Most Holy Trinity!
Homily preached Sunday, June 4, 2023
by Monsignor Michael Deering
I remember having some time to visit with about 20 of our
First and Second Graders in our Sunday School program at my last Parish.
And I asked them: “How many Gods are there?”
A few of the kids answered faintly: “One”.
I said “Really?”
I asked: “Is God the Father God?” They said “Yes”.
I asked: “Is Jesus God?” They said “Yes”.
I asked: “Is the Holy Spirit God?” They said “Yes”.
So I asked: “Then how many Gods are there?”
Quite a few of them said, “Three!”
And I just smiled at them and said: “No, I fooled you!”
There’s not 3 Gods.” There’s only 1 God.”
Yes, God the Father is God .. yes, Jesus is God ... and yes, the Holy Spirit is God.
They are the 3 Persons of God ... and together ... they make up one God!
It is a great Mystery! So don’t worry that you find it difficult to understand.
We adults don’t understand it either ...
so you children aren’t expected to understand it.
Why don’t we understand it? Because it’s one of the great mysteries of God.
And we simply have no adequate way to explain the mystery.
Some 1600 years ago, St. Patrick tried to explain this mystery
to the people of Ireland by using a Three-leaf Clover.
A Three-leaf Clover is one leaf with three distinct leaves … it is 3 in 1 ...
and it gave people a visual representation of how ...
the 3 Persons of God can really be one God.
Another way to attempt to understand this mystery might be to consider the water molecule, H2O. It exists in three different phases: ice, water, and steam. But in each of these phases, it is still H2O. So it’s 3 in 1! Kind of like 3 Persons in 1 God.
Today, much of the world believes that there is one and only one God.
This includes not only Christians ... but the Jews ... and the Muslims as well.
But we Christians ...
we believe that God is a tri-unity, a trinity, a mystery of three persons in one God.
Now all our efforts to explain the Trinity are lacking. And that’s just the way it’s going to be, for our finite minds will never be able to comprehend our infinite God.
Bishop Robert Barron gives a good example of how difficult it would be
to comprehend something when you don’t have the capacity to do so.
He tells the story of how every afternoon while he was working at his desk in his study, his dog would walk into the room and look around at the countless books on the shelves of his many bookcases ... then he would lie down and take a nap.
Well, one day, Bsp. Barron decided to educate his dog ... so he said:
“Rover, you see those books on the shelves?
Inside those books are the 26 letters of the alphabet ...
and those 26 letters are connected one to another to form words ...
and then the words are connected together to form sentences ...
and those sentences express thoughts and ideas ...
that help us to grow in wisdom and truth.
And when he was done explaining this ...
, Rover just looked at him and laid down and took his nap.
Why? Bishop Barron gave Rover a good, simple explanation of his Books ...
but Rover simply didn’t have the intellect to understand the explanation.
A dog doesn’t have the ability to grasp the concepts of:
an alphabet ... words ... sentences ... thoughts ... ideas ... or wisdom. It’s beyond him!
And so it is with all of us!
The mystery of who God is ... is beyond us. It is so far above us...
that we are not capable of grasping it ... not this side of Heaven.
And that’s ok! God doesn’t need us to understand Him ...
He just wants us to believe in Him ... and trust Him ... and love Him.
God has revealed to the world who He is ... that He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And He calls us to believe this and to worship Him.
Which is exactly what we do in every Mass ... we worship the unseen God.
It gives God great glory and it deepens our love relationship with Him.
Today we celebrate the Trinity in a special way ... a mystery we don’t understand.
but that’s ok, because as St. Augustine wisely said in the 4th Century,
“Any God I that can explain … isn’t worth my adoration!”
The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.
It is the mystery of God Himself. It is the source of all other mysteries of faith.
We Catholics reverence this mystery each and every time we bless ourselves. We trace out the sign of our salvation, the Cross, as we proclaim God’s Holy Name, honoring each Person of the Trinity, saying
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!”
