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dreamsister81 · 4 years

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In Memoriam: Jeff Buckley By Dennis

It was one of those nights that makes a difference in your life, when you don't give a damn anymore what the rest of the world thinks, as long as they're thinking it about you, and not just the image you project out of fear, or a desire to be liked.

Our subway stop brought us directly beneath the church, St. Ann's of the Holy Trinity. It was hot. I was sweating, and my head pounded, reminding me how much I loved and missed my air conditioner. When we turned the corner, toward the front doors of the church, we were met with a beautiful spring-like breeze, and a small camp of mourners. It looked the way old churches in even older cities are supposed to look; black and imposing against a bright summer sky, making you feel like you owe somebody, somewhere, something . . . maybe praise. Who knows?

We waited and talked amongst ourselves, sharing cookies and memories. We spotted the black shoes, black pants, black belt, shirt, sunglasses, hair and goatee running across the street, toward the church's side entrance, and immediately knew Nathan Larson, of Shudder to Think. He looked less happy than the building crowd, and obviously had greater reason. He was a friend.

When the doors opened, we worked our way into the line of "Jeff Buckley: Eternal Life Mailing List" members, who were unfairly ushered in before those who'd waited longer, but lacked a modem. But we'd waited, and we've loved long enough to mourn, and two among our group of four were list members. So we entered. A disco ball hung from the arched ceiling, and a movie screen showed a still of Jeff beside a mirror. Kazoo's, guitar picks, and programs were handed out at the door. We later learned the guitar picks were the remnants of a cancelled order for the next tour, and the kazoo's . . . well, read on.

We found our seats and upon them fans, like the kind a geisha would use, or perhaps parishioners longing for air conditioning. We waited with the plaintive cries of Reverend Al Green on the sound system to console us. On the stage, sat the urn holding Jeff's ashes, beside his signature Fender Telecaster.

Fr. Lewis Marshall spoke of Jeff, of his love for the church, and the church's love for him. He spoke words of consolation, but he never tried to explain Jeff's death away. He said no belief system he knows of "could make sense of such a senseless" event. He asked that we make the world a better place through the energy and love and creativity that is, not was Jeff Buckley.

"Not all of me is dust, Within my song,

safe from the worm, my spirit will survive."

-Aleksander Pushkin

Jeff's aunt, Peggy Hagberg, was the first of many to tell us about Scotty, and that she'd only ever called him Jeff once. She read a poem she'd written for his 30th birthday, recalling the intrusion he was when born, "that baby my sister was having." But he soon became plaything, then playmate, then friend. She lamented the loss of her special child to the dual person he'd become in manhood and fame. She read from her paper the words "My Scotty . . ." and nodding toward the still on the movie screen, she weeped "that Jeff" and quietly walked away.

His brother Corey Moorehead, and sister Ann-Marie Huck, the children of the stepfather who raised him (Ron Moorehead,) approached the microphone next. Ann-Marie told us about Jeff's life growing up, about his meeting with Tim when he was 8 or 9, about how he never put his guitar down after that meeting. She told us about Tim's overdose, and how it affected "Scotty", and about the time they went to see "Rose", and how upset "Scotty" was when she overdosed . . . they had to leave the theater. She said "Scotty" always held a dark portion of himself away, a part she could never touch. She cried as she spoke to him, saying she hoped he'd finally found peace in his father's arms.

Corey read a poem Jeff had written sometime in the last five years. I believe it was called "Momma dogga". It was a beautifully written, funny poem from a child's perspective, on the love of a dog and a boy, and it lightened the mood. The poem urged us all to learn to live dog-a way. To hear it, you'd really understand.

Michael Tighe and Parker Kindred (guitar and drums from Jeff's band) walked on stage with Nathan Larson (guitar/vocals, of Shudder to Think, Mind Science of the Mind) and Joan Wasser (violin, of the Dambuilders, and Mind Science of the Mind.) They played a beautiful instrumental piece, with breathtaking violin from Jeff's former lover, and deeply emotional playing from his friends. They walked off as silently as they'd walked on.

Michael Tighe was scheduled to speak next, but the church's creative director took his place and told us how much Jeff loved everyone and wanted us all to love him. She spoke of the way he made us all feel we were special because we all had a place in his heart. She read a poem from Lou Reed, as a way to tell us Jeff was our mirror, to remind us how beautiful we really are, when we forget.

There was a presentation from Columbia Records, showing interview segments, and video clips, revealing live footage, and tales of the recording of Grace.

Rebecca Moore, a longtime friend and lover sat at the piano, and admitted she was shaken by the video presentation. She related the tale of Jeff and her cat, how Jeff made it his mission to make this cat love him. She came home one night to find Jeff with his hands around the cat's neck screaming "Love me!" She said that was the way Jeff wanted the world. She performed, and sang a terribly emotional song, and walked off as quietly as all the others.

