Knowing, praying and imitating the Trinity

Homily for Trinity Sunday Year C 2016

Proverbs 8:22-31, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15

Introduction

Unlike Christmas and Easter, today’s feast of the Holy Trinity is not that exciting.  The Trinity, one God in three persons; that seems so abstract, so theoretical, something only for theologians and not for the ordinary Catholic.

Many analogies have been tried, to explain how there can be three persons in one God: St. Patrick used the three-leafed shamrock, St. Ignatius used the musical chord which has three notes, and modern theologians use the image of water, which can assume three forms of steam, ice and liquid.

But all these images fall short; they don't really leave us understanding the Trinity any better.  For God is a mystery whom the human mind can never fully grasp. That is why in some Eastern religions, before people pray in front of a statue representing God, they apologise for having to pray to him in that form, when in fact he is formless and he is everywhere.  They understand that the human mind is limited in its ability to grasp God completely. 

Scripture and Theology

And yet we don't give up.  While we don't know everything about God, we know something.  Pope Benedict suggests that the love in a family is the best analogy for the Trinity.  He says that the family a community of love and life where differences contribute to forming a communion.  It is in the family that we first learn and practice the love that God, one in three person teaches us.

And so if we leave aside the math of three persons in one God and concentrate on the eternal love shared by the communion of the three persons, then the Trinity begins to make sense.  Our God, one and yet three persons is love.

God reveals himself as love gradually throughout the Bible, first as the Father and Creator; then we soon learn that God is also Son and Redeemer; and as we heard on Pentecost Sunday, God is also Spirit and Advocate.

Already in Genesis we see God as the Father of humankind and the Creator of everything; the sun, the moon, the stars, plants, animals and of course human beings.  We learn that the Father loved humankind so much that he wanted us to be like him; so he created us in his own image and gave us the world to care for.  Of course we returned the favour and tried to recreate ourselves in God’s image, thinking that we could live independently of the Father, disobeying him and foolishly cutting ourselves from God.  And yet despite this disobedience and sin, God the loving Father did not abandon us.  He set in motion a plan to restore his friendship with us.  To this end, he made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants, making them the instrument of his salvation.

When the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, God sent Moses to Pharaoh with the simple message, “let my people go.”  God led them through the desert for forty years of testing, giving them the Ten Commandments and entering into a new covenant with them.  He led them to the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey.  But as human beings are wont do, Israel once again strayed from God.  He could have washed his hands off them at this moment, but he did not.  Instead God the Father sent prophets with a consistent message: “The God of love who wants you back; reform your lives and return home to God your Father.”  Thus throughout the Old Testament we see God as a loving Father reaching out to his wayward children and trying to get them back to himself.

The history of our salvation took a decisive turn, when God the Father sent his Son to continue the work of salvation begun by him.  Although he was always part of the Father’s work, the Son now takes centre stage in the work of saving humankind.  In the New Testament we learn from Jesus that he is the Son of God, sent to tell us about God’s love for us and challenging us to repent and return to God’s friendship.  That is the basic message of the gospel.  Jesus, the Son of God, did not only teach about God’s love, he lived this love even up to giving up his life for the sake of the world.  God the Father, faithful as ever, resurrected him from the dead and placed him at his right hand.

The third stage of God's work of salvation begins on Pentecost, when as Jesus promised, the Father sends the Spirit.  The Spirit had to come, because the world had not yet fully returned to God.  In today's gospel passage Jesus speaks so clearly about the Spirit:  "But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth" Jesus says.  Moreover the Spirit "will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, . . . [and] will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine. . . ."

So now the third person of the Trinity takes centre court, the Holy Spirit who comes to fulfil the work begun long ago by the Father and taken a step further more recently by the Son.  In the Early Church the Holy Spirit helps the first disciples to understand what Jesus said and did, who he was and what he was about.  Just as Jesus was the central figure in the gospels, we see the Holy Spirit at work in the Acts of the Apostles, throughout the history of the Church and even today.  We live in the age of the Spirit.

And so, even though we cannot fully understand who our God is and how is a three persons in one God, we can be sure of one thing; God is a God of love.

Christian Life

Let me offer a take-away message for us, from this feast of the Trinity.  It is fitting that this take-away message is also threefold: knowledge, prayer and action.

First, although we cannot know God in himself, since by definition he is mystery, let us know that little that he has chosen to reveal of himself to us.  God has revealed himself as a God of love, a love that he repeatedly shares with us, as God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit.  Our Trinity is a God of love.

Second, let us be aware of this Trinity in our prayer life.

·        In the Creed every time we recite it at Mass and when saying the rosary, we profess to "believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth . . . . ; one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God . . . . and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life."

·        Catholics begin their prayers with the sign of the Cross, accompanied by the words "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."  We also baptize and absolve sins in the same name "of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

·        Finally we give glory "to the Father, and to the Son and to the Spirit;" and the priest or deacon does not bless in his own name, but asks that the Almighty God may bless you: "The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

Besides knowing that the Trinity is love, and praying to this Trinity of love, the third message is action; what can we do about it?  Let the Trinity be a model of our own Christian lives.  In the Trinity we see a communion, a union, a working together of one God for the same end, sharing his love with human beings.  At one moment the Father takes centre stage, at another, the Son, at another the Spirit; but they are always working together and nobody claims the whole credit.  Can we as a Church, as a Christian community live and love as one, united in the same mission of bringing God’s message of love to the world?  Can we each play our part, building up the Body of Christ, just like each person in the Trinity plays their part in the work of our salvation?

Conclusion

That the Trinity is a mystery should not get us off the hook.  We must know and believe what god has told us about himself; we must pray to him as such, and we must live like, loving as the Trinity loves.