We bless ourselves often. We do it each and every time we pray. We do it at boththe beginning and the endofa prayer; we do it at the beginning and end of Mass.
Perhaps you remember a beautiful Catholic song that was popular 20 years ago, where the refrain went: “We remember, we celebrate, we believe!”
When we recall our faith and celebrate our faith ... we deepen our faith.
This certainly applies to the simple act of blessing ourselves.
When we think about what we’re doing, we remember, we celebrate, we believe!
In our Gospel today, St. John declares,
“Whoever believes in (Jesus Christ) will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Here John is saying that belief in God is essential to salvation ... and particularly belief in Jesus ... the Son of God ... who is the Gate to the Kingdom of Heaven.
We Catholics express our belief in Jesus, the Only Son of God each time we receive the Eucharist. Right before you receive Holy Communion, the Priest or Deacon or Extraordinary Minister presents you with the Host and says,
“The Body of Christ”. It’s then that you respond, “Amen”.
In doing so you’re saying in effect, “I believe”. …
I believe in the Name of only Son of God and I believe that He
is truly and substantially present in the Host that I am receiving.
In our Second Reading today from the conclusion of Paul’s 2nd Letter to the Corinthians, he writes: “May the Grace (and Peace) of (Our) Lord Jesus (Christ),
the love of God (the Father)
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
Surely that greeting sounds familiar to you.
It is the very greeting that I extend to you at the beginning of Sunday Mass.
It also happens to be one of the clearest Trinitarian passages in the whole New Testament. For Paul clearly refers to God as three distinct persons. (Repeat)
Yes, God is a unity of Three Divine Persons. He is a Community ... a Family.
That certainly helps me to see that it makes every bit of sense that God ...
is comprised of multiple persons.
If God existed from all eternity ... and God is Love ...
then God had to have someone to love from all eternity!
For Love desires Love in return.
And we can understand how that has been accomplished from all eternity ...
with the eternal Father loving the eternally begotten Son
and the Son loving the Father ...
and the Love flowing between them being the Holy Spirit!
Last night, in place of the Creed, I baptized a 2 month old baby girl ...
and I did it the way that Jesus declared we should do it ... with the words,
“I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
It’s through Baptism that we are called to share in the life of the Blessed Trinity,
beginning here on earth, through the eyes of faith and
continuing after death in God’s eternal light.
Let’s never cease to praise and worship God for the Mystery that He is ...
one God in three Divine Persons.
And let’s do that right now as we celebrate God as Trinity
by praying together ... The Glory Be:
“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit
as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end.”
Amen!
Now since we are made in His image, we too are community; we too are family.
How perfect that this feast honoring the Most Holy Trinity falls right between the dates where we honor our Mothers on Mothers Day in mid-May and our Fathers on Fathers Day in mid-June. We are family as God is family.
I know of a non-Catholic Christian man who has attended numerous different Protestant churches. And on visiting the Catholic Church he said that the one big difference that he noticed is that it’s “me and Jesus” in the Bible churches, whereas it’s the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit that begins and ends and permeates the Catholic Church Service!
It’s not just me and Jesus. It’s me and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!
Recall the last words that Jesus spoke to His Apostles as He ascended into Heaven. He said, “Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,”
And those are precisely the words that the Priest or Deacon spoke at your Baptism to bring you into God’s family.
As we celebrate the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, let’s remind ourselves to listen closely to the prayers that we pray and recognize how we reverence the mystery of God as Trinity, one God, yet three distinct persons.
For example, listen again to the Opening Prayer that we prayed at Mass today.
“Father, you sent your Word to bring us truth and your Spirit to make us holy.
Through them we come to know the mystery of your life. Help us to worship you, one God in three persons, by proclaiming and living our faith in you. Grant this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.”
And of course there’s the Prayer of Praise at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer where I hold up Jesus, truly present under the appearance of Bread and Wine, and offer Him to the Father saying, “Through Him, with Him, in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, Almighty Father, forever and ever.”
Our prayers and our praise are Trinitarian. Let’s never cease to praise God for the mystery that He is.
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