Jeff's mother followed, and let his cousin, Kelly Hagberg, speak first. She told us about Jeff's sense of humor, and his undying need to create music. He would imitate every character in Saturday Night Fever, do Steve Martin's "Wild and crazy guy" better than Steve Martin, play Nintendo with her little brother, or a song on a Fisher Price guitar. Jeff believed we should make music every chance we got, so we played "You Are My Sunshine" on the kazoo's we were handed at the door. Once for practice, once quietly, and once to blow the roof off.

His mother, Mary Guibert, was amazing; composed and eloquent. She was a natural speaker who drew from us both the sadness and jubilation we'd felt throughout the night. She helped us see the reality in his death that none of us could imagine merely as fans, but she comforted us as well. She loves her son, and she loves us because we do too. Mary told us about the program, that the note from Jeff was one she'd found years ago, that she kept on her bulletin board for inspiration. And she told us about the keys, and the guitar pick strewn about the note. They were the items found in his pockets when his body surfaced, on June 4th.

She urged us to make a Golden Promise.

"A Golden Promise is one that must never be broken. It is made in one's heart to another heart that's just departed this life."

She asked us to "commit 'random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty' ... demonstrate the courage to follow your bliss . . . maybe, just maybe, together we'll be able to repair the damage done to this lowly little world by the untimely passing of this gentle minstrel."

We were shown a full concert from the Metro in Chicago, from 1995; nearly 2 hours long. There were pictures on a wall in the backroom, and a poem by Jeff. Michael Tighe, Parker Kindred, Mary Guibert, and Jeff's siblings mingled in the room, graciously taking time with well-meaning fans.

We left that night, feeling like we had a higher purpose, that things did matter. We left with songs in our hearts, and on our lips. We played our kazoo's on the streets of New York as Mary had asked us too.

Life will not go on as it always had. Life will go on as it always should have.

with love from the delphil

-dennis via mojopin.org

#jeff buckley #23 years ago #mylove #supremebeing #favorite #music #st. anns memorial service

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sweetdreamsjeff · 5 years

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From the Memorial at St. Ann's

In Memoriam: Jeff Buckley

"Not all of me is dust, Within my song, safe from the worm, my spirit will survive. -Aleksander Pushkin

There was a presentation from Columbia Records, showing interview segments, and video clips, revealing live footage, and tales of the recording of Grace.

She urged us to make a Golden Promise.

"A Golden Promise is one that must never be broken. It is made in one's heart to another heart that's just departed this life."

Life will not go on as it always had. Life will go on as it always should have.

with love from the delphi -dennis

#Jeff Buckley #Peyote Internet Theatre #From the Memorial at St. Ann's

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pamphletstoinspire · 2 years

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Advent: An Invitation to Spiritual Poverty

The Advent season is once again upon us. It is an invitation Christ extends to each one of us every year through this liturgical season of preparation for His birth at Christmas and His Second Coming. Advent is often eclipsed by the secular Christmas season going on around us, which means that too often we fail to enter into this important season that allows us to spiritually prepare to meet the Christ child in the manger.

In many ways the secular Christmas season reminds us that as Christ’s disciples we cannot live the materialism, noise, and busyness of the culture if we want to be spiritually prepared to encounter Jesus. Advent is a season of stillness, waiting, patience, preparation, and detachment. It points us towards heavenly realities and the end for which we are made: eternal life.

The Son of God, the King of the Universe, came to us as a helpless babe born into a life of poverty and suffering. Our culture calls us to the opposite through a season of consumerism. There is an inordinate emphasis this time of year on material things that can get in the way of intimate union with God and spiritual progress. It is not that gift giving is wrong, it is not. The problem arises when it becomes too much of our focus and becomes disordered. Our lives must be marked by spiritual poverty and a detachment from the things of this world if we want to live in intimate union with God.

This Advent season is an opportunity to ask God to help us overcome our tendency to place our hope, happiness, and dependence on the things of this world. It is only through a complete emptying in the image of Our Savior that we can stoop down to meet Him lying in the manger this Christmas. It is with hearts of total poverty that we can enter into the deep mystery of God lying as a baby in a cold, dark cave who has come into this world under the shadow of the Cross in order to redeem us. Christmas is both a promise of our redemption and an invitation to live the poverty of Christ.

Too often we want to rationalize and justify our dependence on material goods, which in turn clutters our souls. We may not be called to a vow of poverty, but we are called to be “poor in spirit”, which can only fully come about when we surrender everything to God, including material goods. We must come face-to-face with our own nothingness and the fact that nothing in this life can fulfill us. We are made for more. We are made for intimate union with God and for eternal life.

The saints show us the radically of our calling as disciples. They forsook wealth, comfort, and ease in order to love and serve others. They lived in spiritual and material poverty in order to be completely filled with the Most Holy Trinity. They wanted to be able to give everything to the Christ child each Christmas. They understood that our souls become divided when we are attached to the things of this life. As St. Margaret Mary Alacoque put it so beautifully: “I need nothing but God, and to lose myself in the heart of Jesus.”

