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MOST HOLY TRINITY (B)

  1. St. Paul tells us – God dwells in inaccessible light. St. John tells us – no one has ever seen God; God the Son, the Word made flesh, yet ever at the Father’s side, he has revealed God. (That God dwells in inaccessible light does not mean that God is playing "hide and seek". It means that, this side of the grave, no one has the power or equipment with which to see God. God’s gift of grace leads us here and now to our faith in God. In heaven – which is grace gone home – we will see God by the great gift of glory – face to face as the Scriptures tell us.)

  2. On one occasion, during Our Lord’s public ministry, Jesus was speaking to his disciples about the One he called with great affection "my Father in heaven", the One Jesus taught his disciples to invoke in prayer – "Our Father who art in heaven". (Heaven does not mean here some distant land or place; heaven means wherever God is and the Catechism tells us: “God is everywhere”.) The apostle Philip was so taken by what he was hearing that he exclaimed with great enthusiasm – "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." Jesus replied – Philip, have I been with you all these days and you do not yet realize that whoever sees me sees the Father? (The Lord could very well say to us his present day followers – Whoever hears my scriptural words in the Church, hears the Father; whoever encounters me in the Eucharist, encounters not only me but the Father and the Holy Spirit as well.)

  3. Who can teach us about God? Saints and scholars tell us – "God himself is our authority about God. Otherwise, God is not really known. No one can have any knowledge of God unless God is the teacher. Not only is God our teacher, but we must have proper respect for God’s pedagogical methods. The great Eastern doctor of the Church – Gregory of Nazianzen – describes God’s pedagogy when he writes: “The Old Testament proclaimed God the Father openly and God the Son more obscurely. The New Testament manifested God the Son and suggested the divinity of God the Holy Spirit. Now the Spirit Himself dwells among us and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of Himself. For it was not safe when the God-head of the Father was not yet properly acknowledged, plainly to proclaim God the Son; nor when that of the Son was not yet received to burden us further (if I may use so bold an expression) with the Holy Spirit.” From these words of St. Gregory we can draw two conclusions about the mission of Christ in our human history: a) the Lord Jesus came among us to reveal to us his heavenly Father as our Father who so loved us that he gave us his only-begotten Son (cf. Romans, 5); b) the Lord’s task – on his return to glory – was to send us from the Father the "promise of the Father" – that is – the great gift which is the Holy Spirit.

  4. As far back as last December, and beginning with the Advent Liturgy, we have been focusing our thoughts and prayers on those events in history which constitute our faith: the birth of Christ, the public ministry of Christ, Christ’s death, his resurrection, his glorious Ascension – the coming of the Holy Spirit. By reflecting on these events, these ways God shows himself in history, we gain some insight into the all-holy mystery which is God the Trinity. Like the apostle Philip, we begin to see the Father. This is the point of the prayer with which we began our liturgy this morning. We said to God our Father – “You sent your Word, your Son, to bring us truth; you sent us the Holy Spirit to make us holy; through them – your Son and your Holy Spirit – we come to grasp something of the mystery of your life.” Theologians like to say – God is as God shows himself in salvation history; and God has shown himself at Christmas and Easter through his own divine Son, and has shown himself at Pentecost through the gift of the Spirit. In the light of this prayer we can understand why one early Christian writer spoke of Son and Spirit as the Father’s two hands – meaning – that the Father so loved the world that he sent us his Son as our redeemer, and that the risen Christ so loved the Father and us, his people, that he gave us the Spirit "as his first gift to those who believe, to complete Christ’s work on earth and bring us the fullness of grace". This reminds us – does it not? – that our human lives, wonderful in God’s creating designs, are now given a share in God’s own divine life – a life that has its origins in God the Father and has been brought to earth through God the Son and becomes our interior, personal possession by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. This is why our Trinity Sunday liturgy shouts out with great joy – "Blessed be God the Father and God’s only-begotten Son and their Holy Spirit – for God has shown how much he loves us."

  5. The purpose of the Trinity Sunday liturgy is not to make us scholars of the Trinity but rather to urge us to prayer, to worship, to treasure our sharing in Trinitarian life, to the practice of virtue, to growth in faith and hope and love. Does not St. John tell us – “God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God in him”? Does not St. John also tell us – “Whoever does not know love, does not know God”?

  6. As we celebrate Trinity Sunday we must be mindful of the world in which we do our celebrating. The writer Walker Percy, in his little volume “Lost in the Cosmos” (cited by John Kavanaugh), mused ironically about the strange fate of post-moderns who spend billions on space stations attentively listening for an extraterrestrial blip that might speak to us. All the while these post-moderns are more than sheepish about the possibility of a personal God who loves us and reveals himself to us; and they are positively skeptical about whether this God has anything important to say to us.

  7. Trinity Sunday provides a wonderful opportunity to remember all the marvelous things our three-Personed God has been doing for us in the course of the liturgical year from Advent to Pentecost. God has been pouring his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us. Pentecost also provides us with the opportunity to think ahead throughout the weeks that follow Pentecost – How can we best live in our everyday lives the loves that the Easter Mysteries have brought to be? To quote a Byzantine antiphon – “We have seen the true Light; we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true faith; we adore the indivisible Trinity who has saved us.”