Homily for Trinity Sunday Year C 2019
Proverbs 8:22-31, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
Introduction
After completing the Easter Season with Pentecost last Sunday, we now return to the Ordinary Time of the Liturgical Calendar, starting an ordinary but fundamental doctrine of Christianity, which is the Trinity, one God in three persons! This is perhaps the one doctrine that sets us apart from our Jewish and Muslim brothers, who believe in the God of Abraham, but not in the God who is a Trinity.
But isn’t the Trinity a mystery? So why bother explaining it? I am reminded of a story of an old Ugandan man, about to be baptized who the priest was interviewing about the faith. The first question (Question 186 of the Baltimore Catechism) was: “How many persons are there in God?” The elderly catechumen thought a little and said: “Father, I know there is God, but how many persons there are, I really don’t remember. And frankly I don’t care, as I don’t have to feed them or care for them. Just baptize me Father, I believe in God.”
While there is something to admire in this man’s simple and profound faith, there is also something to gain from trying to understand, as best we can, who God is. After all, don’t we do that for our spouse or our friend? That is why many analogies have been tried to explain how there can be three persons in one God: St. Patrick used the three-leafed shamrock found in Ireland, 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 leave us any wiser about who God is. 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.
Scripture and Theology
Like these people, we don't give up. While we don't know everything about God, we know that which he has told us. Pope Benedict suggests that the love in a family is the best analogy for the Trinity. Like a family is composed of different members, doing different things, but still living in communion, so the three persons in One God, the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, are communion and love. And as love is exactly how God has gradually revealed himself throughout the Bible, first as the Father and Creator; then as Son and Redeemer; and as we heard on Pentecost Sunday, as 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 God in our own 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 our friendship with him. 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 to do Israel time and again strayed from God. He could have washed his hands off them and of the whole project, but he did not. Instead God the Father sent prophets time and again with a consistent message: “The God of love who wants you back; reform your lives and return home to God your Father.” We could summarize the Old Testament as a story of the Father’s love for us.
The history of our salvation took a decisive turn, when God the Father sent the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity to continue the work of salvation begun by him. Although he was always part of the Father’s work from the beginning, 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 concretely by giving up his life on the Cross for 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. God the Spirit had to come, because the world had not yet fully returned to God. In today's gospel passage we heard Jesus tell the disciples "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” That is why he and the Father send the Spirit who “when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth" that God the Father had previously revealed and now Jesus has taught. 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. . . ." This is possible only because the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one.
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. 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 God the Spirit.
And so, even though we cannot fully understand who our God is and how three persons are in one God, we can be sure of one thing; our God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a God of love. We can be sure that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct and yet one, do different things and yet equal, each takes centre stage at different times and yet eternal.
Christian Life and Conclusion
Let me offer a take-away message for us, from this feast of the Trinity, and in the spirit of the Trinity, it is a threefold take-away message. I will base my message on the answer given to the Baltimore Catechism question “Why did God make you?” The answer is: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”
First, although we cannot know God in himself, since by definition he is mystery, we must know that little which he has chosen to reveal of himself to us as a God of love in three persons. My mother tells me that when I as a kid, I prayed only to Jesus, since I could identify with him as a child, but not with the Father and Spirit, who I identified with the grown-ups, you know those who made me take my medicine and other suchlike nasty things. So she accused me of a little heretic. We must not be like I was, but must try to know and grow in relationship with God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit.
Second, besides knowing, we love God by praying to the One God in three persons. That is why we start all our prayer 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." The priest baptizes our babies and absolve our sins in the same name "of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit;” and in the Creed recited at Mass and during 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." We give glory "to the Father, and to the Son and to the Spirit." Finally, the priest does not bless in his own name, but asks the Almighty God, "The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit" to bless you.
Thirdly, besides knowing that the Trinity is love, and praying to this Trinity of love, the third message is serve God by living like the Trinity of Love. Let the Trinity be a model of our own Christian lives. Like the diversity of the Trinity does not come in the way of God’s plan of salvation, may our diversity of race, age, gifts, nationality not come in the way of God’s plan of salvation. May we achieve that unity of love in the Trinity, each playing our part in building up the Body of Christ!
Yes, “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” When that time comes, are you ready to join the community of the Trinity?