The level of intimacy we reach with the Most Holy Trinity is directly linked to our attachment to the things around us. The more we are attached, the less we are able to give of ourselves to God. As Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene explains in Divine Intimacy:

In the face of all that life can offer us in the way of honors, satisfactions, affections, affections of creatures, comforts, and riches, the Holy Spirit repeats in the depths of our heart the words of Jesus: “If though wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast…and come, follow Me (Matthew 19:21)”. This means, not only to desire nothing more than what one has, but to give up even this; not to be eager for riches, pleasures, consolations, fame, nor earthly affections, but to sacrifice all these things which fill the heart with the world, and prevent it from being filled with God.

We are filled with God in the measure we give up the things of this world. A detached and spiritually poor heart is the only heart fully capable of dwelling in union with God at the highest supernatural levels. This is the way of nada according to St. John of the Cross. It is something we can seek to live in any vocation.

A life of spiritual poverty allows us to enter more fully into the life of Christ because it frees us from all that would distract us or keep us from Him. The spiritual masters of our Tradition discovered that the more they died to this life, the greater their joy. That is because they sought to live for heaven, rather than earth. They were able to fly to heaven in this life. This poverty is the key to a joy-filled life and a deeper experience of the gift of Christ’s birth.

Poverty of spirit consists in being entirely stripped and empty of all these pretensions, so that the soul seeks and desires only one thing: to possess God, and to be thus content, even when God lets Himself be found only in darkness, aridity, anguish, and suffering. Here is that perfect poverty of spirit which frees the soul from all that is not God; this very freedom constitutes the reason for our happiness, because “the soul that strips itself of its desires, either to will or not to will, will be clothed by God with His purity, joy, and will. The beatitude promised to the poor in spirit is the possession of God, a possession which will clothe them with His infinite riches.

Only He can fill us with “His infinite riches” and be the source of unending joy. This is the gift offered to us each Christmas. Advent is an opportunity to ask God to lead us to greater poverty of spirit so we can be prepared to meet Him and allow Him alone to dwell within our souls. If we refuse to detach ourselves from all of the stuff around us that leads us to become attached to the things of this world, then our hearts will not be completely open to Him this Christmas or in our daily lives.

The question we have to ask ourselves throughout this Advent season is: Do I truly want to be free of the things of this world in order to meet Him this Christmas? The only way to do this is through embracing detachment and a simplicity of life that leads to spiritual poverty. To abandon materialism, comfort, and pleasure as the means for attaining happiness. Those are lies anyway. This requires letting it all go so Christ can fill the depths of our soul.

Each year Christ gives us an opportunity to make way and prepare for His coming. Now is the time to forsake the materialism and consumerism of our culture that gets in the way of our progress towards heaven. May we come to the manger this Christmas truly poor in spirit, so He can be the source of our joy. He is the only gift we need this Christmas.

BY: CONSTANCE T. HULL

#advent

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frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 3 years

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30th May >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Matthew 28:16-20 for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: ‘Make disciples of all the nations’.

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Gospel (Except USA)

Matthew 28:16-20

Go and make disciples of all nations.

The eleven disciples set out for Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had arranged to meet them. When they saw him they fell down before him, though some hesitated. Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.’

Gospel (USA)

Matthew 28:16–20

Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they all saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

Reflections (7)

(i) The Most Holy Trinity

Long before we were taught the traditional prayers of the Our Father and the Holy Mary, we were probably taught to bless ourselves in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We were introduced to God as Trinity at a very young age. When I go into the junior classes in the local primary school, they may not have been taught the Our Father or the Hail Mary yet, but they all know how to bless themselves. There is something appropriate about learning to bless ourselves so early in life, because as babies we were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in response to the instruction of Jesus to his disciples in today’s gospel reading. Making the sign of the cross over ourselves while expressing our faith in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a very ancient custom in the church. It was a form of mutual recognition among Christians in the early centuries when Christians had to keep a low profile or risk persecution and death. It remains a form of mutual recognition among Christians today. When you see someone bless themselves, you recognize them as people of Christian faith. It is a very public act and it can be a very powerful and courageous, statement of faith in these days when the public expression of faith is often frowned upon.

