Here is my homily for this weekend. God bless each of you!
Trinity Sunday, Cycle B
May 30/31, 2015
Dt. 4: 32-34, 39-40; Rom 8:14-17; Mt 28: 16-20
The central mystery of our Christian faith is the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. God, the only God, the one God, who is three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is the Trinity, and the revelation of the Trinity by God himself through the life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit that is the core of all we believe as Catholic Christians.
God is one, one God, the only God, infinitely perfect, infinitely pure, infinitely just, eternal, the complete Truth, without division or defect, God without beginning or end, who knows all, understands all, God who is pure Love. He is incomparable. He has no equal. He is everywhere at all times. He is brilliantly beautiful. This is the same God of whom Moses spoke in our first reading today:
Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?This is why you must now know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and the earth below and there is no other.
Yet, God is three as we heard in our second reading from St. Paul, and in our Gospel today. For St. Paul told us that God the Spirit enlightens us to recognize God the Father, Abba, and glorifies us in God the Son, Jesus; and Jesus told his disciples in the Gospel to go and baptize in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Notice he said name not names. One God, three Persons.
Yes, one God, three divine Persons. One divine nature, one divine will, all three persons acting together as one divine Being.
This God, who is both One and Three, and possesses all these attributes is the same God who dwells in you by the grace of your baptism. He is the same God who, as Moses said, now calls you to live your lives always aware of this relationship you have with Him, always conscious that wherever you are, whatever you do, God is there, the mighty eternal amazingly beautiful and awesome and powerful God, is right there each and every moment telling you to not be afraid to do what He asks and demands.
We are called into the relationship with the Trinity. This is what we learn if we contemplate the Holy Trinity. We are called into a relationship , an intimate relationship with God himself! God never leaves us alone and we cannot flee him. This is why we so very much need each other and the Church, why we need family, why we need God. We were created to be in relationship with God, the triune God, who is himself a perfect relationship of Father, Son and Spirit.
Why is it today more and more of us think we do not need to be in Church, we don’t need each other to know God or worship Him? We cannot live in love, or thrive in life, without each other to sustain each other and to love each other. Just as God the Father never does anything without God the Son and God the Spirit, for indeed they, though three Persons are one God and act in complete unity, so too we must not act as lone rangers in our lives. We must not live as if we are only individuals and relate only to ourselves. No, we are one with each other. We desperately need each other. We must act together as on Body in Jesus Christ.
Just as the Father is always and completely a father to us, always and at each moment fathering us, so too the Son is always one with us in our human struggles to teach us how to be united to him and to follow him as true sons and daughters of God, and so too the Spirit, sent by the Father and the Son into our lives at baptism and confirmation, draws us up into the love who is God and enables us to be in relationship with the very nature of God.
Yes, the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central Christian mystery. No one can understand it with reason alone. Only God knows himself as he is. We only know what he has revealed to us about him, and he has revealed to us that he is One God in three divine Persons. Not only that, but he has sent the Spirit into our lives to draw us up into an intimate relationship with him. Only Divine Love could draw us into this relationship with the Trinity, because without God’s love in the Spirit we would be far too afraid to come close. We would hide in fear. But God sends us his love in the power of the Holy Spirit who always says to us, “Be not afraid!”
We are to live in these mysteries. Our lives are to be swallowed up, you might say, by the Holy Trinity. Our lives are to become one with God.
May God the Father protect you!
May God the Son walk with you!
May God the Holy Spirit inspire you to newness of life!
May the blessings of God remain with you always!
