Family Matters

NB: This homily was preached on my first weekend in my new parishes of Holy Rosary, Stuttgart, and Holy Trinity, England. 

On Tuesday of this week, I became an uncle for the third time. I know you all don’t know a lot about me or my family yet, so allow me to share just a few personal details.

I have been a priest for almost seven years. I was born and raised in Little Rock, where my parents still live. My younger brother is also a priest for our diocese, and he is assigned at the church down in Lake Village. Our sister moved to Nebraska when she married, and it is she who had a baby boy this week. Our family is close, and because my brother and I are priests, my sister’s family is pretty special and gets a lot of attention from us. All week long I have been receiving updates and pictures, and I have made a few calls over FaceTime to see how things are going. As for any family, welcoming this new child has been an amazing gift, and a reminder of the awesome gift of life that comes from God.

A new baby brings a lot of excitement and joy, and as I begin my time with you here at Holy Rosary (Holy Trinity), I can’t help but feel a bit similar to my little nephew. My infant days are long past, but like him, I have stepped into a completely new world, and into a new family as well. What a joy it is to finally arrive here after several months of preparing to come! Like my nephew, I know I have a lot of new things to experience and to learn about this great community, and probably a lot of growth to do as well. No doubt you will help me to do that. I know it’s never easy to go through a pastoral change, and it necessarily will take time for us to get to know each other. But while there may be challenges and growing pains along the way, we know that just like a human family, our parish family is founded upon and established in love, and it is love that it is the context for all that we do.

The Holy Trinity, attributed to Francisco Caro (c. 1650)

Today, our parish family celebrates with the universal Church the feast that reminds us, perhaps more than any other in our year, that love is the foundation for all reality: specifically, the love that is God himself. Since Easter, we have been celebrating how exactly God has revealed himself to us. Jesus Christ, the Word of God and the Second Person of the Trinity, shared our human nature in order to reveal the Father’s love for us; he did so most clearly and visibly in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The Holy Spirit, sent to us by the Father and the Son at Pentecost, now guides us in the ways of truth, as we heard in today’s Gospel, reminding us of all that the Lord has done for us. Thus, the one God has revealed himself as a Trinity of Persons: Father, Son, and Spirit.

That God has revealed himself to us in this way is an act of love. He desires that we come to know him, as he really is, because he loves us. And it is out of this love for us that he has revealed he is himself Love – in his innermost reality, God himself is the communion of love shared by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Most Holy Trinity is more than just an abstract theological concept – it is the most fundamental reality, it is what is more than anything else. Everything else that exists – you and I, all of creation, anything that we can think of – shares in God’s existence.

God exists as a Trinity of Persons, as Father, Son, and Spirit, and so we might say that God’s very essence is family love. It’s no coincidence then that our families can so often be such wonderful sources of experiencing the love of God. The most wonderful moments of family life give us a glimpse into the mystery of God’s life, into the mystery of his love. Just gaze upon the face of a newborn child to be reminded of that! But this pattern of divine love found in the family extends beyond just our individual human families. It is true most especially of the People of God, the Church. The Church is truly the family of God; indeed, we say that we are the children of God, adopted sons and daughters of the Father in Christ. In the end, God reveals himself as a Trinity of Persons not only so that we might know the one from whom we draw our earthly existence but ultimately because he invites us also to share in his heavenly life – in the love of his own family, you might say. That’s why God has created each of us, that’s why he has redeemed us in Christ, and that’s why he continually sanctifies us through the power of the Spirit throughout our earthly journey – so that at the end of our days, each of us might also come to share in for all eternity the communion of Love that is the basis of all reality, the Trinitarian love of God.

Since the love of God has been revealed to us in this way, as the love of a divine family, that same love must be the touchstone for all of our families as well. In our human families, in our parish family here at Holy Rosary (Holy Trinity), we should be rooted in Trinitarian love. It's that love that “has been poured into our hearts,” as St. Paul says, and it should be made visible in all that we do. Our model for how to accomplish this is the life of Christ, especially in his example of sacrificial love – of a love so great that one can lay down life itself for the good of the other. That must be always the standard and the model for our own love, the love found in our families, the love displayed in our parish here as well.

My friends, I feel very honored and joyful to become a part of your family here at Holy Rosary (Holy Trinity), and I look forward to sharing your life. As we begin this journey of faith together, let’s remember that it is by the love of our families – our families at home and our parish community here – that God is always seeking to draw us more deeply into his own divine life, forming us truly into his family. As we prepare to share in this Eucharist, may the Love that is the Most Blessed Trinity be renewed in each of our hearts so that we may come to share that love ever more deeply in all that we do.