Whenever we bless ourselves, we are expressing our faith in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is a Trinitarian shape to our faith. Jesus was a Jew, and at the core of the Jewish faith is the conviction that there is only one God. There aren’t many gods, as other nations believed. That fundamental conviction of the Jewish faith is expressed in our first reading, ‘the Lord is God indeed, in heaven above as on earth beneath, he and no other’. As a Jew, Jesus shared this fundamental conviction. Yet, Jesus revealed that within the life of this one God was a set of loving relationships. Jesus revealed the life of God to be a life of love, and there is always a relational or communal dimension to love. God is a community of love. Jesus spoke of God as Abba, Father. He had a uniquely intimate relationship with God, as Son to Father. Jesus also spoke a great deal about the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit belonged to God in a unique way, but Jesus showed that he himself also had a unique relationship with the Holy Spirit. He was full of the Holy Spirit in a way that no one else was. Jesus showed us that the life of the one God had a wonderful relational quality. The church came to express this communal quality of the life of God by expressing its faith in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God as Father is the origin of our lives, our Creator and also the goal of our lives, towards whom we are journeying. Jesus, the unique Son of God, is the greatest gift that God has given to the world. When we look upon Jesus, we are looking upon God, such is the intimacy of their relationship. He is God-with-us and he is the way to God the Father. The Holy Spirit is the shared gift of God the Father and his Son to us. It is through the Holy Spirit that God the Father and Jesus come to live in the depths of each one of us. The Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son, and it is through the Holy Spirit that the love of the Father and the Son enters our lives and makes us loving persons. Just twenty five years or so after the death and resurrection of Jesus Paul could conclude his second letter to the church in Corinth with the blessing, ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all’. The love of God the Father was expressed in the grace or the gift of Jesus to us; that love is poured into our lives through the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Holy Spirit is communion, loving relationships between us all. The role of the Holy Spirit is to enable us to live lives that reflect the community of love that is God.

People often ask, ‘Who am I to pray to? God the Father, God the Son or the Holy Spirit?’ We can pray to all three and how we pray depends on our needs and circumstances of the time. If we find ourselves experiencing a deep sense of gratitude for the wonders of creation, we might give thanks and praise to God the Father and Creator. If we find ourselves struggling with suffering or sin in our lives, we might find ourselves turning to Jesus who heals our wounds and pours out God’s merciful love upon us. If we need encouragement or enlightenment in our day to day lives we might pray to the Holy Spirit. The understanding of God as Trinity not only speaks of the richness of God’s way of relating to us but also of the rich diversity in how we can relate to God.

And/Or

(ii) The Most Holy Trinity

The French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, once wrote, ‘Hell is other people’. There are times in our lives when we might find it easy to sympathize with that sentiment. If we have had a very negative experience of other people over a period of time, we can long to be on our own, away from the troubles that others seem to bring us. We can begin to think of heaven as a state of glorious isolation. Yet, even the greatest loners among us long for human company and human companionship, from time to time. At some deep level we sense that we are only complete when we are in relationship with others. In the context of a prison, solitary confinement is a very cruel form of punishment. It is the frustration of a very deep need in all of us to be present to others and to have others present to us. We all long for some form of communion with others. If we were to call to mind the happiest moments of our lives, we would probably discover that they involved some element of communion or community, some experience of relationship. Even in our age of great individualism, we know instinctively that no one is an island.

Today’s feast of the Trinity reminds us that what is true of ourselves is even truer of God. At the very heart of God’s own life is a community, what we call a communion of persons, a set of relationships. In the gospel reading this morning, the risen Jesus makes reference to the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Within God there is a relationship of profound love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Those relationships of love within God became visible to us all with the coming of Jesus into the world. In particular, the death of Jesus on the cross reveals the love that the Son has for the Father. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead reveals the love that the Father has for the Son. The fruit of that love of the Son for the Father and of the Father for the Son was Pentecost, the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the church, upon each of us. The love that is within God could not be contained within God, but was poured out upon us through the sending of the Holy Spirit, so as to draw us into that life of love that is God. In that sense, the community that is within God is not a closed community. Rather, it is a community to which we are all invited to belong. We are not only invited to belong there, we are drawn there by God. Jesus draws us to the Father. The Holy Spirit draws us, leads us, to the Son, reminding us of all that Jesus said to us. St. Paul, in today’s second reading, tells us that the Holy Spirit, in leading us to Jesus, thereby enables us to have the same relationship with God the Father that Jesus has, moving us to cry out ‘Abba, Father’, as Jesus himself does.

If God is a communion of love, a community of love, and we are made in the image of God, then our task, our calling, is to create communities of love, communities that somehow reflect the community of love that is God. The first community of love that we experience is our family. We are born into a family. None of us have perfect families. We will always struggle with our families in one way or another. Yet, the family has the potential to be a communion of love that reflects and gives expression to something of that love that is within God. Beyond the family, the church is called to be a community of love. Jesus, on the night before he died, said to his disciples, ‘As the Father has loved me, I have loved you… Love one another as I have loved you’. Jesus wanted the church to be a loving community that was a reflection of the loving community that is God. We know that the church, the gathering of Jesus’ disciples, has frequently fallen short of this vision of Jesus. Yet, the Holy Spirit reminds us of what Jesus said to us, keeps on reminding us of what we are called to be as church. With the Spirit’s help we need to keep on trying to live that calling. The parish is the local church, and every parish is called to be a reflection of the loving communion that is God, that is within God.

