Blessed and Undivided Trinity!

Deus Dixit: God has spoken!

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, May 30, 2021

During my days in the seminary, the common joke among students and professors is that Trinity Sunday is the day that all manners of heresies are preached from the pulpit. Others also joke that Trinity Sunday is the “the preacher’s nightmare.” These jokes stem from the difficulty associated with the preaching or teaching of the deepest mysteries of our faith: that God is a Trinity of persons. While the Trinity can be seen as the most abstract and out of reach Christian doctrine, it is also the most ordinary and obvious. Although the finest minds in the Church— Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Karl Rahner have all wrestled with the meaning of this great mysterious dogma, the most ordinary Catholic regularly invokes the Trinity every time he makes the sign of the cross: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Every time we pray formally or informally, every time we gather to celebrate the Mass we invoke the Trinity and put ourselves within the dynamics of the Trinity. Every baptized Catholic is baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. That means we have been sealed by the Trinity and brought into the dynamics of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is technical and abstract but it is the most ordinary sign of the Christian life. 

How do we understand this unique teaching? Today’s readings give us a good logical guide. In the first reading taken from the Book of Deuteronomy (4:32-34, 39-40), Moses asks the nation of Israel as they are about to enter the Promise Land: “Did any god venture forth and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation… which the Lord, your God, did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?” In the ancient world, everyone believed in God or gods or some sacred phenomenon. But what set Israel apart was their belief that the Lord God of heaven and earth has specifically chosen them as his special people. Before you kick against this notion, the Old Testament makes it clear that this chosen has nothing to do with privilege rather with mission. Israel was chosen by God in order to become the vehicle by which the whole world will be gathered unto God. Through God’s mighty acts of liberation in Egypt and Babylon, through his gift of the Torah, through the sending of the prophets, through the establishment of the Temple in Jerusalem, through the cutting of covenant after covenant, the God of Israel sought to draw Israel into communion with him so that liberation, prophesy, covenant, Temple might be universalized and all nations might come to worship the true God. God is a great gathering Force. 

All these reached their zenith in the life, teaching, dying and rising of a young rabbi from Nazareth called Jesus. Was he greater than Torah? Yes, but so much more because he claimed authority over the Torah itself: “You have heard that it was said to your ancestor in the Torah….but I say to you…” (Matt. 5:21-48). Was he a prophet? Yes! He claimed that title but he was so much more. He is not just one more bearer of the truth, but the prophetic truth itself. He says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). None of ancient prophets— Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel etc could have said such. Was he a lover of the Temple? Yes! He was often in the Temple to pray and preach. But he was also so much more than the Temple because he claimed to be himself the New Temple: “You have something greater than the Temple here” (Matt. 12:6). At the climax of his life, he said referring to the Temple in Jerusalem, “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will rebuild it” (John 2:19). The new Temple he wants to rebuild is the Temple of his Body. 

But what does all these mean? What immediately became clear to the early church especially in the light of the resurrection is that this Jesus who is sent by the God of Israel, also spoke and acted in the very person of the God of Israel. He is the Son of God in an absolutely unique sense. As the New Testament puts it, he is the perfect reflection of the Father’s being. He is the means by which the Father will gather the whole world unto himself. In the old dispensation, prophecy, law, Temple, covenant were used by the God of Israel to draw the world to himself, but now, Jesus of Nazareth, who is the fulfillment of all of those is also the definitive means by which God is drawing the world to himself. In the light of his dying and rising, the first Christian believers saw that the Father has sent his Son to the very limits of God’s forsaken— into sickness, sin, and death itself in order to draw everybody into the dynamics of the divine life. This is the reason why St. Paul says in our second reading of today, “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, through whom we cry, “Abba, Father!” If Jesus is the Son, then we who are grafted unto him are sons and daughters in the Son. That is the Christian Faith! That is the meaning of Baptism. 

