Holy Trinity Sunday

A couple approached me after the 10 o’clock Mass last Sunday. They introduced themselves and said they had enjoyed my homily. They appreciated the points I made about being open to the coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives and my reflections on some of the attitudes we can have that block our openness to the Spirit’s coming. After their compliments, the man stated that he is a Permanent Deacon in the Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama, and he and his wife were visiting Cape Cod for a wedding. The Deacon admitted he found preaching about the Holy Spirit difficult. Then he added, “You know next week is even more challenging. Preaching on Trinity Sunday is the toughest assignment of the year.” I told him I agreed. 

Yes, explaining an unexplainable mystery of our faith is a daunting task, one with which even great theologians like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas struggled. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines the Trinity as a basic truth of Christianity. The Trinity is our belief that we are a people saved by God, through Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the doctrinal formulation about the nature of God as the source of all other mysteries of the faith. 

Okay, okay, I already see your eyes glazing over and your heads beginning to bob. How can one God also be three persons? It defies logic, and trying to explain a mystery is fruitless. Preaching on Holy Trinity Sunday is the most challenging day of the year. Luckily the purpose of faith isn’t to solve an equation but to encourage you to be in a relationship with an ever-loving God who reveals God’s self to a world in incredibly unexpected ways. 

Several years ago, the Holy Spirit inspired me. The Spirit helped me to recognize that the point of preaching on Holy Trinity Sunday wasn’t to explain the unexplainable. It was to acknowledge that the Christian concept of God is unique. We believe God is a community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three persons, co-equal, co-eternal, and indivisible. None of these persons outrank the other. The three persons all work together in unison to bring mercy, graciousness, kindness, and fidelity into the world. Our God is a community, so my preaching on Holy Trinity Sunday should focus on evaluating how our community here at Holy Redeemer reflects the presence of God in Chatham.

We have just completed the Easter Season. During Easter, the first reading at Mass came from the book of the Bible known as the Acts of the Apostles. Acts is the story of how the Apostles and disciples grew as a church and succeeded because they were a community of faith living out their belief in a God who is community. Acts tells us of a unified community that shared the same desires of the heart; they were all on the same wavelength. That focus included even their money and possessions. This sense of community helped them love and care for each other. Other people saw how they loved each other and wanted to feel the same way, so they too became part of the Christian community. Today, we ask ourselves, how is Holy Redeemer living up to that model? How can we do a better job? 

Jesus was all about establishing relationships. Throughout His ministry, He reached out to people on the margins of society. Jesus wasn’t afraid to be in contact with people that others tried to shun. He reached out to the sick, even lepers. Jesus eats with tax collectors and prostitutes. He came into contact with pagans who didn’t believe in the One True God. Jesus kept no one away from feeling welcomed by Him. He even accepted the religious authorities who tried to entrap Him. 

Several years ago, Holy Redeemer adopted the mission statement "Living in faith, Growing in faith, Sharing in faith." We developed a vision statement to help us put that mission into practice. We said we want to be a community where “Through a culture of excellence in worship, we are a Christ-centered welcoming parish dedicated to life-long faith formation, evangelization, social works of justice, and community outreach that strengthen the Catholic Church on the Lower Cape. Through gifts of time, talent, and treasure, we embrace all people as brothers and sisters.”

Our mission here at Holy Redeemer is to do for others what Jesus has done for us. It is to reach out to others and help them feel the same impact in their lives that Jesus has in our lives. Recently, I read a great insight about the Church. The writer pointed out that the Church is the only organization that exists for its non-members. Let me repeat that. "The Church is the only organization in the world that exists for its non-members." This church isn’t here to be a clubhouse for Catholics. The purpose of this church is to be a place for everyone who seeks a relationship with God, who desires to hear the Scriptures preached, receive God’s Grace in the Sacraments, and learn to be disciples who take Jesus’ Good News into the world. The church is a disciple’s training grounds. That is something we may have lost sight of or never even known.

Our vision for Holy Redeemer Parish has to be for us to be the best place for growth as disciples of Jesus that we can be. A vision is the desire to look at the horizon and make a plan to get there. A vision believes in future possibilities we want to achieve. Vision is never satisfied because we constantly see more and greater opportunities ahead that call us to grow deeper and wider. Over the last few years, our parish has been working on the vision of being a parish filled with people who are partnering to reach people not connected to God and invite them to establish a relationship with Jesus. We haven’t gotten there quite yet; we have faced setbacks, but we are working on it and moving forward because that is our mission. 

Since our mission is to do for others what Jesus has done for us, part of our vision has to be to evaluate our building. We know that the Church isn’t a building but a community, but a building is still important because we need a welcoming, hospitable place to gather to learn to be better disciples. Our church building needs to be accessible to all.

Before I came to be pastor here at Holy Redeemer just short of five years ago, initial plans were being made for renovations to this church. We set those plans aside for a while and were about to re-evaluate them when Covid struck. Now we are reviving those plans. We can never wait for the perfect time for a project. Sometimes we just need to set our minds to get it done. Recently, Bishop Da Cunha permitted the parish to undertake a renovation project. It is a modest one.

The focus of the project is a new elevator. The chair lift we have at the back of the church is not adequate. To accommodate the elevator, we will build a new thirty-foot by thirty-foot addition to the right of the sanctuary. The addition will include a new sacristy, a more prominent side entrance to the church and Parish Center, and additional seating. A prominent stain-glass window will grace the side of the addition facing Old Harbor Road, so passers-by will recognize this is a church. The stain-glass window will be one repurposed from a church that has been closed. 

Other renovations will be the construction of a restroom in the location of the present chair lift. Renovations will remove walls to enlarge the sanctuary and create a space for the organ and choir to face the congregation. We will replace the pews with new reconfigured ones, put down new floor covering and make other cosmetic updates. 

Anyone who has done renovations knows it is hard to stop once you start. Building code requirements and other recent mandates require updating some building systems, and we need to meet handicapped accessibility and fire code requirements. To do that, we need to construct additional restrooms in the Parish Hall, move the present kitchen and carry out other necessary overhauls. If funds allow, we also plan to renew our parking lot with a new entrance/exit directly from Old Harbor Road. 

On the weekend of June 25/26, we will hold information meetings after each weekend Mass. The project’s architect, Tom Palanza, will be present and provide models and drawings of the project design. I feel you will be very pleased with the design. Everyone who has seen it so far has become excited about the project. The meeting will also be an opportunity for parishioners to offer design changes if they would like. 

The estimated cost of these updates is $3M. Bishop DaChuna is permitting us to take $1.5 from parish savings. The $525,000 the parish looks to receive from the recent sale of land in S. Chatham will be applied to our plan. The final $1,000,000 of the project’s cost we anticipate raising in a Capital Campaign taking place later this summer. 

This project is a challenging one, and it will require our generosity and prayer. Right now, it feels as daunting to me as preaching on the Holy Trinity. If we recognize we are a community with the vision to grow in faith and the desire to help others succeed in theirs, we will make our plans come true. We will make our church even more beautiful and accessible to all who want to develop a closer relationship with Jesus as his faithful disciples. Please remember this renovation project isn’t one we have to do, but one we get to do.