If we look around us we will find examples of communities of love that are not specifically church related. We will soon host the Special Olympics. It is a great privilege for our country to do so. They would not be happening without the presence over time of various communities of love that sustained the vision of the Special Olympics and that have helped to make that vision a concrete reality in our land today. Many other similar life-giving communities could be identified in our midst. There are a whole range of support groups for various categories of people. Whenever we act to make such communities possible we are acting in a Trinitarian way, even if we have no awareness of the Trinity when we are doing it. Every time we bring people together in ways that affirm them and build them up, we are living in the spirit of the Trinity. That is the call and the challenge of today’s feast. Although the feast of the Trinity might initially seem remote from us, it is, in reality, a very down to earth feast, because it reminds us of what we need to be about in our day to day lives.

And/Or

(iii) The Most Holy Trinity

It is probably true to say that most of us know only a few people really well. A husband and wife may know more or less all that there is to know about each other; the same could be said of two people who have been very close friends for many years. Yet, even those who spend a lot of time in each other’s company do not necessarily know each other deeply. Parents do not always know their children in this deep sense and vice versa. In particular, I suspect there are many sons who feel that they never really got to know their father and many fathers who never really manage to understand their sons. We are complex and mysterious beings, all of us. Not only are we complex but most of us do not find it easy to reveal ourselves to someone. It is not surprising that it is difficult to really understand each other.

If we struggle to grasp each other, what chance do we have of grasping God? God is infinitely more mysterious than any human being. The earliest and, perhaps, the greatest theologian of the church writes in his most profound letter, his letter to the Romans, ‘O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!’ Paul was acknowledging there that God is different to us; God is, in a sense, beyond us. When it comes to speaking about God, human language is totally inadequate. Yet, although in one sense we cannot talk about God, in another sense we have to talk about God, while acknowledging that our talking about God never does justice to God. There is more to God that we can ever hope to put into words. At the same time, words are all we have.

Today’s feast is the feast of the Most Holy Trinity. Those words, ‘Most Holy Trinity’ are an effort to express an important truth about who God is. As Christians we believe that, although God is mysterious, Jesus is the fullest revelation of God possible in human form. In so far as God can be revealed at all in human form, Jesus is that self-revelation of God. If Jesus had not lived we would never come to think of God as Trinity. Those who do not recognize Jesus as the fullest revelation of God possible in human form do not believe that God is Trinity – Muslims for example.

The Jews had a very strong conviction about the oneness of God; there is one God and no other. We find that expressed in today’s first reading, ‘The Lord is God indeed, he and no other’. The first Christians, who were Jews, shared that conviction. However, because of all that Jesus said and did, they came to recognize that within this oneness of God, there was a wonderful diversity. In other words, they understood that if God is one, he is one community. God’s life is a communal life; within God there is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit who relate to each other in love. The church eventually came to speak of God as a Trinity of persons.

This is a very rich understanding of God and it is one that distinguishes Christianity from all other world religions. It has important implications for what human life is about. If in some way we are made in the image of God and if the life of God is a relational life of profound love, then our calling as human beings is to form loving relationships with others, to build community wherever we happen to find ourselves. We are most God-like when we are in loving relationships with others, when we love others as God the Father loves Jesus and as Jesus has loved us, when our love for each other is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Such loving and life-giving relationships are, therefore, a wonderful blessing; we are at our best when we are in them; they bring the best out in us.

Our calling is not only to build communities that reflect the community that is God. There is another dimension to our calling which is even more fundamental. We are invited into the communal life that is God; God draws us into God’s own life. At the very beginning of our Christian life, we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; we are baptized into the life of the Trinity. St. Paul makes that clear in today’s second reading. Through baptism we receive the Holy Spirit who makes us cry out, ‘Abba, Father’. Through the Holy Spirit, God the Father unites us to God the Son, enables us to relate to God the Father as Jesus does, inspiring us to cry out ‘Abba, Father’, as Jesus does. It is extraordinary to think that we are invited to have the same relationship with God the Father that Jesus has and that the Holy Spirit makes this possible. Even though God is very different from us, we are called into a very intimate relationship with God, Father, Son and Spirit.

It is in allowing ourselves to be drawn into the communal life of God in this way that we in turn will be enabled to build communities that reflect the life of God. In that sense, there is a two fold movement in our lives as Christians which is ongoing throughout our lives. We are continually drawn into the life of God and continually sent forth to form relationships that give expression to the relational life of God.

And/Or

(iv) The Most Holy Trinity

I once received a gift of a small ikon of the Trinity by the Russian iconographer Rublev. The original is dated to around the year 1410. It is currently in a gallery in Moscow. It is inspired by chapter 18 of the Book of Genesis where Abraham and Sarah show hospitality to three strangers who turn out to be three heavenly visitors. If an artist was asked to depict an image of the Trinity I think he or she would be hard pressed to do so. How do you depict something as mysterious as the Trinity? Every image will stumble when it comes to such a mysterious reality. Yet the church has recognized in this icon a very powerful image that communicates something of the meaning of the feast which we celebrate today.