And what does today’s Gospel (Matt. 28:16-20) has to say about this? The risen and glorified Lord speaks to the new Israel, the church: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” No Israelite prophet— Moses, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah etc would have said such a thing. The one speaking is the very replica of the Father’s being. After making such an extremely audacious and true declaration, he adds, “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.” He gives them the order of gathering in the nations of the world. What is the mission of the Church? It is the mission of the Son of God which is to gather all people into the love that connects the Father and the Son which is the Holy Spirit. When we talk about the inner life of God, it could be challenging to do so, however, we should never allow the arcane language of theology to obscure the revolutionary meaning of the Trinity as a summons to mission, as a call to action. The Son is speaking to us all who are sons and daughters in him, to go and do the work giving to him, that is, to gather the whole world into the dynamics of the divine life. The Protestant theologian, Karl Barth says, “The Trinity is the function of the biblical principle “Deus Dixit” which means, “God has spoken!” Within God there is a Speaker, and we call him the Father; as a speaker, there has to be a word spoken. The law, covenant and prophesy are examples of the words that the Speaker speaks. But in Jesus, he speaks his definitive word. Jesus is the Word spoken. And according to Karl Barth, there has to be an interpreter of the Word. The Holy Spirit is the divine interpreter who helps us to understand the Word spoken. Up and down the century, the Holy Spirit through theologians, popes, teachers etc has been teaching us the meaning of the Word. 

The Comforter Has Come

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Great Feast of Pentecost, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, May 23, 2021

We celebrate today one of the truly great moments in the life of the Church— the Feast of Pentecost. Forty days after the Resurrection of Jesus, ten days after his Ascension, the Holy Spirit comes down upon the Apostles and generates in them an uncommon courage that took them to the streets to testify that Jesus of Nazareth who was betrayed by the Jews, crucified by the Romans has been raised by God. He is risen! He is the Lord! He is the Messiah of the Jews and the world. Now, since Pentecost is the great Feast of the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, the question is: when did we, the subsequent followers of Christ receive the Holy Spirit? At Baptism, not Confirmation. What happens at Confirmation is the strengthening of the gifts already received. Confirmation is derived from the Latin word, “Confirmare” which means “to strengthen.” Through the sacrament of Confirmation, the Holy Spirit strengthens us to do exploits in three basic ways: Firstly, the Holy Spirit strengthens us in our relationship to Jesus Christ. Secondly, the Holy Spirit strengthens our capacity to defend the Faith, and thirdly, the Holy Spirit strengthens our capacity to spread the Faith.

In our ordinary life, there are individuals living or dead that we consider heroes and sheroes. A few years ago when I had to read the US civics to prepare for citizenship test, my admiration for the 16th President of America, Abraham Lincoln rose to the highest heaven. No doubt, he was a great man and a great president. In politics, I consider him my hero. If he were to be a Catholic, he could have been canonized a saint. In the area of social justice, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is my hero. In my youthful age in Nigeria, there were three musicians, Reggae musicians that I admire a lot— one was a South African (Lucky Philip Dube), the other a Jamaican (Bob Marley) and another a Nigerian (Majek Fashek). I enjoyed and still enjoy listening to their songs. Their songs sowed in me a deep interest in how people, particularly Black people are treated by both the political class and the powerful people. Now, as great as Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were, as much as I admire them, I will not say I have a relationship with them. As much as the lyrics of the songs of Lucky Dube, Bob Marley and Majek Fashek inspire me, I will not say I have a relationship with them. I don’t have any relationship with any of them and will not consider them my friends. But when it comes to Jesus, it is not the same. Jesus of Nazareth is not a distant historical figure I admire. He is not just a great philosopher or teacher. Rather, he is a Living Presence and as one song says, I do have a friend in Jesus. The most important friendship of my life is my friendship with Jesus. So, the first work of the Holy Spirit is to strengthen that relationship, that friendship. 

