Tonight, it was our turn to practise delivering a homily on the Blessed Trinity. Four of us delivered our homilies in front of the other deacon candidates and Fr. Joseph Yim, who is our instructor. The other three had written their speeches in full and read them out while I wrote an outline and rehearsed most of the materials in my head. When I did my homily, I looked at my audience and did not refer to the outline. Regrettably, I missed a crucial point and had to retract.
In the subsequent feedback session, the members gave candid comments on our performance. I was natural but there were quite a lot of subconscious actions which I was not aware of. My smiles were too broad, and did not look solemn enough in the reading of the Gospel. I also made the mistake of naming names. I should not compare different religions/sects in homilies. Fr. Yim pointed out a crucial though minor mistakes. I spoke too careless about invoking the Holy Spirit to turn the bread and wine into the sacrament of the Holy Communion. It is theologically wrong. The bread and wine are turned into the Holy Communion, the body and blood of the Lord. They are NOT turned into a sacrament! Fr. Yim encouraged us that we are still green. Practice makes perfect. He suggested videotaping our homilies if we seriously wanted to improve.
Fr. Yim also told us the differences between Sunday homilies and instructions in catechumen classes. The target audience are not the same. People attending Sunday Mass are baptized and are believers already. The purpose of Sunday homilies is to deepen their faith, to encourage/console them to face daily challenges. In catechumen classes, our job is evangelization. We need to introduce the Good News of Jesus and hope that one day, the catechumen would accept Jesus as their Saviour. The same differences also apply to Wedding Masses and Requiem Masses where part of the audience in wedding, or even all of the audience in funeral are non-Catholics. These are also occasions of evangelization. However, with the time constrains imposed by the occasions, we can only focus on the Catholic views on marriage and family in case of a Wedding Mass; and our belief in resurrection and afterlife in case of a Requiem Mass.
Next Monday, four other members will deliver their homilies on Corpus Christi. In the meantime, I will tidy up my homily, translate it back into English and put it here. Stay tune.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today, I would like to discuss with you an equation: "one plus one plus one equal to one." But before that, let us take a look at our current situation.
Unlike other believers of monotheism who believe in one and only one God, the God we Christians believe in is a bit complicated. For Jews, Yahweh is one. For Muslims, Allah is one. There is nobody beside Him. The Christian God is also one but there are three persons in this one God: the Father who created this known universe; the Son who died on the cross to redeem this world and the Holy Spirit who sustains the redeemed world. We call this idea "the Blessed Trinity", a term invented by theologians for the sake of discussion. Since we are the only believers in this Blessed Trinity, we have the responsibility to understand this God better and to explain this Blessed Trinity to the people we meet.
Not all those who hold and wave the Christian Bible are Christians. You must be familiar with the sight of those Jehovah Witnesses whom you meet on LRT platforms or Tuen Mun Town Park. They give out booklets and magazines, such as the Watch Tower and Awake! free of charge. They claim to be Christians but they do not believe in the Blessed Trinity. The above equation is posed by them.
How can "one plus one plus one equal to one"? It must be three. Or can you have one third of the Father plus one third of the Son plus one third of the Holy Spirit to make up one God? Therefore, either there are three Gods or the idea of the Blessed Trinity is wrong. Since Christians believe in one God. Therefore, the idea of the Blessed Trinity must be wrong. Q.E.D.
How shall we defend the Blessed Trinity?
I am sure you must have heard of the story of St. Augustine struggling with the idea of the Blessed Trinity. Briefly, Augustine was agonizing over the mystery of the Blessed Trinity. He walked along the seashore to clear his head. An angel appeared in the form of a young child. It ran to and fro, scooping sea water into a little hole. Augustine was curious and asked the child what he was doing. The child replied that he wanted to move all the water from the sea into the little hole. Augustine was amazed and answered how it was possible for the tiny hole to contain the infinite sea. The angel retorted how it was possible for Augustine's tiny brain to fathom the infinite Trinity!
What do we learn from this legend? Of course, we should not be discouraged by the infinite mystery of God and give up contemplating the Trinity. Rather, we should make good use of the intellect God gives us to seek Him. There must be a purpose for everything. God has so created us that we may exercise our intellect to know Him. So, how do we proceed?
Well, I take cue from the infinity of God to solve the equation posed by the Jehovah Witnesses.
One plus one plus one cannot be one when the "one" is finite, such as an apple. However, if the "one" is infinite, such as the set of integers, the story is different. Infinity plus infinity is still infinity! Therefore, the JW equation is correct because God is infinite. God the Father is infinite. God the Son is infinite. So is the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the infinite Father and the infinite Son and the infinite Spirit make up the infinite Trinity.
If you find such infinity talk hard to follow, don't be discouraged. God allows us to fathom His infinite mystery with our finite mentality. Jesus used parables. We use analogy. We use some finite images to express some transcendental concepts. For example, we always describe God as a father. God is like our father in a certain way but He is not our father. So, how shall we proceed to express the Trinity with analogy?
Don't worry, God has revealed Himself to many of His good friends. These saints have left us with many workable images. For example, John, the beloved disciple of the Lord once said that "God is love" (1 John 4:8). How true it is! Though love is not infinite, doesn't "love plus love plus love equal to love" hold true?
Love involves a relation. Love involves an object, be it oneself or another person. God is love. Therefore, there must be a relation in God. But God is one, an infinite one. What sort of relation is there in God? Without God's revelation, we will never know. But God reveals Himself as the Father and the Son. The Father loves the Son and in this communion, there proceeds the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, the spirit of love. This way of saying can only be an analogy. The truth is much broader and deeper.
The gospel today says,
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).
God is truly love. Not only does the Father love the Son, He also loves the world. He does not want to see sinners perish. He saves them and gathers them into a Church, an assembly of believers. Therefore, the Church should bear the mark of the Trinity. So, how does the Church show the face of the Blessed Trinity to the world? Of course, in our prayers, sacraments and liturgy, we always call on the Triune God. We begin our Mass with greeting in terms of the Trinity. We recite the Nicene Creed after homily to declare what we believe. In the Eucharistic prayer, we invoke the Holy Spirit to come down upon the bread, the Father's creation, to consecrate it into the body and blood of the Son, the sacrament of the Holy Communion etc. We lead our religious life in the milieu of the Blessed Trinity. But what about our secular life? Through the communion of the believers in love and the support of local churches among themselves, the world witnesses the communion of the saints and from it, sees the Triune God. Do we, parishioners, demonstrate this communion of love? Do we just care about our own groups and ignore the needs of the others? In our families, do husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law love each other? When we do, the face of the Blessed Trinity is revealed.
Let us contemplate for one minute what we have done in our situations to manifest the face of this Blessed Trinity.
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