is sick and asking for prayers he often phones them. Recently he called Franco Rabuffi, a sick Italian man, and greeted him with a simple, “Hello, I’m Pope Francis”. Franco hung up on him, thinking it was a prank call. Pope Francis tried again. Again, Franco hung up on the Vicar of Christ. Finally on the third attempt Pope Francis was able to get through to Franco and they talked. Imagine how much closer Franco must have felt to the Pope after their conversation. Communication brings about unity. Pope Francis has phoned the most unexpected people hoping to break down divisions. Some time ago, Pope Francis called up Eugenio Scalfari, a prominent atheist and newspaper editor at his office. Scalfari described the “the telephone call I will never forget as long as live” in this way.

It was half past two in the afternoon. My phone rings and in a somewhat shaky voice my secretary tells me: "I have the Pope on the line. I'll put him through immediately." I was still stunned when I heard the voice of His Holiness on the other end of a the line saying, "Hello, this is Pope Francis." "Hello Your Holiness", I say and then, "I am shocked I did not expect you to call me." "Why so surprised? You wrote me a letter asking to meet me in person. I had the same wish, so I'm calling to fix an appointment. Let me look at my diary: I can't do Wednesday, nor Monday, would Tuesday suit you?" I answer, that's fine. "The time is a little awkward, three in the afternoon, is that okay? Otherwise it'll have to be another day." Your Holiness, the time is fine. "So we agree: Tuesday 24 at 3 o'clock.”

And so they met and talked - an atheist and a Pope who is convinced that unless we seek to bring about unity we are not doing the work of the Holy Spirit.

Sin leads to division. The Holy Spirit, who we have received at Baptism and Confirmation, overcomes separation and builds unity. Communication leads to communion. Let us follow the example of Pope Francis. Sometime soon, pick up the telephone and call somebody who you think you need to be closer to. Phone a sick friend or someone you have been been in an argument with recently or an elderly family member you have lost touch with. In this simple, practical way, we can live Pentecost here and now.