Trinity Sunday - June 7, 2009

We are having a Flea Market in the parish parking lot today and as I walk about I am hearing the same message - how the recession is touching each family, senior citizen, individual. It's a common theme today, it seems, every where one visits. A member of my own family was on pins and needles just a few weeks ago. After 30 years with the same company, he wasn't sure if the end had come. Thank God, it didn't but once there is a threat of your job becoming history, stress levels rise .

I had the unpleasant task of calling together our entire staff this past Thursday and notifying them that there would be no raises this year. I hated doing it. I have never done that in all my years as a pastor. I asked for their understanding. It was all I could ask for. I wasn;t happy giving the news and, to be sure, they were not happy receiving it.

I need to do some research. How did the Church handle the Great Depression? It seems that being a Church right now takes on new dimensions that pastoral ministers like me have never explored before. I heard about the Depression from my parents and grandparents. But I am not clear of the mission of the Church at that time. I don't think that we just keep on going "business as usual", at least I don't think so.

By-products of recessions are homeslessness, violence...and I could go on and on. You can l;ist them. So can I. Yet, as I think of this I am amazed at all the greed that we still see. Do recessions ultimately spring from greed? When one gets too much someone else does not have enough and there is enough in the world for everyone. Basic human wants are not satisfied because the school of hedonism teaches that pleasure is the principle good. There is a blindness to basic human needs.

The family of mankind must take a lesson from the family of God that we know as the Most Holy Trinity. The Trinitarian dynamic of love is the absolute opposite of the hedonistic dynamics of pleasure and selfishness. "Greater love..."is the message of the Trinity. It is the message of the Son, the second person of the Family of God. It is the Father whose love gave birth to humanity and it is the Spirit that continues to infuse life and grace into all of creation.

Look back on the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy.