Sermons
June 11, 2017
Today, on Trinity Sunday, we celebrate the wonder of relationships. Relationships exists even in God. From our vi-sion of God as Trinity - God as relational - we are reminded that we are "all connected" as a community of faith, hope and love. We want to form, we want to become a community that hopes to be one family, a community that brings rich and poor together, a community that works for justice in the world. We have been created with a desire for mutual and loving relationships. We are invited to work together in order to create healthy relationships between all of God’s people: relationships be-tween individuals and also between nations and groups, relationships of mutual respect and collaboration, relation-ships leading toward justice and peace. In some ways today's scriptures for Trinity Sunday are a story of discovery: the discovery of God, the discovery of who God is, what God is like and what God offers to us. 1st reading: [Exodus 34,4-6.8-9] On the mountain, Moses finds a God with whom he can converse in some way. Moses finds a God with whom it feels good to talk, a God with whom it feels good to walk together. Moses asks this God to journey with all the people. Again and again, in the scriptures we discover a God of relationships. God is more than “totally other”. We discover a God traveling with us and with the whole community. Our God is a social God -- a God who is concerned with our world and its people. 2nd reading [2 Corinthians 13,11-13] The second reading reminds us that the relationship that exists within God also mirrors the relationship that should exist within us as a human community. The relationship within God – we call it the “trinity” --is a relationship of mutuali-ty and support, a relationship of love and respect. And we are invited to imitate it. In the 1920s, a theologian even said that the Trinity is a model for democracy, that modern Western democracies would be impossible without the theological concept of trinity. I was impressed by this Erik Peterson (1890-1960). He also said that strict monotheism leads necessarily to dictatorship and tyranny and totalitarianism. Whereas all divine persons have the same dignity, the same love and the same power. Gospel [John 3,16-18] Jesus reminds us in the gospel that God travels with us not to condemn but to love – God travels with us to be of help to all of us. Our teaching about God and the great mystery of God is a social teaching. As God is a social be-ing, so are we. Any good theology of God has social implications. It calls us to social values. Our religious faith in-volves a community of mutual support and discovery. It involves a set of values that we share in common. Values that call us to share with each other. Therefore, we are concerned with the issues of the world and everyday life. We are concerned with justice and peace. As friends of Jesus, we focus on the common good, we do not want to ex-clude anybody. We have hope in the midst of all the problems and challenges of the world. In this way the Trinity is a model for how we live, of how we love, for how we change the world.
Fr. Wolfgang Felber, SJ
May 28, 2017
Prayer is an essential expression of our relationship with God. Today’s reading teaches us a lot about prayer. We see the apostles with Mary and other women disciples at prayer to ask for the coming of the promised Spirit. And we listen to the great prayer of Jesus at the last supper shortly before his passion and death. The readings put us the question what the place of prayer is in our own life. How much time and attention do we give to prayer? Jesus asked his friends to pray always. Only a few saints have reached such closeness to God. We should at least try to pray at important moments. The most important moment during the week is surely the Eucharist that we are about to celebrate. It is the great prayer of thanksgiving of the Church. As the priest lifts up to heaven the symbols of bread and wine, we bring ourselves and our lives before God in praise of the Lord, the God of all creation. There are at least three moments every day that naturally lend themselves to prayer. At the beginning of each day before the bustle of daily activities claims all our attention we could dedicate the day to God and ask His blessing. And the end of the day, when the TV is switched off, the kids are in bed and our brains begins to wind down we could pass our day in review, become aware of the little signs of God’s love and drift into sleep with a heart-felt “Thank you Lord.” And then there are the common meals, these sacred moments of sharing food and friendship. It is such a loss that table prayers have virtually vanished from Christian practise. They could be a moment during the day to remember that food does not come just from the supermarket, but in the last resort is gift of God’s creation for us. As we grow into a discipline to give to God key moments of the day, we might also find ourselves sometimes praying spontaneously at critical moments during the day: before an exam, when we have problems with a difficult person or seem stressed by the overload of work. Prayer thus becomes slowly a habit. The way we send spontaneously a photo or a whatsup message to friends about an interesting happening we naturally communicate with the One who promised to be always with us. We do not even have to type it in. A word about a special form of prayer one might call: prayer of discernment or prayer of decision. This is what the apostles did when Jesus was gone from them. They were in a difficult situation. Jesus had given them the mission to make the whole world his disciples and yet he had not left them with a work-programme how to go about it. He had simply told them to wait and to pray for the Spirit. One element in making wise decisions is to wait for the right moment. Jesus often said: My time has not yet come. In todays Gospel, he said at last: My hour has come. He waited for a sign from his Father. Mature decisions are like a ripe fruit that falls from the tree. When you pick it too early, it is still sour. When you wait for too long, it has started rotting. We have to learn to wait for God’s time. The other element in a decision-making process is prayer. It is not good to take decisions when we are emotionally upset. We need to wait that our heart is at peace. Prayer leads to peace. To make a good decision we have to gain inner freedom, a disposition where we put gently aside our natural preferences and become open to God’s will, whatever that entails. Then, we need to use our intelligence and weigh the reasons for and against each option. Finally, in prayer we put the decision we need to take before God and ask him to show us what He wants from us. God usually does not send us messages. The sign of the direction in which God calls us is a deep sense of inner peace.
