Bless and Keep You

Last week, as I was packing up the rectory, I came across the notes for my first homily here three years ago. Believe it or not, it was for the very feast we celebrate today, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. In it, I spoke a little bit about my family, including my youngest nephew, who had just been born a few days before. I spoke about how God reveals his love for us through the family – through our natural families and through our spiritual family, the Church. And I spoke about how it was a great honor and joy for me to have become a part of the spiritual family of Holy Rosary parish.

I still feel that way today, even as I now say farewell to you after just three short years. While I wish I might have stayed for a longer time, I also know that this is what God’s Providence has arranged for our community at this present time. In my years as a priest, I have come to believe that God’s wisdom is often at work in ways deeper than we can know. For example, when I came here three years ago, there were some projects that I left unfinished at my previous parish, and out of pridefulness it was bittersweet for me to leave there with those things undone. But the pastor who followed me has been doing amazing work at accomplishing those things – much better than I could have done – and all in the midst of a pandemic. God truly does know better than us what is best for us.

Today’s Gospel shows how the first disciples learned this. When Jesus tells them that he had to return to the Father, surely they wondered, “Why?”. Couldn’t he just stay with them? Jesus knows, however, that the disciples must be made ready for the mission he will give to them, and that for him to continue to be present to them in the way that he had been wouldn’t actually be what’s best for them. What they need is God’s presence in a new, intensified, and expanded way. What they need is the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Trinity (c. 1650) by Antonio de Pereda y Salgado

The Holy Spirit’s coming is also best for the disciples in another way. He enlightens their minds to show them at last the fullness of who God is – a Trinity of Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All that they will do thereafter will be, in some way or another, a proclamation of this deepest mystery, the Most Blessed Trinity. The words they preached, the signs they performed, even ultimately in the witnesses of their deaths – the disciples will do all of them with the aim of helping others to know and love the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the way that they do.

The same is true here. Just as he did for those first disciples, the Holy Spirit will continue to lead and guide this community. He will be active in your new pastor, Fr. Babu, who is excited to get to know you and to work with you. He will teach you about Jesus in new and profound ways, and with different gifts than I had. The Holy Spirit will also be active in the new deacon of our parish, Deacon Greg Fischer. He doesn’t speak Spanish – not yet, you can help him to learn! – but he knows that he has been ordained for service to our whole parish, and so he is happy to help you in whatever way he can. I hope that he will be able to occasionally help at this Mass, too, so that he can show you by presence if not in word, that he is ready to serve you as well, in the model of Christ the Servant.

And finally, perhaps most importantly of all, I know that the Holy Spirit will continue to be active in and through you. He’s calling you as disciples to continue to proclaim Jesus in the world, just as he did the first disciples. You may preach with different words; you may perform different signs in your daily labors; you may lay down your lives differently than they did – but the love of the Most Holy Trinity who is behind all, who is the foundation of all, is the same. And if you trust in his guidance, in his Providence, the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth.

Brothers and sisters, it has been an honor to have been a part of this parish family, and I look forward to when God’s Providence will arrange for us to see each other again. In the meantime, let’s pray that we all may remain strengthened by the Holy Spirit and united always in the one family of the Church. May all that we do, as priests and people, be a proclamation of the love of the Most Blessed Trinity, and an offering of love to the same – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.