The Faithlessness of Small Thinking

[Music] [Music] is please be seated and good morning if you can comprehend it it is not god so wrote one of the greatest theologians the church has ever produced the great saint augustine in commenting on the fact that much of god's nature and activity are shrouded in mystery residing beyond the threshold of our finite minds if you can comprehend it augustine said it is not god almighty god himself speaking through the prophet isaiah said this for my thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways my ways for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts you know if ever there was a doctrine of the church that is encompassed in these words from both augustine and isaiah it is the doctrine of the blessed trinity to which we give special emphasis today on this solemnity of the most holy trinity the church began very early on to use the word trinity to teach the truth of three persons father son and holy spirit in one god the actual doctrine the dogma of the blessed trinity was formalized and promulgated in 325 a.d by the council of nicaea the same council which gave us of course the nicene creed but the trinity is more much more than mere doctrine it is as you have heard me say before one of the grand convictions of our christian faith in our processional hymn this morning just a few moments ago one of the great hymns of the church penned by saint john henry newman we sang the words firmly i believe and truly god is three and god is one one of the beautiful wonders of our faith of our catholic faith is that it calls us to submit ourselves to eternal truths that are grander bolder more audacious than we can fully grasp or that we could even formulate on our own on the other hand one of the hallmarks of the popular culture that surrounds us is the smallness of its thinking and therefore the smallness of the gods it worships that smallness is predicated on human wisdom alone where every person becomes the center of his or her universe and every issue is settled on the basis of sentimentality or self-interest rather than on reason or the common good and where subjective opinion drowns out and shouts down objective truth and where wokeness and political correctness supersedes everything there's an awful lot of that kind of thinking behind the chaos that our nation has been experiencing over these past 14 months we're witnessing the manifest unraveling of our society which is the fruit of decades of small godless thinking thinking that has created structures and systems and movements and policies devoid of any reference or acknowledgement of godly wisdom and admonition the pundits and the prognosticators are all over the lot in trying to explain the chaos and the confusion citing political sociological and economic causes and there certainly are those behind this terrible moment in our nation's history but i would submit to you that at its root what we are witnessing is the fallout of a profoundly spiritual problem the problem of godlessness godlessness forced upon our culture by the prevailing ethos of relativism and secular humanism and marxist statism we see the evidence of of it all around us but probably nowhere more obviously than in the political realm and those three overlapping ideologies in the political realm in other words in the hands of our ruling class end up subjecting us to the godless fruit of small thinking small thinking small thinking is what's operative for example when a catholic politician or office holder decides i need to advocate for the cause of abortion if i'm going to garner the support of my pro-abortion party and if i'm going to be successful in climbing my way up the political ladder i need to demonstrate that i'm a friend of planned parenthood in order to get their endorsement and the votes that accompany it big thinking on the other hand would have the same catholic politician thinking this way i will one day have to stand before the judgment seat of christ where i will need to give an accounting of my life to the god of the universe [Music] i need therefore to live a life both privately and publicly that is consistent with god's laws and the teaching of the church and that includes this i must as a public figure do all in my power to protect the lives of the most vulnerable in our society beginning with the unborn brothers and sisters that's big thinking we cannot allow small thinking to cloud our judgment or to influence the way we live our lives as faithful catholics listen to this big thought by then pope benedict the 16th quote when freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself that necessarily the creator himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of god as the image of god at the core of his being the defense of the family is about man himself and it becomes clear that when god is denied human dignity also disappears end quote brothers and sisters our trinitarian faith will not allow for small thinking or for the creation of small gods whether they be the god of self the god of identity politics the god of government the god of materialism the god of technology or anything else that presents itself as a substitute and a counterfeit to the god of the universe the one true and living god father son and holy spirit in other words our faith compels us to frame our lives around the understanding that the god that we worship is infinitely larger holier more powerful more majestic than all of the man-made gods of 21st century popular culture far from worshipping some small false god true christians are we who profess the bold audacious truth that if by god you mean anything other than father son and holy spirit you aren't talking about the one true and living god at all the god we worship is the god both of history and of eternity the god of creation the god of all that is visible and invisible we owe our allegiance to him and one day we will have to give an accounting of our lives to him the blessed trinity is at the very epicenter of our understanding of salvation history of god's redemptive relationship with humanity in fact the trinity is an affirmation that at the very heart and nature of the one true and living god and at the core of his creation is relationship it is not for nothing that saint john wrote that god is love in fact quoting saint augustine again in his attempt to depict the relationship of father son and holy spirit augustine wrote this quote god is the lover god is the beloved god is the love and the message that our very existence as human beings black white brown yellow whatever human beings created as we are in the image of god the message that that speaks is a message of the inner life of god himself a life of love and relationship the one true god we worship and whose life we reflect unless unlike all the false gods of all time is in his very nature personal and relational and you and i are called by our baptism and by our life of faith to be both the recipients and the instruments of god's infinite love for god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son we read in john 3 16 for god so loved the world that he gave he gave all too often what is portrayed as love in our popular culture is a cheap counterfeit of the real thing small thinking again self-love that views others as little more than a means for enhancing that self-love in other words a love that takes rather than gives but god so loved that he gave and we who have been incorporated into the life of the trinity by the grace of baptism and by the life of faith are beckoned by father son and holy spirit to do the same to give of ourselves in selfless love and it is in the church in other words in our relationships with our brothers and sisters in christ more than anywhere else that you and i are called to express the self-giving love of the trinity why is that first because that self-giving love is a sure sign the acid test of our identification with jesus who said by this will all know that you are my disciples if you have love one for another and secondly because we cannot grow into the full stature of christ's likeness on our own our growth and maturity as disciples of jesus has as one of its prerequisites our relationship with other like-minded christians iron sharpening iron is what proverbs chapter 27 calls that and so brothers and sisters on this day when we pause to give special emphasis to emphasis to the blessed trinity let's consider a couple of things first how big and how mysterious our god is second that because we have been incorporated into the godhead by grace we are called to share in the relationship of love that is a hallmark of the divine nature that we are called in other words to friendship with god in christ by his spirit and third that we are called to be instruments of god's love to all people beginning with our brothers and sisters in the family of faith but by no means ending there and finally let me say this to our young people teenagers and young adults please listen to me for a moment i urge you i urge you in these turbulent times stay true to the church stay faithful to the church in your entire life trust me in your entire life you will not find anything bigger truer or more life-giving to believe in than our catholic faith and i'd like to conclude with a wonderful quote by another one of the great theologians that the church has produced a quote by the venerable archbishop fulton j sheen on the mystery of the trinity found in his work entitled the divine romance man's quest for god bishop sheen wrote this quote finally it is the mystery of the trinity which gives the answer to the quest for our happiness and the meaning of heaven let me read that sentence again it is the mystery of the trinity which gives the answer to the quest for our happiness and the meaning of heaven heaven is not a place where there is the mere vocal repetition of alleluias or the monotonous fingering of harps aren't you glad he goes on heaven is a place where we find the fullness of all the fine things we enjoy on this earth heaven is a place where we find in their plenitude those things which slake the thirst of hearts satisfy the hunger of starving minds and give rest to unrequited love heaven is the communion with perfect life perfect truth and perfect love god the father god the son and god the holy ghost to whom be all honor and glory forever and ever amen in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit

Channel: Fr. Edward Meeks

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Id: c0mKs6jRZ4E

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Sun May 30 2021