Trinity Sunday
June 3, 2023
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
Summing Up
As we celebrate the Church’s Year of Grace, the liturgical year, our eyes of faith see the Most Holy Trinity at work, not only in the history of salvation but also in our lives, in our experience. We saw how God created the world out of love, resolved to redeem humanity when we turned away from his goodness, chose a people of his own, and from that people raised up a Savior.
That Savior was not merely a prophet but God’s own Son in the flesh, whose birthday into human history we celebrated at Christmas. Soon thereafter we entered into Lent, a forty-day penitential season that led us to the Cross where Jesus, in loving obedience to his Father’s will, laid down his life for us and our salvation. Next we peered into the empty tomb from which the Lord of glory arose, raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, that is, by the power of the Spirit.
For the next forty days, we shared in the amazement of the disciples as they encountered the Risen Lord, still bearing the marks of the Cross, breathing his Spirit upon them so as to authorize them to forgive sin, commissioning them to go forth and preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. And only last Sunday, Pentecost, our eyes of faith witnessed the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples and the birth of the Church’s mission of evangelization. Along the way, we glimpsed into the vitality of the Church at its beginnings, as the disciples went forth and bore witness to Christ before the nations, rejoicing even to suffer and die for “the Name above every other name”.
Trinity Sunday
So, having experienced yet again what God did to save us, we now come to Trinity Sunday when we ask, ‘Who is this God that has done all these great and mighty deeds for us?’ ‘Who is this God that created us in love, redeemed us with still greater love, and remains with us still through Word and Sacrament?’
The brief answer is that, in Christ, God has revealed himself as a Trinity of Persons, One God in Three Persons. The Father eternally begets the Son and the Son eternally receives and reflects the glory of the Father, and the bond of love between them is the Holy Spirit. Trinity Sunday is a joyous celebration of the self-giving, the self-deferential love that circulates among the Three Persons of the Trinity, summed up in three words: “God is love”.
To be sure, the Trinity is a mystery beyond our capacity to understand. The only real way to grasp something of this mystery is to immerse ourselves in it, to participate in the life of the Trinity, to experience God’s Presence in our lives. And because we experience the love of the Father of mercies, as revealed in the heart of his Son, and as communicated to us by the Spirit – we also long to have a way of thinking and speaking about so great a God, just as we want to have a way of speaking and thinking about anything else that really matters in our lives. How, then, might we think and speak about the Triune God, Three distinct persons “of one substance and equal in majesty”?
The God Who Is “With Us” and “For Us”
Perhaps we might find it helpful to think and speak of the Trinity as simply as the God who is “with us” and “for us” – even as the Three Persons of the Trinity from all eternity have been “with” and “for” one another in truth, in love, and in glory. If God is love, then from all eternity the One God is not solitary. To love, there has to be a someone to love, an “other” to be “with” and to be “for”. In the One God this “otherness” exists in the Three distinct Persons – who, from all eternity are “with” one another and “for” one another – and who, with absolute freedom willed to share their Triune life and love with us human beings who were created in their image. To repeat: throughout salvation history, God has been “with” us and “for us” … just as from all eternity the Persons of the Trinity have been “with” and “for” one another.
We see this truth displayed in today’s Scripture readings where Moses, still unaware of the mystery of the Trinity, proclaims the truth and merciful love of God and begs this God of faithful love to accompany the people God made his own on their journey to the promised land. God remained “with” his people, leading them through the desert and God proved himself to be “for” his people in their many struggles.
That God is “with us” and “for us” comes into sharper focus in the Gospel where Jesus sums up the whole Gospel: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.” Indeed, our Savior is Emmanuel, a name which means “God-is-with-us” … And the Son, who perfectly reflects the loving heart of the Father, is surely “for us” – because he gave his life for us on the Cross; he came not to condemn us but to save us. And what Christ did for us lives on and remains with us to this day through the Spirit whom the Father and the Son sent us. So acting in history and continuing to act in our lives, God has given us a “window” into his inner life and love, and how we should rejoice to see in faith what the eyes of flesh cannot see.
The Church as the Sacrament of Unity
In 2nd Corinthians, St. Paul greets us in the Name of the Trinity: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” This greeting tells us a lot about who we should be as a Church. The God of love who is “with us” and “for us” has willed to bring into being a New People, a people from every land and nation, that shares in and reflects his own Triune life and love. Or as St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote, “a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Therefore, our life together in the Church must be God-like. In two simple words, we must be “with” one another and “for” one another, eschewing divisiveness, bitterness, and partisanship in our relations with one another but instead strive to be a community of faith that seeks to overcome, in God’s grace, the isolation that sin produces and the bitterness that egotism foments.
If indeed, God wills that his Church be “the sacrament of unity” and the means or instrument through which we encounter him, then each of us must ask ourselves if we truly are “with” and “for” one another. Is our life in the Church qualitatively different from life outside the Church? Indeed, our mission is to a world where people’s lives are fragmented and isolated, a world where people are decidedly “against” one another, not “for” one another. The God who is “with us”, the God who is “for us” has shown us a better way! On this Trinity Sunday, let us resolve, as God’s Holy people, to manifest in our lives “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” … And may God bless us and keep us in his love!