There are three figures at a table, one at either side and one in the centre. The faces of the three figures are identical; the figures seem to be of indeterminate gender; each of the figures has some blue clothing, blue being the colour of the heavens, the symbol of divinity. Yet, each also wears something that speaks of that figure’s own identity. The figure on the right is the Spirit, the outer green garment suggesting new life. The incline of his head draws us towards the figure in the centre representing the Son. The inner brown garment of this figure speaks of the earth, his humanity; the outer blue garment suggests his divinity. The incline of this figure’s head draws us towards the figure on the left. This represents the Father. This figure seems at rest within itself. Its blue garment is almost hidden by a shimmering ethereal robe. At the centre of the table is a cup, suggesting the Eucharist. The figures can be enclosed within a circle, but it is not a close circle. It is an open circle. The place opposite the Son in the centre is empty. That is where the viewer sits or stands. We find ourselves drawn into this circle of love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is a wonderful hospitality about the image; these three serene figures seem to call us to be part of their life of love. It is as if the symbolism of the icon is designed to take the viewer into the mystery of the Trinity. The icon is about hospitality, welcoming, and drawing all into sharing at the table. It is about the company much more than about what is eaten.

It is said that a picture can convey a 1,000 words. When it comes to God, especially the mystery of God we call Trinity, words fail us. We can sense the poverty of our language when we are trying to express the inexpressible. The image, the icon, can speak to us at a level that words do not reach. In a sense, the most appropriate response to this icon of the Trinity is not so much analysis, but contemplation, a silent gazing on the image, a kind of surrender to all that it seems to be communicating. Yet, even though words are inadequate when it comes to God, and in particular to the Trinity, we need to use words in our struggle to understand God, before whom we have to exclaim with Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans, ‘O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!’ What the teaching of the Trinity seeks to convey, and what Rublev’s icon expresses so powerfully, is that the life of God is essentially a communal life. God is one and there is no other, as the Jewish tradition has always insisted upon, which is the message of our first reading. God is also community, a communion of love between three persons, which is the distinctive Christian revelation about God. One of the simplest and yet most profound statements about God in the New Testament is to be found in the first letter of Saint John, ‘God is love’. To say that God is Trinity is to develop that understanding of God as Love. The Trinity is a celebration of the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit for each other; they are so closely bonded to each other that they are perfectly one, while remaining distinct persons.

God relates to us as Father, Son and Spirit and we are drawn into a relationship with God the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. The Son leads us to the Father; the Son is the way to the Father. The Spirit leads us to the Son; the Spirit reminds us of all Jesus said to us. We need the Holy Spirit if we are to come to Jesus and we need Jesus if we are to come to the Father. As Paul says in our second reading, the Spirit makes us coheirs with Christ, brothers and sisters of Christ and empowers us to cry out with Christ, ‘Abba Father’. There is a great richness in that understanding of how God relates to us and we relate to God. This feast also reminds us that we are drawn into the life of the Trinity, into their communion of love, so that we can be empowered to recreate that life, that community of love, in our world, in our parishes, in our families.

And/Or

(v) The Most Holy Trinity

As you probably know, All Hallows College in Drumcondra was founded at the end of the 19th century for the training of Diocesan priests to work on the missions. Over the door of the original building, what is called the Mansion House, you will still find engraved a quotation from this morning’s gospel reading, ‘Go, make disciples of all nations’. Those words of Jesus at the end of Matthew’s gospel have been the inspiration for much of the church’s missionary work throughout the centuries. They express the Lord’s desire that peoples of all nations would be given the opportunity of hearing the gospel and of becoming his disciples.

The sequence of the risen Lord’s parting words to his disciples in this morning’s gospel reading is significant: make disciples, baptize them and teach them. The first activity is to make disciples by preaching the good news of God’s great love for us in Christ. The second activity is baptizing those who receive the good news and want to live by it. The third activity is teaching. Those who are baptized will need further instruction, beyond the basic presentation of the gospel. For most members of the church, in this part of the world, those three activities tend to come in a slightly different order. The activity of baptism comes first, because most people are baptized as infants. Hopefully, the activity of making disciples comes second. The children who are baptized have to be helped to hear the gospel, so that they can respond to it with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. They need to hear the good news that God so loved us that he sent his only Son to us as our way, our truth and our life, and that God and his Son so loved us that together they sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts. Hopefully they will be hearing and responding to this good news in their early years, at home and in primary school. Having heard the gospel and been touched by it, there comes a time when more in-depth teaching is called for, as the children get older and enter into adolescence and young adulthood. At that point they will have all kinds of questions about the gospel which need answering. Those who teach in secondary school will be very aware of that. Such questioning is often a sign of wanting to explore more fully the depths of the great mystery of God’s dealings with us and our dealings with God. When some of those questions begin to get answered, new questions can emerge. In fact, the questioning phase of our faith journey lasts until we see God face to face beyond this life. What the first reading calls ‘the living God’ is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be explored; such exploration is a life-time’s work. God is always greater than our feeble attempts to understand God. In his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul exclaims, ‘O the depths of the riches and wisdom and understanding of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable are his ways!’