Fr. Wolfgang Schonecke, MAfr
May 21, 2017
Everybody is rejoicing today, because it is your First Holy Communion Day – a very special day for the ten of you here in the first row. You have been waiting for receiving the Holy Communion like your parents and older siblings had done before you. You have prepared yourselves intensively. I am convinced your catechists were a good and reliable help for you on your way. Today, as every Sunday, we come together here in the All Saints church as a congregation, like a family, to take part in a meal: share a loaf of bread and a cup of wine. In just a few moments, the bread and wine we offer to God will be offered back to us as the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. We will be invited to eat at His table like His friends were invited to eat with Jesus 2000 years ago. Today marks the first time you will come and eat, yet hopefully it will not be the last time. As the years go by and you grow into a teenager and then adulthood, the Eucharist, this common meal, this Sunday gathering can become an essential part of your growth. The many challenges you will face require a strong faith in Jesus’ love and friendship for you. The food that Jesus gives us helps us grow strong in love of God, and in the love of others such as parents, siblings, teachers, relatives, and friends. The most important message that Jesus says to us through the Eucharist is that God loves us and cares for us – without condition! God will never abandon us. When we come to God’s house and eat at God’s table, God’s love for us is made visible time and again, at every Eucharist. God’s love is so strong and deep that God is ever faithful to our needs. As God loves you with an unlimited love, God desires you to love and help others. This is not always easy. Many times in school, we don’t feel like being kind or helping others. We may not feel well: the test didn’t turn out as well as we expected; someone has hurt us and we are angry; maybe we have even been punished unfairly; perhaps we just want someone to listen to our side of the story. Yet we can still love and help others. This friendship with Jesus, symbolized in the Body and Blood of Jesus, can give us the strength to be kind to others even when we don’t feel like it. When you look at the life of Jesus, you see that many times Jesus was tired and hurt by others, yet he continued to help those who were in need; Jesus was punished unfairly, yet he never sought hurting others in return. He wanted to forgive them and love them. We are asked to do the same, just like Jesus. Not only do we take notice today of you boys and girls who will receive their first Holy Communion. We take notice and give thanks for all your families and friends and your catechists who are with us this morning. We are truly God’s family nourished by God’s love in the Eucharist. Parents, you are entrusted with the sacred vocation of continually nourishing your son or daughter in God’s way. Today you are asked to dedicate yourselves again to this mission by your reception of the Eucharist. In the many trials of your life - think back and remember if you have been sustained by the Eucharist, where you have been sustained by your friendship to Jesus, to God. Think back and remember if you found a way to express your friendship with God? Maybe by participating in the Eucharist? Today you will receive the Eucharist with your child. The family is the ‘little church’ which is empowered to help build up the Kingdom of God. Finally, to all of you who are to receive your first Holy Commu¬nion, there are three words that I want you all to pray many times as you receive Jesus in the Eucharist today. They are the three words that sum up everything we do at Mass: “Thank you, Jesus” ... for giving us your life, and for continuing to give us your life in the Eucharist. I ask you all to say in your hearts as you make your first Holy Communion, “Thank you, Jesus.” When the excitement of the day is all over, and you've opened your cards and gifts, and had a party and packed your clothes away and when you climb into bed tonight, remember this morning, and tell Jesus you love Him, and ask Him to bless your Mom and Dad, your sisters and brothers, your Grandmothers and Grandfathers, your aunts and uncles and cousins and friends and teachers and catechists. And be assured: you are important to Jesus now and always: God loves you and so do all of us!
Fr. Wolfgang Felber, SJ