Ok, we’ve celebrated the Church’s beginnings with Pentecost, and the gift of the Spirit. We celebrated the Trinity, and the gift of relationships. And the feast today, is about the gift of food--the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. Like the other feasts, this day tells us a lot about God, but also a lot about ourselves, who we are as Church, and how we continue to live as the Body and Blood of Christ in a world that is so very hungry.


Our God is a God who feeds. Over and over again the scriptures are filled with stories of food and feeding. Our God likes the gift of food.


And if we are a people who believe in, and make ourselves obedient to God, and a people who pray daily for the will of God to be done, then we might be ready for a big question at judgment: “Did you eat this Bread? Did you share it with others?”


The second reading, from Corinthians, reiterates our theology of Eucharist. There is no profound, complicated theology here. We share in this ONE loaf to become the ONE Body of Christ to a hungry world.


Jesus wants his followers to feed others. Eucharist can only be fully understood in terms of community and service.


For us as Catholic Christians, the bread and wine offered become truly the body and blood of the Lord. Many people today do not understand that enormously large word: transubstantiation. It is not a word that we would use in ordinary, daily life. All it means—and this is a lot of meaning—is that the bread and wine, which were truly bread and wine, are now truly the Body and Blood of the Lord. This is not only a memory of Jesus, but a making present here and today, the saving actions and of His very person.


Today's great feast is about our need to be fed, and the need to feed others! It is about the personal relationship that we each must have with Jesus, and, with each other. The feast today is about our capacity to give ourselves to others and for others, just as Jesus has given himself to us and for us. We, who receive today the Body of Christ, are joined with Christ, and, with every other person who comes to this table. Take a look around this morning as you come forward. Our “communion” (or common union) is not only with the Lord, but with each other as well. We receive the Body of Christ, and then together…we become the Body of Christ to our waiting world.


But, we can only feed, if we are fed. And we are fed by the presence of our Lord in the communion that we share. Knowing how Jesus gives Himself to us and for us, we must be formed by the Holy Spirit to live in that same way: we must give ourselves to and for others…all others, no exceptions


We cannot truly call ourselves Christians if we are only aware of Jesus’ presence for myself alone, and ignore others. If we treat today's solemnity as simply a mystery for myself and not a mystery about my relationships to Jesus AND the others in my family or in my community, then we fail to understand Eucharist.


Today, we are invited to see in this sacrament the deepest mystery of giving of self. Though there are many of us, we form a single body because you have a share in this one loaf.


Are you part of this ONE?

Ok, the second week of feasts and the second gift. Remember last week was the Gift of the Spirit. Today is the Gift of Relationship.


Many years ago, well, many, many years ago, my homiletics instructor in the seminary said, “Gentlemen, more heresy is preached on Trinity Sunday than any other day of the year—so keep your homily short!” Now, I think that this happens because it’s really difficult to use words to attempt to describe God without restricting God by misleading and insufficient descriptions of God. I think our task today is not so much to explain or try to understand the Trinity, but to open our lives to further experience the truth that Trinity brings to us.


The doctrine of the Trinity says that we believe in God as completely one, and yet we know we experience God as Father, Son, and Spirit: Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.


You see, the Holy Trinity is more about experience, and less about just “understanding.” Trinity is about what happens to us, not only what we think about. It is about what we know from experience, not only what we learn from textbooks or courses. It seems to me that this day is more about a quiet waiting and watching that prepares us and opens the way to a union, a deeper relationship with God.

The experience of God is an experience of relationship, not an experience of ideas. Any way you look at it, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, as a theologian or as a philosopher, thinking about the Trinity leads to reflections about relationships, what brings us together and binds us to one another, and to God.

I avoid the word: "Mystery." “Mystery” leads us to suspect that we cannot understand, and then we excuse ourselves from the wonder and awe Trinity can stir in us.

The experience of the Trinity is the ultimate acknowledgement of God's Loving presence. The three most essential questions that lurk in the depth of the human soul are stilled by the experience we call Trinity. Do you love me? How much do you love me? Will you be here tomorrow?