The second strengthening of the Holy Spirit is the desire to defend the Faith. In the 20th century, more people died for their Christian Faith than all the previous centuries combined. And in this 21st century, things are not getting better for Christians. Look around the world especially in Africa, Middle East, and Asia. The most persecuted religion today is Christianity. I pray that none of our lives will be on the line, however in the world of social media, the world of new atheism, the world of internet, the world of radical secularism, the Catholic Faith is under serious attack. This attack sometimes comes from lax and “practicing” Catholics. So, when your faith is attacked, do you chicken out? If you are a confirmed Catholic, you are confirmed to be a soldier of Christ. As a soldier of Christ, do you possess a soldier’s courage? The Holy Spirit is meant to strengthen us in that capacity. The third strengthening of the Holy Spirit is spreading the Faith. Do you know that every baptized and confirmed person is by the power of the sacrament a missionary? The Christian Faith is not a private possession. It is not something we privately keep for ourselves; it is always meant to be shared and spread like seeds. As apostles, we have been sent out on mission. 

After the Holy Spirit has strengthened our relationship with Jesus, after he has intensified our capacity to defend the Faith, after our passion to spread the Faith has been increased by him, the Holy Spirit also gives us what the Church calls the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not come for the sake of coming. He never comes empty-handed. He always comes with gifts. These gifts are; wisdom, knowledge, understanding, fortitude, counsel, piety and fear of the Lord. For you to be a good defender of the Faith, you need to know the Faith in a deep and searching way. Can you go to a physician or a surgeon who stopped studying medicine, anatomy and chemistry after graduation from medical school? Would you take your car to a mechanic who never updates his or her knowledge of vehicles? Of course not. We want someone with a lot of expertise, a lot of wisdom, knowledge and understanding of the field. Our friendship with Christ our Lord is infinitely more important than cars and even our physical health. This friendship we have been strengthened in, meant to defend and spread is the most important thing we can imagine. So, we need a lot of wisdom, knowledge and understanding. For most Catholics, their religious education and formation ends at Confirmation. No serious doctor tells you that their medical education ended after graduation from medical school. Just as graduation is actually the beginning of medical education and training for physicians and surgeons, so must ours be. Confirmation should and must be the beginning of our faith formation. Do not be a Catholic who can’t defend their faith. Do not be a Catholic who can’t explain their faith to their children and grand-children in a way that makes them say, “I also want what you have.” 

The other gift of the Holy Spirit is fortitude—i.e. courage in adversity. Fortitude helps us to witness for Christ especially in extremely difficult situations. Today in Nigeria, many Christians, and a lot of them young people, high school students, under-graduates etc have been killed by Islamic terrorists for refusing to renounce their Christian Faith. This is going on now even as I preach. Every day, these soulless human beings kidnap people from major roads and from their homes and behead them for being Christians. A year ago, a young man studying to become a Catholic priest was kidnapped. After refusing to renounce his Faith in Jesus, he was killed. These Christians, these soldiers of Christ paid the ultimate price because they had the Spirit’s gift of fortitude. Now, I pray and hope you never experience any of this, however, when your faith is belittled, you must have the fortitude to stand your ground. Piety and fear of the Lord tell us that God is the absolute center of our lives. If you have piety and fear of the Lord, that means wealth, pleasure, power, honor and worldly things are not your utmost concern. They are not the center of your life. It means that God is the center of your life. The last gift is the gift of counsel. Counsel is the capacity to tell right from wrong. Do we take the wild path of selfishness, hatred and violence that many take? Or do we take the narrow path of selflessness, love, compassion and non-violence? Every person who has reached the age of accountability makes decision everyday and those decisions shape the kind of person we are going to be. Counsel is the gift of the Holy Spirit that enables us to make those right choices. With these Seven Gifts, we are strengthened in our friendship with Jesus. We are strengthened in our capacity to defend the Faith, and we are strengthened in our capacity to spread the Faith. But these gifts are not magical realities. We must cooperate with the Holy Spirit and use these gifts to do exploits for the Lord. 

The Holy Spirit has come!

The Comforter is here!

