Homily for Trinity Sunday Year A 2020
Exodus 34:4b-6.8-9; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18
Introduction
Contrary to what most people think, Islam and Christianity have a lot in common. Both Christians and Muslims believe in one God. We both believe that morality should be based, not simply in what pleases us, but in what God has told us.
But one of the things about which we seriously disagree is the doctrine of the Trinity; that the one God exists in three persons. In fact Muslims accuse Christians of believing in three gods. Like some of us they just cannot wrap their heads around the belief that there is one God, but he exists in three persons.
And so theologians have used many analogies 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 the three states 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. That is why Pope Benedict XVI suggests the analogy of love in a family to explain the Trinity. He says that the family is a community of love where differences, such as being a father or mother, a parent or child, male or female, contribute to forming a communion, a life of love. Similarly the distinctions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are ways of loving within the Trinity. In fact, only the Christian God is a God who does not just love but is love itself. Our God is love. His very being is an eternal love shared by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this way, the Trinity begins to make sense.
Looking at the Scriptures we see God revealing himself gradually as love, 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 Sanctifier.
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 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. That is what St John tells us in today's passage: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life." 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 that Jesus 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 John's gospel Jesus speaks so clearly about the Spirit saying, "But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth." 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 God the Spirit who continues to sanctify us.
And so, even though we cannot fully understand how our God is three persons in one God, we can be sure of one thing; God is a God of love. And yet it is not such a bad thing, that we leave some mystery in God, after all he is God.
Christian Life
The take-away message I offer on this feast of the Trinity is threefold, just like the Trinity: knowledge, prayer and action.
First, we must attempt to know our God as much as he has revealed himself to us, as much as we are able. God has revealed himself as love, a love that he shares not only eternally among the three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, but also one he shares repeatedly with us, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Second, when we know our God of the Trinity then we pray to him as such. In the Creed we are about to recite, in the sign of the Cross with which we begin every prayer, in the formula of with which our children are baptized and our sins forgiven in confession, and in the formula by which we are Blessed by the deacon or priest, we acknowledge the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Thirdly, after knowing and praying to this Trinity of love, we must put this knowledge and prayer into action. Let the Trinity be a model of our own Christian lives. In the Trinity we see a a union, a working together of three persons for the same end, sharing love with human beings. At one moment the Father takes centre stage, at another, the Son, at another the Spirit; but they always work together and nobody hogs the credit. The current COVID pandemic and the protests highlighting another silent pandemic of racism are a perfect opportunity for us to demonstrate that we too can live and love as one, united in the same mission of eradicating evil and now the evils of suffering and death, racism and violence. Like the Trinity, let us live out the motto of this country e pluribus unum (out of many one), so that as one we work for good and as one against evil.
Conclusion
As we practice this love here on earth, we are preparing ourselves for life on the other side, where we shall live in love with the Father and the Son, in fellowship with the Holy Spirit, forever and ever and ever and ever.
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