Trinity Sunday

Good morning! My wife, Barbara and I are delighted to be joining you and Our Lady of the Woods! As you may have gathered from hearing the introductions — I’m a bit of an odd bird. On top of that, I have my brain injury. For those of you who haven’t seen the introduction bulletin insert, I received my 8th concussion at the end of 2002 and have a variety of deficits because of it. Aside from my walking sticks, my deficits are invisible — which often brings up a lot of questions from folks. Depending on the day, I can hike mountains or trike for miles, so some folks wonder “what’s this disabled thing all about?”. Please, whatever your questions, I’m happy to answer them. The only way for us to understand each other and work together to build God’s kingdom here and now is to face the challenges of life head on. Or is that how I got to be brain bludgeoned, facing too many things head on? Please know I’m delighted to meet and talk briefly after Mass, but email is the best way for me to be able to respond to you. Thank you for your wonderful welcoming openness to trying out this “quiet” Mass. Perhaps the silence may even invite us to experience the gift of Christ in a new way.
The Trinity. (Sign of the Cross) May God bless us, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Today is Trinity Sunday — a time to reflect and explore who God is. Intellectually we understand the Trinity. Three in One. Esoteric, bizarre math. The three leafed shamrock. A non-existant 3-dollar bill. Those images give us a picture of three mostly identical parts. That’s not how we experience the different person’s of the Trinity. We experience them very differently. God the Father saves us through his son Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
We live in the shadow of Pikes Peak — the lone, grand mountain seen from all sides — sides which look vastly different from one another. There are numerous tales of the Ute Indians finding safety from those who pursued them around the mountain. They would get disoriented, looking for Pikes Peak. You see, it’s very distinctive as seen from the East, a lone peak among the foothills. As seen from the North, near Green Mountain Falls or here at Woodland Park, it looks very different, a tall peak on the left with a long sloping tail drifting off to the right. Move around to the West, to Cripple Creek or Victor - the peak disappears. It’s just a bunch of high rolling hills clumped together. Different faces — one peak. That’s a lot like how we experience God.
I came to see and understand Pikes Peak this way because of experiences I had hiking the Grand Tetons. Three tall, majestic peaks bursting out of the plains — that’s how most of us have seen them. But backpack around them and they become one peak from the South — until you see them as three distinct peaks once again from the West side. “The Grand Breasts.” One of the Hebrew names for God is “The Breasted One” — El Shedai. Somehow, I doubt the French trappers who named these majestic mountains bursting out of the flat plains had El Shedai in mind when they dubbed them “The Grand Tetons!” and yet that earthy imagery brings me to another way for us to begin to grasp the vast mystery of three in one. Marriage.
The fullness of marriage – what marriage is meant to be – is nothing less than the image of God – the Trinity. The Eastern Orthodox Church offers us a new, very old, understanding of who our creator is. Here's a poem I wrote on marriage, based on this mystical understanding of the Trinity as Lover, Beloved, and the Love they share:

Before the beginning
was the Lover,
Ever present, infinite reaching,
with a love so strong, powerful, and deep,
reaching out, demanding a response!
So the Beloved,
who had always been,
rushed into the arms of the Lover.

Lover and Beloved,
Embracing in a wild passionate dance eternal.
The Love they share
pours forth in abundance –
as the first winds over every new creation.
We know them as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Lover, Beloved, and the Love they share.
We are their creature,
Made in their image.
Their incarnation,
we yearn to live as
Lover and Beloved,
to change the world by the
Love we share.