The Greatest Commandment

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, May 9, 2021

What do you think is the greatest commandment in the entire Bible? There are 613 commandments in the Old Testament: 248 of them are positive commandments, and 365 are negative commandments. While positive commandments instruct Jews what they should do, negative commandments prescribe to them what they should not do. The most prominent of these commandments are the Ten Commandments. When a scholar of the law asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (Matt. 22:36), the Pharisee was simply asking Jesus to specify from the many 613 commandments, which one of them is the greatest. Although Jesus chose two: Love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself, those are not the greatest commandments in the Bible. They are just the greatest commandments in the Law, the Old Testament. The greatest commandment was revealed at the Last Supper: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn. 13:34); “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you” (Jn. 15:12). 

Jesus’ new and great commandment “love one another as I love you” contains the Old Testament Law, but the Old Testament Law does not contain Christ’s kind of love. The Old Testament commands us not to kill, but Christ’s commandment of love forbids us from getting into sinful anger (Matt. 5:21-22). In all of these, Jesus is raising the bar of what is required and expected of us. He is addressing the root cause of our external actions which is found in the human heart. Jesus is not messing with the Ten Commandments. He is not trashing it. In Matthew’s Gospel he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill” (5:17). 

Sisters and brothers, Jesus’ soteriology is quite clear. In Matthew’s Gospel 25:35-40, Jesus tells us how the Son of Man will judge all the nations of the world when he sits upon his glorious throne. The sine qua non of salvation for Jesus are these: “…I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” The truth of the matter is this: the way you treat others is the way you treat Jesus himself because the Lord does not dwell in some remote and distant place, but rather in you and in those around you. Jesus is a lot closer to us than we think. St. Matthew tells us that the moment Jesus died on the cross, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom (Matt. 27:50-51), thereby exposing to all the innermost and most sacred area of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem which was accessible only to the Israelite high priest. The opening of the Holy of Holies communicates that God was no longer confined and restricted in a building, in Jerusalem’s Temple. God is rather now to be found in a new temple, the temple that is the Body of Christ— you and me. Each of us is the living stone that forms God’s temple. Each of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Therefore the way we treat each other is of supreme importance. Jesus wants us to begin to love others not as we love ourselves but more than we love ourselves. In this way, our love becomes more than merely human. It becomes divine. It becomes a means for God to touch the heart of another person. That’s what the Lord Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel when he gives us the greatest commandment in the Bible: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” How does Jesus love us? On Good Friday, he shows us precisely how he loves us: “He bore our sins in his own body on the cross, so that free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds we have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). And on Easter Sunday, we see the result of his sacrificial love— victory over sin and death, the ushering in of a new era of mercy, grace, favor and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which finally brought healing and reconciliation to the human race.

Today we celebrate Mother’s Day. We celebrate the special and wonderful women who participated in God’s miracle of creation in a unique and significant way. When it comes to divine and sacrificial love, mothers have a lot to teach us about it than everyone on the planet. Bringing forth new life generates in mothers a strong capacity to die to self. Nine months of physical discomfort, the excruciating pain and danger of labor and childbirth, the sleepless nights, several months of breast-feeding their baby, changing the diapers, cleaning the baby’s mess, giving their entire life to protect, loving her child more than she loves herself etc bear testimony that sacrificial love is possible. A mother continues to love even when she gets no love in return. That kind of love is sacrificial and redemptive. So, in our mothers, we see the greatest commandment in the Bible in full display. We see it in action. Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Mothers teach us that each of us has the capacity to love totally, sacrificially, unreservedly.  

Stay Rooted And Connected To The Vine

Stay Rooted And Connected To The Vine

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B

St. Mark Catholic Church, St. Paul, MN

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Sisters and brothers, Jesus is not simply an inspiring teacher. He is not one among the many. He should not be paired with religious figures like Mohammed or Buddha or Confucius. Jesus is distinct and distinctive. Why? Because throughout his life and ministry, Jesus spoke and acted in the very person of God. It is the reason why he compels a choice like no other religious founder or philosopher. He says you are either with me or against me (Matt. 12:30). He says “The Father and I are one” (Jn. 10:30). Unlike other religious and philosophical figures, Jesus forgave sins, raised the dead, healed many of their infirmities, rebuked and expelled unclean spirits from possessed people. No other religious founder acted and spoke the way Jesus did. In today’s Gospel, we read one of Jesus’ “I AM” statements: “I am the true vine.” As soon as he calls himself the true vine he says we are the branches. Those words bring to mind other statements like it in the New Testament: “Unless you eat my body and drink my blood you have no life in me” (Jn. 6:53); “Remain in me as I remain in you” (Jn. 15:4); “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).”

