Do you have it in you? Homily for Sunday, September 7, 2025

Do you have it in you? Being a Christian, a real Christian, requires us to recognize that we need God’s grace. And we need to realize that God is both imminent and transcendent. Readings for Today.

Do you have it in you?

Do you have it in you? Are you ready for a challenge? Are you willing to make your life a paradoxical mix of strength and surrender? Deep inside you do you have the character to be dedicated to be the type of person that can become extraordinary?

These questions are underneath the readings for today. Questions of meaning and purpose. Questions of identity. Who are we? And who is God?

God is challenging to figure out. On the one hand, close to us. Loving us. Caring for us. Forgiving us. Theologically, we call this quality of God immanence. And we see the immanent God in the second story of creation in the Book of Genesis. God walks with Adam in the garden. God speaks with Adam. 

The interesting thing about describing God as imminent is the paradox of how it influences our perception of God. It can be the case we do not believe in God’s love for us. We do not value the gifts and talents God has given to us. 

It becomes important for us to ask just what we believe about ourselves. Do you know you are lovable? Do you know that you are filled with goodness you can access? That you have talents you did not earn, talents that became possible because God first placed them in you?

Do you really believe the sentence I have said in homilies before? It is good that you exist. It is good that you exist. And existence is not just taking up space. Our existence is proof that God loves is. For if God did not love us, we simply would not exist. God’s love for us is what holds us in existence.

But there are other times when we think about Jesus that we make him a buddy, not God. The first story of creation reminds us that God is all-powerful. God speaks and things are created. God creates us differently, however. God creates us in his image and likeness. 

God’s image and likeness. But we are not God. At our best we are simply reflections of God. For when God sees us, it is as if God is looking in a mirror. 

It is this quality of God that we call transcendence. God has the power to create us in love because he is so much more than we are. God is infinite and eternal. Compared to God we are small. We know very little. 

And most important, we cannot save ourselves. We are broken. We are sinful. We need a savior, one so strong that he can save us. One whose infinite love took on our sinfulness by dying on the cross. One whose life, death and resurrection and ascension into heaven shows us the way.

God is both imminent and transcendent. Close enough to love us unconditionally, yet powerful enough to save us. Strong yet gentle. Challenging and supportive. But how can this be?

Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the LORD intends? A professor who was teaching me about Saint Thomas Aquinas used an example that helps us to understand how limited our knowledge is, especially as it pertains to our knowledge of the spiritual world.

While his example concerned angels, the example he used is even more appropriate for God. When we consider angel’s knowledge of the spiritual world, think bright shining sun. And when you consider our knowledge of the spiritual world, think dim 20-watt bulb.

And scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven, who can search them out? Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high?

Because our knowledge of God is limited, we find it hard to recognize that God is both close to us, while at the same time is demanding of us. As a result, we tend to emphasize one quality of God over the other. 

There are times in the Church where we make God too distant. This was true during the period of Jansenism in the Church, a heresy ultimately condemned, when the flesh was seen as evil. Worse yet, we were incapable of doing even the slightest good thing.

But we also have had periods where in emphasizing the closeness and love of God we reduce God to a teddy bear. While it is true that God loves us, God’s love becomes something so small as to never challenge us. While we might acknowledge we sin, we see God as a “Get out of Jail Free Card”. God will always forgive us, regardless of whether we seek conversion.

How is it we solve the conundrum of God? How is it that we, here on earth, are able to recognize both the imminence and transcendence of God? Fortunately for us, it is God who is the way. We recognize the imminence and transcendence of God here, at Mass.

It is easier to experience the imminence of God here at Mass, because we can see and touch those around us. Because we are all material, and as humans we are very good at knowing the material, we can see in those around us reflections of God’s love.

But it is also the case that we can see the transcendence of God. In fact, in a world filled with brokenness, it is the transcendence of God that we crave the most. We want to know that God is powerful enough to save us. 

That is why Mass has infinite and transcendent value even if the priest celebrates alone. That is why the primary and most important reason we come to Mass is to worship God. And it is why Jesus tells us in the gospel that we must love God more than parents, spouses, friends, or even Dominican friars. 

To be a disciple demands we first recognize God’s love for us. To be a disciple demands that only God can save us. To be a disciple who recognizes that those we love are only possible to love because of God. God creates our friends and family and enables us to love them and them to love us.Because of the transcendence of God, we genuflect to the tabernacle. Because of the transcendence of God, we bow to the altar. Because of the transcendence of God, we kneel at the consecration. And because of the transcendence of God, we are able to be saved and to live forever with God.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update. You can subscribe to our podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

About Author