In the reality of the Trinity, God speaks to us and quiets the fear and anxiety that these questions can bring. "Do you love me?" "As much as I love myself", says God the Creator in whose image we are made. "How much do you love me?" "Enough to send my only Son to be with you in your darkest hours." "Will you be here tomorrow?" "My Spirit will be with you everywhere and forever." You see, there is no “mystery” here except the mystery of unconditional love.

This day calls us to wonder and stand in awe before God. This day calls us to raise our hands again, more confident than ever, as we sign ourselves in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: a people embraced in love.


Our life in the Trinity expresses our own identity and our mission in these days following Pentecost. We are sent now, just as Jesus, to reveal this God we have come to know and to let others see what we have seen, that they too may become children of God: relationship.


On Trinity Sunday, we are presented with the gift of Relationship: the passionate, loving relationship of Father, Son and Spirit, and our call, to join that relationship.

In the next three Sundays, we will celebrate three gifts: The Gift of the Spirit, The Gift of Relationship, and The Gift of Food. The Church calls these: Pentecost, Holy Trinity, and Corpus Christi (or the Body and Blood of Christ.)



St. Paul in the letter to the Corinthians makes the gift this Sunday most obvious. He insists that the Spirit is given to each member of the community not just a few gifted leaders or apostles.


Yet somehow in our competitive world, it is always the gift of someone else that get our attention either by way of admiration or of envy. But ignoring our own gifts because we have our eye on the gifts of others is not just foolish. It is wrong. It robs us of life, and it diminishes the glory and generosity of God to each of us.


Pentecost is about gifts, our gifts, and not just those seven gifts we memorized at the time of our Confirmation (wisdom, understanding, counsel, courage, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord). It is about the gifts and talents we often take for granted, or wrongly assume are just for ourselves.
 
But, it is easy to get caught up in the excitement of these readings today.

The images are powerful and vivid: not just tongues of fire and a mighty wind, but also these disciples who are so transformed by their experience in that room: from fear to courage, from locked doors to wide open windows, from the shame of their betrayal to the pride of their calling, from the silence of whispered wishes to the bold proclamation.

Even an unbeliever would have to be impressed and filled with awe.
A transformation of such significance can only be the work of God.

It’s easy to hear these verses from Acts of the Apostles and wonder "How did they do that? How did they speak in all those tongues?” But, all the while ignoring what they said! You see what’s important is not how they spoke in all those tongues, but what they had to say, and the fact that some actually LISTENED!

I would like to put it another way, and give you something to take home today.

Talking is not nearly as important as listening. It is the listening that makes a difference. Pay attention to the story of this day. The first important verse here for us is: "each one heard them speaking in his own language." Something happened that day because the crowd stopped to listen.

That had to happen first. What good would the gifts of the apostles had been if no one had been willing to listen? We are reminded today more about listening than about talking. If the apostles had not listened to Jesus, they would have had nothing to say. If the people in the streets had not listened to the apostles, nothing would have happened that would have made any difference. The listening changed everything, not just the talking. What good can it do to say "I'm sorry" or “I love you” if no one listens to the words?

I need to remind myself every day, about the need to listen.


It seems to me that one of the gifts of the Spirit is the gift of listening—a little more involved, a little more important than "hearing,” listening is part of the gift of Understanding and Wisdom. The image of the tongue, the tongue of fire, which artists have so quickly captured, should perhaps someday be an image of an ear of fire.

You see, the miracle of the tongues takes us nowhere without the miracle of the ears. They are both essential to make the Pentecost experience complete. 

We are never going to have the peace that Jesus promises until we learn to listen: listen to the cry of the poor, listen to the anger of the oppressed, listen to the pain of the sick and those living with AIDS, listen to the silence of those treated unjustly, listen to hearts of the lonely, listen to the whispers of the old and abandoned, the joy of the youth.


The gift of Peace that Jesus wishes for us will only find a home in the hearts of those whose lives, open to the Spirit, talk less, and listen more.