God's wonderful plan for human life
Ex 34: 4-9; Dn 3: 52-6; 2 Cor 13: 11-13; Jn 3: 16-18

Matthew Habiger
Trinity Sunday
26 May 02
Reproduced with Permission

This is Trinity Sunday. Following Ascension Thursday and Pentecost, it brings together the involvement of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in our salvation. Remember: all three persons of the Blessed Trinity are involved with us, and we with them.

God is the most profound of all mysteries. He is the creator of the entire universe, all that exists. He created all the angels. He created the human race, beginning with our first parents, Adam and Eve. God is one. Christianity is a monotheism, not a polytheism. But within the one Godhead there are three persons. Three persons in one God. In his full grandeur and complexity, God is inaccessible to our limited vision and our poor understanding. But God has given us ways and means of knowing something about Him. The Father sent His Son among us as one of us. Jesus, in turn, taught us about the Father. And now the Holy Spirit helps us understand the full meaning of Jesus' words.

One very good way to explain the Holy Trinity today is to think of a communion of persons. We know something about what it means to enter into a communion with another person. We make the gift of ourselves to a friend, and accept the gift of themselves to us. There is a sharing of hearts, of minds, of wills, of our very person. Marriage, as God designed it, is the clearest example of this: the husband makes the total gift of himself to his spouse. She accepts his gift, and then offers the total gift of herself to him. And he receives her, appreciating the rich significance of the gift of her person to him: a communion of persons.

Apply this now to God. Among the three persons of God, there is a total communion of love and life. The love of the Father and the Son issues forth in the person of the Holy Spirit. The love, life and creative energy among these three divine persons becomes one dynamic communion, one God: a communion of three persons in one God.

The Vatican II document, Gaudium et spes #24, speaks about God's design for the communitarian nature of the human vocation: "The Lord Jesus, when praying to the Father 'that they may all be one É even as we are one' (Jn 17:21-2), has opened up new horizons closed to human reason by indicating that there is a certain similarity between the union existing among the divine persons and the union of God's children in truth and love. It follows, then, that if human beings are the only creatures on earth that God has wanted for their own sake, they can fully discover their true selves only in sincere self-giving" (GS 24).

My brothers and sisters, I want to relate this "communion of persons," and this "making the gift of self" to our situation in these times. The recent sex scandals by some clergy is forcing us to re-examine God's plan for us as bodied persons. We recall that God alone designed human nature, and that He alone designs the moral order. He alone determines what is right and what is wrong.

I am going to talk about God's plan for human love and life, about chastity, and about violations against God's plan, especially contraception and sterilization. You probably have not heard these topics discussed before from this pulpit, or for that matter from other pulpits. And for that we priests are guilty in the negligence of our duty to teach clearly God's plan for human love and human life. I ask you now to forgive us our negligence in performing our duties.

This is a time for all of us to return to the basics about our sexuality, about the fact that we are bodied persons. The natural attraction between a man and a woman (Adam and Eve), the desire to become "one flesh" is good and noble. But this desire must be expressed according to God's design for human love and life. The only proper place for sex is in marriage. Outside of marriage sex is wrong and sinful. It violates God's plan for human love. Similarly, within marriage, God also has a plan. That plan calls for making the total gift of self from one spouse to another, a total sharing of one's self with one's spouse, a communion of persons. This sharing includes our fertility. Sex and fertility go together. We cannot hold back part of the gift and pretend we are giving and receiving the full gift of self.

When we reflect upon the nature of conjugal love, we soon realize that it is both unitive (love-giving) and procreative (life-giving). True love is always life-giving in one way or another. I am a celibate, but my love for you and for others is always life-giving. Contraception and sterilization always go wrong by withdrawing the total gift of self, by attacking the goodness of our fertility and considering it something evil to be destroyed, by refusing to be open to the gift of a new life.

The encyclical Humanae Vitae predicted the tragic results of widespread contraception: a weakening of moral discipline; a trivialization of human sexuality; the demeaning of women; marital infidelity; state sponsored programs of population control; the introduction of legalized abortion and euthanasia, the idea of unlimited dominion over one's body and life as seen now in genetic manipulation and embryo experimentation.

The teaching of Humanae Vitae honors married love, promotes the dignity of women, and helps couples grow in understanding the truth of their particular path to holiness. It is also a response to contemporary society's temptation to reduce life to a commodity.

My brothers and sisters, on this feast of the Blessed Trinity, I encourage you to learn more about God's wonderful plan for human life and human love, about marriage and family. Learn why men and women are the only creatures on earth God wanted for their own sake, and why we can fully discover our true selves only in sincere self-giving.

I encourage you to get a copy of Humanae Vitae and study it. It is a very clear statement of God's plan for human life and human love. I encourage you to learn about natural family planning (NFP), God's way and nature's way of exercising responsible parenthood. NFP helps couples discover something of the richness of their being bodied persons, made "in the image and likeness of God."

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