Yet, although God’s judgements may be unsearchable and God’s ways may be inscrutable, we have to search and to scrutinize. It is in our nature – our God-given nature – to do so. The term ‘Most Holy Trinity’, which Christians have given go God since the early centuries of the church, is one attempt to name the inscrutable, to grasp the unsearchable. Christianity emerged from Judaism, and the core belief of Judaism is ‘God is one’. We find that core belief expressed clearly in today’s first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, ‘The Lord is God indeed… he and no other’. That remained the core belief of the early church, and remains the core belief of the church today, ‘God is one and there is no other’. Yet, from the very beginning, those who recognized Jesus as the unique revelation of God began to realize that more needed to be said about God than ‘God is one’. They began to appreciate that the inner life of this one God was much richer than they had ever imagined. The inner life of God was a relational life, a communal life, a life of love, embracing Father, Son and Spirit. The classical formulation of that insight came in the fourth century: God is one, but within that unity there is a trinity of persons. Jesus by his life, death and resurrection, has shown us that God’s inner life is richer than anyone could have suspected, which means that our relationship with God can be richer than anyone might have thought. We are baptized in the name of the Trinity, and baptism calls on us to relate to God as Trinity - as Creator, as Saviour, as Sanctifier. Much of the public prayer of the Church is addressed to God the Father, through God the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The shape of such prayer is also the shape of our Christian lives. We are journeying towards God the Father, through Christ, who is our way, and in the Spirit, whose power at work within us leads us to Christ and, through him, to the Father. The teaching of the Trinity not only makes a statement about how God relates to us but also about how we relate to God.

And/Or

(vi) The Most Holy Trinity

I never studied mathematics beyond secondary school and, so, I am only familiar with what would probably be considered basic mathematics. I have always associated certainty with mathematics. It is absolutely certain that twelve and twelve are twenty-four. We often use the term ‘mathematical certainty’. That level of certainty has never been associated with the life of faith. All genuine faith has an element of doubt in it, because the God in whom we believe is too mysterious to be fully grasped by faith. When the church came to speak of God as Trinity in the early centuries of its existence, it was an attempt to unveil something of the mystery of God. In keeping with its Jewish roots, the early church affirmed that God was one and there was no other, but they also came to understand that the life of this one God was a communion of love between three persons, Father, Son and Spirit. Yet, the early church recognized that even this insight into God as a Trinity of persons, as a loving communion, was only a partial insight. Saint Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians declared, ‘now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known’. He affirms that in this earthly life our insight into the mystery of God will always be partial. We are always on a journey towards knowing God more fully; only in eternity will we know God as God knows us. It has been said that doubt is essential to adult faith because it keeps us open to truth. It keeps us seeking after God who is Truth and who is always beyond us.

I have often been struck by the description of the disciples in today’s gospel reading, which is the concluding scene of Matthew’s gospel. It is said there that when the disciples saw the risen Lord on a mountain in Galilee, ‘they fell down before him, though some hesitated’. Another translation puts it, ‘they worshipped him, but some doubted’. Here we have this group of the original disciples characterized by a mixture of worship and hesitation, reverence and indecision, faith and doubt. They are, in a way, the beginnings of the church. The evangelist may be suggesting to us that it is in the nature of the church to have this mixture of faith and doubt, of adoration and hesitation. The presence of hesitation, indecision, doubt, in our faith does not invalidate it in any way. This is one of the differences between a church and a cult. Members of a cult can have a terrifying certainty about them. That can even be true of some expressions of the mainstream religions. In the gospel reading, it is to that group of disciples characterized by a mixture of faith and doubt that the risen Lord entrusts a most extraordinary mission. This group were to go out and to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that Jesus had commanded. They weren’t just to go to the neighbouring Galilean villages; they were to go to all the nations. Their mission had three essential and distinct elements to it. They were to make disciples of others, by preaching the gospel to them, the good news of God’s love for us in Jesus. Secondly, those who responded to their preaching of the gospel they were to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; they were to baptized them into the very life of God as Father, Son and Spirit. Thirdly, those whom they baptized, they were to teach, instructing them in all that Jesus had taught during his ministry. It is quite a commission that the risen Lord gives to his faithful yet hesitant followers.