What do all these statements have in common? What do they point to together? The fact that Jesus is not simply an inspiring teacher to whom we listen. For the Christian faith, Jesus is a field of force in which we participate, a body in which we are cells and molecules, an ocean in which we swim. There is a living and ongoing relationship between Jesus and his followers. Jesus says that just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own, so neither can we unless we remain in him. To make the statement more dramatic, Jesus says, “…without me you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5). You know, many people till date admire Abraham Lincoln and consider him the greatest president of all time. Many people around the world admire Mahatma Gandhi. Many Catholics admire and venerate great saints like St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Padre Pio, St. Pope John Paul II etc. But no matter how much you admire Abraham Lincoln as a political figure, no matter how much you admire Gandhi as a moral hero, no matter how much you admire Padre Pio as a spiritual and saintly hero, you will never be tempted to say that without any of them you could not live. You cannot say unless you are grafted unto any of them, you can do nothing. But about himself Jesus says, “…without me you can do nothing.” 

Jesus is the Word made flesh. He is the very  embodiment of power by which God makes and sustains the world. What does that mean? It means that anything that exists, exists through him. The Gospel of John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All that exists came to be through him.” If Jesus is one teacher among the many, he wouldn’t make that claim. But if Jesus is in fact the Word by and through which all things exist, that means we find our very being in him. He is like the sunlight that illumines the day. If you take away the sun, you take away the light. He is the air that we breathe. If you take away the oxygen, we cease to exist. Our existence and life come from Jesus, the Word of God (Logos). That is why Jesus can say apart from me, you can do nothing; apart from me you can bear no fruit. 

What’s the implication of this? Every person on the planet— Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, Christian, non-believer is in a sense rooted in Christ whether they know it or not. On the question, what’s the point being a Christian if everyone is rooted in Jesus? Christians have been given the vast privilege of knowing Jesus in a personal way. As John tells us, the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us. The Word, the Logos by which all things exist, by which all science and philosophy operate is a person Christians have come to know as Jesus Christ. What every science, every philosophy, every other religion see vaguely, Christians radiantly and clearly see in Jesus Christ. He has a voice, we can hear him in a tone of human voice and he is leading us to eternal life. That is the difference it makes. In his first letter, St. John beautifully writes, “What we have seen with our eyes, what we have touched with our hands, the word of life, this is what we share with you.” Christians have been given the great privilege to participate, to share and be in a relationship with Jesus the Logos who through him and with him and in him all things came to be and stays in being. 

So, why in the world would someone wander away? Why in the world are you considering abandoning Christianity for something less? When people were walking away from Jesus when he first preached that his flesh is the real food and his blood the real drink, Jesus turned to his disciples and asked if they are going to leave him as well. Responding to him Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the word of  eternal life.” Peter could have said more elegantly, Lord, to whom shall we go, you are the Word of eternal life. If you decide to go away from Jesus Christ, no matter where you decide to go to, you are walking further away from the fullness of the Logos. If you are standing on the North pole, any step you take in any direction is a step away from that summit. If you go in search of truth, goodness, beauty, or love away from Jesus, it is a step down. It is a descension, not ascension. It is a declension away from the Summit, the terminus a quo and terminus ad quem of every human person. What today’s Gospel is telling us is to stay close to the fire. We Christians have been given this incomparable privilege of knowing personally, physically the Logos of God who is Jesus. And Jesus says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you.” Now do not look at it as magic words that if you ask for anything, ask for a luxury car in the name of Jesus you will get it. That’s not what it means. It means that if you stay rooted in Jesus, you will be aligned to God’s own mind. And whatever you ask for in that attitude, you will certainly receive, for you will ask only what God originally intended for you. I urge you therefore to stay close to the fire.