We are now into our second week of Phase III of reopening. Drive-In Masses on Saturdays at 5:00PM and the Livestreamed Mass is at 10:00. As always, you can catch the video on the St. Pat’s Facebook page and our YouTube channel. Here’s the homily.
I’ve always been puzzled by those on either side of the argument who say that faith and reason are somehow opposed to one another. I think the folks at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Vatican Observatory would share this puzzlement. The two are not opposed. They simply answer different questions.
They also employ different methods of inquiry to discern the truth. By and large, science limits itself to the physical, natural universe and seeks understanding by approaching it as a problem to be solved, using the scientific method. I’ve mentioned Prof. Michio Kaku, a really smart guy who is one of the pioneers of ‘string theory.’ He is fond of describing it as a “theory of everything.” By this, I assume he means everything in the physical, natural universe. As far as it goes, science is really good at what it does. By observing, asking questions, hypothesizing, predicting, testing and iterating (making new hypotheses and predictions), science has given us the internal combustion engine, solar power, nuclear medicine, and hopefully soon, a treatment and vaccine to the coronavirus, just to name a few.
But even the best scientists will admit that science has its limits. There are just certain things it is not designed to explain. For example, let’s talk about relationships between persons; let’s talk about love. While there have been some interesting studies by the behavioral sciences which describe certain characteristics about persons who are in love, a comprehensive scientific explanation of love simply does not lend itself to analytic scientific inquiry. It remains, appropriately so, a “mystery.” Don’t believe me? Try this little experiment at home. Go to your spouse or loved and say,
“You know, I’ve done the research and I’ve determined that I’ve got you figured out. I know everything about you. I know your history. I know what you like, what you dislike, your favorite color, your favorite foods. There is nothing about you that is hidden from me.
See how far you get.
Or instead you might say, “You know after all these years, you still amaze me.”
Herein lies the key. When we approach the phenomenon of relationship between persons, we can do so as problem to be solved, or mystery to be lived. If we do so as “problem to be solved” as we would for the physical, natural universe, we are bound to fail because we are using the wrong tool for the job.
However, if we do so as “mystery to be lived,” then we enter into a different level of inquiry, we move “beyond the natural” and into the “super-natural.” Then we can make some headway.
When we talk about “mystery” in this sense of relationship with the other we are referring to a “reality larger than yourself of which you are a part, and which is a part of you.” A first good example is your family, such as it is. Think about it. You don’t “solve” your family. You are a part of your family; and genetically, psychologically, sociologically, spiritually your family is literally a part of you.
Now let’s bump that up a notch. Let’s talk about larger groups of relationships between persons—your neighborhood, your school, your nation, even the Church. These are realities bigger than any of us, of which we are a part, and which are a part of each of us in all the ways I have mentioned.
Now, let’s talk about the mystery that is God. God is certainly a reality bigger than all of us. We Christians understand the reality of God, not as something to be proved, but as the perfect relationship between persons. The terms that have been given to us by Christ are relational. The Father and the Son love each other eternally, and that relationship itself is what we call the Holy Spirit. God is love.
The amazing thing is that we are invited into the very relationship that is God.
Think about a couple you know who have a great marriage. Now think about the love between the husband and wife,
This relationship is exclusive to them, but they can invite others into that circle.
Have you ever been invited over to their house for dinner?
Have they ever shared their table with you at Christmas, Easter, birthdays,
Do neighborhood kids hang out at their house with their own children?
Now think about the love between God the Father and God the Son. Just like a married couple can invite us into the circle of their own relationship, so too we have been invited into the relationship between them. We receive the Gift of the Holy Spirit. This is not just intellectual, it is personal, involving our whole person – mind, body and spirit. In the context of this relationship, we truly enter into a Holy Communion with the Divine.
It is this union with God at the level of our very being that makes Christianity unique.
We are united in a communion of life and love with the God who perfect relationship itself.
It is in the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries, that our Communion with God is complete.
This is the great invitation of grace.
This is the dignity that has been won for us when Christ reconciled all things to the Father in his Passion, Death and Resurrection
This is the hope which we proclaim to the world
And our destiny in the life to come.