All of us here can be thought of as the fruit of that commission of the risen Lord to these disciples. We have all been baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Hopefully, we have had the gospel of God’s love preached to us and responded to it in faith. Hopefully also, we have received some teaching regarding what we believe, because our faith has a content. The core of that content is to be found in the Creed we recite every Sunday, the shape of which is Trinitarian. We believe in God our Father, the origin and the goal of our lives, who has created us all out of love and who awaits us all with the loving heart of a Father. We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s greatest gift to humanity, who has shown us who God is like and who has also revealed to us God’s vision for our lives. We believe in the Holy Spirit, who comes from God the Father and from Jesus his Son, and who is God’s presence in the depths of each one of us, working to bring to pass God’s vision for our lives. What is God’s vision for our lives? It is that we reflect in the way we treat each other something of that communion of love which is God. We are to relate to all human life with the same life-giving love which is at the heart of God.

And/Or

(vii) The Most Holy Trinity

It is probably true to say that long before we were taught the traditional prayers of the Our Father and the Holy Mary, we were taught to bless ourselves, in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, while making the sign of the cross on our body. We were introduced to God as Trinity at a very young age. When I go into the Junior classes in the Girls School in Belgrove, they may not have been taught the Our Father or the Hail Mary yet, but they all know how to bless themselves. Perhaps there is something very appropriate about learning to bless ourselves so early in life, because as babies we were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in response to the instruction of Jesus to his disciples in today’s gospel reading. Making the sign of the cross over ourselves while expressing our faith in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is a very ancient custom in the church. It was a form of mutual recognition among Christians in the early centuries of the church when Christians had to keep a low profile or risk persecution and death. It remains a form of mutual recognition among Christians today. When you see someone bless themselves, you recognize them as people of Christian faith. It is a very public act and can be a very powerful, and indeed, courageous, statement of faith in these days when the public expression of faith is often frowned upon and many want to push the faith to the margins, making it almost invisible.

Whenever we bless ourselves, we are expressing our faith in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is a Trinitarian shape to our faith. We may not always reflect upon that fundamental shape of our faith, but today’s feast is a good opportunity to do so. Jesus was a Jew, and at the core of the Jewish faith is the conviction that there is only one God. There aren’t many gods, as the Greek believed and other nations believed. There is one God. That fundamental conviction of the Jewish faith is very clearly expressed in our first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, ‘the Lord is God indeed, in heaven above as on earth beneath, he and no other’. As a Jew, Jesus shared this fundamental conviction. Yet, Jesus revealed that within the life of this one God was a relational life. Jesus revealed the life of God to be a life of love, and there is always a communal dimension to love. The life of God is a communal life of love. God is a community of love. Jesus spoke of God as Abba, Father. He revealed to himself to have a uniquely intimate relationship with God, as Son to Father. Jesus also spoke a great deal about the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit belonged to God in a unique way, but Jesus showed that he himself also had a unique relationship with the Holy Spirit. He was full of the Holy Spirit in a way that no one else was, and he could give the Holy Spirit to others in a way no one else could. Jesus showed us that the life of the one God had a wonderful relational quality. The church came to express this relational quality of the life of God by expressing its faith in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God as Father is the origin of our lives, the Creator of our lives. God as Father is also the goal of our lives, the one towards whom we are all journeying. Jesus, the unique Son of God, is the greatest gift that God has given to the world. When we look upon Jesus, we are looking upon God, such is the intimacy of their relationship. Jesus is Emmanuel or God-with-us. The Holy Spirit is the shared gift of God the Father and God the Son to us. It is through the Holy Spirit that God the Father and God the Son come to live in the depths of each one of us. The Holy Spirit came to be understood as the love between the Father and the Son, and it is through the Holy Spirit that God the Father’s love and God the Son’s love enters our lives and creates us as loving persons. Just twenty five years or so after the death and resurrection of Jesus Paul could conclude his second letter to the church in Corinth with the following blessing, ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all’. The love with God found expression in the grace or the gift of Jesus to us and that love is poured into our lives through the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Holy Spirit is communion, loving relationships between us all. In that sense, the role of the Holy Spirit is to enable us to live communal lives, lives that reflect the community of love that is God, lives that share in the community of love that is God. If God is community, it is a community, a flow of relationships, that reaches out to embrace us all.

People often ask, ‘Who do I pray to?’ ‘Is it God the Father, God the Son or the Holy Spirit?’ We can pray to all three and how we pray depends on the needs and circumstances of the time. If we find ourselves experiencing a deep sense of gratitude for the wonders of creation, we might give thanks and praise to God the Father and Creator. If we find ourselves struggling with suffering or sin in our lives, we might find ourselves turning to Jesus who heals our wounds and pours out God’s merciful love upon us. If we need encouragement or enlightenment in our day to day lives we might pray to the Holy Spirit. The understanding of God as Trinity not only speaks of the richness of God’s way of relating to us but also of the rich diversity in how we can relate to God.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

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