Today’s celebration of the Trinity is an important feast in the life of the Church. What we believe about the God who created us and has revealed Himself to us has important implications for how we live. It’s always tricky to preach and teach about the Trinity because God is God and we are not. God’s existence is a mystery, but that doesn’t mean we can’t know anything about it. The mystery of the Trinity is infinitely beyond our ability to fully understand, but that doesn’t mean we can’t understand important things about God with the help He gives us. A lot of the early work of the Church was clarifying what we do and don’t believe about God. The early Councils of the Church, gatherings to clarify and defend what we believe against those who were teaching incorrectly, gave us the Creeds that we say at Mass and before the Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet. Creeds help us give words to the core of our beliefs, those central truths that we can spend a lifetime diving into but never fully wrap our minds around.
Think about how awe inspiring it is to look out at the vast ocean or the huge expanse of stars in the night sky. We don’t feel cheated by not being able to take them all in at once. Our perspective is limited, but that limited view of something so much bigger than we can grasp invites us to a sense of awe. So it is with God. We could never hope to fit the God of the Universe into our limited minds, but God, in His great generosity, has revealed Himself to us, allowing us to grasp what is essential about Him and through that revelation, enter into an awe-filled relationship with Him. We will never fully wrap our minds around Him, but that is OK, because He is God and we are not!
One of the best ways we can help our minds at least have some grasp of the Three Persons of the Trinity is through natural analogies. One analogy that I really appreciate is that of the sun. When we think of the Sun, there is the sun itself, its rays, and the heat that comes from the Sun. Those three aspects point us to the interaction between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God the Father from all eternity actively begets God the Son. Also, from all eternity, God the Son is actively begotten of the Father. And between that eternal relationship of Father and Son is the radiance of the Love between them, who is Himself a Divine Person, God the Holy Spirit. So in that analogy, we have the sun, the ray and the radiance, which is analogous to the Father, the Son coming forth from Him and the Divine warmth of Love between Them. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it helps move our minds toward the God who has revealed Himself to us as a Trinity. Each Person of the Trinity is fully God, and they are distinguished from each other by their relationships. Again, this mystery is impossible to fully wrap our minds around, but it is also a beautiful thing which invites us in to search the depths of God.
Even though God is completely beyond us, He has constantly worked with us throughout history. In the first reading, Moses describes the uniqueness of the True God’s working in this world. Unlike all other false gods that humanity has chased after, the True God has shown us time and again that He cares for us, and in His care, has revealed Himself. God doesn’t just leave us to figure things out on our own. In great humility, He lowers Himself to our level and tells us that we are His. This is a great gift! As Moses put it:
Was it ever heard of?
Did a people ever hear the voice of God
speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?
Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself
from the midst of another nation,
by testings, by signs and wonders, by war,
with strong hand and outstretched arm, and by great terrors,
all of which the LORD, your God,
did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
God came and called forward His chosen people and brought them out of Egypt. Those Chosen people of Israel were an image and forerunner of the Church, which in the fullness of time, God has called to Himself. We live in a time where God has brought all of us not just out of slavery to an earthly taskmaster like Pharaoh, but out from slavery to our ancient taskmaster, the Devil. In those earlier times in the history of Humanity, God revealed Himself as the foundation of all being, the I AM. But now, through Jesus, God has shown us that He isn’t just a solitary creator but a loving, perfect, eternal union of Three Divine Persons who invites us into His perfect union.
By God the Son taking humanity to Himself in Jesus, God has lowered Himself completely to our level so that we might enter into His life. This is an amazing thing to think about: that God wasn’t content to simply create us and communicate with us. He became one of us in Jesus! And through Jesus, God revealed Himself to us as Trinity and invited us to share in His very life. As St. Paul reminds us in the passage we heard from his letter to the Romans: “those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a Spirit of adoption, through whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’” The Christian life invites us into the mystery of God’s life as Trinity. Through our baptism, we are given the capability to live a life as true sons and daughters of God, giving ourselves to God our Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. Paul even goes so far as to call us “joint heirs with Christ.” Here he is talking about the fact that through Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit, God the Father has given us access to the greatest inheritance we could possibly imagine–the adventure of eternal life with Him beyond the sufferings and death that are of this world. Wow!
So today is an opportunity for us to be grateful for this inheritance, grateful to the One God who is so generous that He has given us the gift of sharing in His own life! This gift comes to us through our Baptism, which Jesus so generously gave us. As we heard from the end of the Gospel of Matthew today, Jesus’ instructions to the Apostles were clear:
“All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
Jesus shared His power and authority with the Apostles and this power and authority has been passed down through their successors, the Bishops of the Church. That authority was for the sake of bringing people into the life of God Himself: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When we were baptized, that happened–we gained entry into the life of the Blessed Trinity. Everything the Church does is centered around helping us to enter into the life of the Trinity and then live in the power of the Trinity. And Jesus remains, with His power, present to the Church in all of the Sacraments to help us, thereby fulfilling His promise to be with us always. What an awesome gift!
Think back on the analogy of the sun which we began with. Remember the Northern Lights that we were able to see not so long ago right here in Coshocton? Those happened because of the immense energy released by solar flares impacting the earth’s atmosphere and being deflected toward the poles by the earth’s magnetic field. As that energy interacted with molecules like nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere, it created incredible colors.
This is a great analogy for what the Christian life is for us all. God has revealed himself to us as a Trinity of Divine Love to draw us into the power of the Love which He is! Each of us has the ability to actually live in the power of God’s own life. By Baptism and through all the Sacraments, we enter into and share in the power of the Trinity. If the Sun can produce such beautiful and awe inspiring effects, think of what God wants to do in our lives by letting us share in His own life!
As you all know, I like to end my homilies in prayer. Today, I will end with a beautiful prayer by Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity:
+ O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me forget myself entirely so to establish myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity. May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you, O my unchanging God, but may each minute bring me more deeply into your mystery! Grant my soul peace. Make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling and the place of your rest. May I never abandon you there, but may I be there, whole and entire, completely vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative action. +