tvc.dsj.org | June 6, 2017
By Father Brendan McGuire
Pastor of Holy Spirit Parish, San Jose, and Vicar General
for special projects, Diocese of San Jose. Email him at [email protected].
SPIRITUALITY
7
Sunday Homilies
The Sauce of Life
Ordinary Elements
Sunday, June 11, 2017
As an adult, I ventured into cooking. A good friend, who is a chef, taught me
all these different sauces. I have learned how a sauce can change a meal. It doesn’t
have to be very sophisticated; a very simple sauce can tie all the ingredients to-
gether in a most magnificent way. Something as simple as a brown butter sauce
can transform simple fish. The sauce ties all the simple ingredients together. It
doesn’t change the ingredients. It complements and brings them together.
I think of this as a metaphor for the Trinity. We refer to all three persons in
one God; they complement each other and they do bring each other alive. There
is this sense of integrity to the three persons. We can think of the Holy Spirit as
the sauce that ties it all together. There doesn’t have to be a lot of the Holy Spirit
for us to come alive. As Catholics, we’re afraid of the Holy Spirit; too much Holy
Spirit and we might be talking in tongues!
But if we allow the Spirit in, it will change our lives. The Spirit is playful. The
Spirit is alive. The Spirit gives us energy. The Spirit is a gift from God that brings
his presence alive in our hearts here and now.
As we celebrate Trinity Sunday, there is a temptation to talk about it in doctri-
nal terms. But the real purpose of the Feast of the Holy Trinity is to experience
God in the wholeness of who God is, three persons in one substance. God the
Father created us in his own image. God the Son became one of us to redeem
and validate our humanity, to show us the way to the Father. God the Holy Spirit
sanctifies and makes our life holy, and also enlivens our life by the very gift of
God’s presence within us.
Just like making a sauce for a dinner, it takes an extra effort. We have to invite
the Holy Spirit into our lives and allow it to take over some space in our life. It
won’t just happen; we have to use our free will. Basically, the Holy Spirit is the
love that flows between God as Father and God as Son.
So, when we participate in loving one another, we participate in God’s very
self, th e substance of who God is. When we choose to love, then that love brings
us to a different place. It helps us to be better people, and it’s in that exchange of
allowing ourselves to be loved and to love in sacrificial ways for the sake of the
other that we become more than who we are. We become more divine in some
way because we have allowed ourselves to be full of God’s love and God’s Spirit.
We are opening our hearts so God will allow us to be loved and then we can
love others. It is that virtuous cycle that improves our lives and who we are. As we
celebrate the Trinity of God, may we come to experience God’s love in each other.
Sunday, June 18, 2017
“Jesus took the bread and gave it to his disciples.” We might wonder why Christ chose
bread and wine? Bread was the most common ingredient at a meal. It was not the
food for the wealthy. It was for the poorest of the poor. In fact, bread and wine were
likely at every single meal. They were sustenance food.
Since Christ is the Son of God, why not take something a little bit more
dramatic,something harder to come by, such as figs or lobster? Take something that
is so incredibly hard to find to say, “Hey, look, I am the Son of God!” But he does
not. He takes bread and wine.
Therein lies the message. He takes the ordinary ingredients of daily life and
transforms them into his Body and Blood. That is his promise to us: God will take the
ordinary events of our daily lives and transform them into something extraordinary.
That is what we celebrate each and every Sunday when we come to the table, and, in
a special way, this day when we celebrate the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Therein lies the challenge as well. When we come on Sunday, when we celebrate
this bread and this wine that is turned into the Body and Blood of Christ, we are
called to partake, but then we are called to become what we receive. We are called
to become the Body of Christ broken for others. We are called to become the Blood
poured out for others.
We believe that what happens here is real. So, too, in our daily life, we have to
believe that God is in the most ordinary circumstances and that he will transform
those ordinary events into something extraordinary. This is the challenge.
Some of you here today have just celebrated graduation for your children. It is an
exciting time of joy. It is a time of great anticipation for the year ahead. Others have
received a job promotion, a new job. You are excited and there is great joy.
But there are others, who have suffered great loss this last week. Some have lost
a child. Some are losing friends. It is hard to see where God’s hand is at work in
the midst of that loss. In the midst of that darkness, we find it difficult to feel or see
God’s presence in our lives.
When we come to this table, we do not celebrate the Body of Christ as an indi-
vidual. No, it is a communal act for every single person here so that we can help each
other because we have become that Body of Christ. We have become that strength for
each other to get through those difficult, dark times. It is not just about receiving the
Body of Christ for ourselves but also that we become the Body of Christ to others.
When we come to receive, we do so both individually and communally, we are
called to become what we receive, the Body of Christ broken for others and the Blood
of Christ poured out for others.
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