As we start this month of June, the month of weddings, where Lover and Beloved are joined and begin to share their Love, I’m reminded that the marriages among us reveal God to the world in a way far beyond our understanding…
Wait. Marriage can reveal God to us? Yes. Each of us is made in God’s image. Each of us has some unique aspect of God to reveal to the world. In discovering, living, and serving others through who God created us to be, we reveal who God is and help build the kingdom of heaven. This is holiness.
We typically think of holiness as the purview of priests, monks, and others who take vows of celibacy. It is. Holiness is also the purview of married folks, working to balance the chaos of jobs, kids, school, friends, activities, vacations. God is in that chaos. The way we struggle and strive with the hectec and the hustle and bustle can reveal God to those around us.
Marriage is a path toward holiness. Living the sacrament of marriage unwraps over a lifetime. The vows my wife and I took when we were 19 have taken on depth and meaning as we’ve lived our lives together. The many struggles, gifts, losses, and triumphs help us understand more fully the meaning of those simple words “for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, till death do we part.”
Marriage gets a bum wrap in society. Like many things, marriage is becoming disposable. Optional. For many people marriage is a disposable item that can be cast off when it becomes inconvenient — if it’s taken on at all. Angelina Jolie has ruled out marriage to Brad Pit, saying "We've both been married before. Our focus when we got together was family, and we are legally bound to our children. That really seems to be the most important thing." A recent television show of “Bones” depicted a much anticipated bride and groom at the altar, learning at the last minute that she was already married. Oddly, the groom didn’t care and they ran off together. The message? It’s love that matters, not some administrative formality called marriage. How much does this Hollywood mentality toward marriage reflect our society? Hard to say, but there is a growing disillusionment among young men and women that makes them either blase about marriage or leary of entering a commitment they don’t see much hope of being able to keep. In many ways, our culture seems to be moving toward what Pope John Paul II called European secularism — where faith is irrelivant, marriage foolish.
Perhaps we are partly to blame. Do we, as Catholic Christians, strive to celebrate the gift marriage really is? We hear our Church telling us the dangers of gay marriages or unions to the sanctity of marriage, of the need to thoroughly prepare before becoming married, that what God has brought together, no person can tear apart. But do we really understand the true gift of marriage? Do we understand that the joys and sorrows, triumphs and challenges of sharing life intimately with another can reveal Jesus to us? Do we hold up our own marriage and those around us as examples of the Father’s redemptive love? Do we understand that for most of us, marriage, like the Holy Spirit, gives us new life and is our path toward holiness? Do we really get that our gateway to salvation, to becoming who God created us to be, is the flesh and blood man or woman we married?
It’s one thing to decry the current state of marriage in our society. It’s something else entirely to strive to transform ourselves and our society by the power of our faith lived out in the daily fabric our our lives — to celebrate the reality that marriage redeems those who strive to live it and brings new life to all who are near it.
I said that for most of us, marriage is our path toward salvation. How can this be? Just as Jesus our Christ is the bridegroom of the Church, husband and wife are Christ for each other. I don’t know about you, but my wife constantly reveals to me Christ’s patience, temperance, passion, and love. Her daily choices of sacrifice, her intimate knowledge of me, help me understand my own potential of who God made me to be. I pray I do the same for her. By living as Lover and Beloved we both reveal Jesus to each other and are shown how we can become more like him. Our Beloved is our doorway to God.
I also said that marriage offers new life to those who encounter it. Children are the most obvious example of this gift of co-creation. One plus one equals three, or four, or five or…! And children aren’t the only way new life bursts forth from married love. We’ve all encountered couples who exude life — inspiring others to love and live more deeply — the hope and joy of life simply spreading out around them.
How do we celebrate marriage? How do we support those marriages that are part of our community? Marriage vows are powerful promises — and they take on meaning as we live life, face life’s challenges and triumphs. How do we celebrate and support those marriages who are living out one side or the other of for richer or poorer? Or sacrificing in sickness while praying for health? struggling through worse in the hope of better? How do we celebrate and support families new to our parish family, or who have new born life and are delightedly struggling with parenthood?
I haven’t been here long, but already I know that the people of this community have been celebrating and supporting many marriages in many ways — helping families in need financially, facing sickness or injury, struggling to serve each other. These things have been quietly happening through marriage and social ministries, informal networks, and parish friendships. Christ has been and is being revealed in the love and support given to many families within our community.
Lover, Beloved, and the Love they Share. A new, very old way of understand the Trinity. Marriage gives us an understanding of who God is, offers us a path toward salvation in Jesus our Christ, and helps spread new life in the form of children and of boundless love.
I invite each of us this week to think of those couples whose marriages reveal God to us. Be bold and tell them, “I see God in your love for each other! Thank you for the gift your marriage is to me.” Be bold and send them a thank you note.
For those of us who are married, I invite us to recognize Christ in our wife or husband. What is Jesus trying to tell us through our Beloved? When we greet each other after being parted for a day or a week, is our reunion that of Lover and Beloved in passionate embrace? It should be! This week I invite you to share with your Beloved how they are Christ for you, how they invite and challenge you to become more fully who God created you to be. And together explore the Love you share and the various ways it goes forth and breathes live into the world!
Mountains and Marriages. The experience of God, here among us. Tangible experiences of peaks seen from different sides, of husband and wife sharing one love and it taking the form of new life. These very human experiences give us a glimpse of God’s vastness and eminent, intimate presence in our lives. God the Trinity, in whose image we are made, a mystery beyond understanding, yet wondrously jubilant to embrace.
May God bless us as we gaze on mountains and see our Creator. May God bless us as we witness God the Lover, Beloved, and the Love they share in our marriages and those families around us. May we ever be marked and blessed as belonging to (Sign of the Cross) the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.