Trinity Sunday
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
Our Lady of the Fields
May 25-26, 2024
Where Have We Been?
Today the Church celebrates Trinity Sunday, a feast that arrives just as the Easter Season concludes, a culminating moment in the Church’s liturgical year. What journey did we begin with the start of a new liturgical year? Where has it led us thus far? And what question does it now prompt us to ask?
In Advent, we awaited the coming of the Messiah, as did the Israelites. At Christmas, we celebrated the birth of the Savior, “conceived by the Holy Spirit and incarnate of the Virgin Mary”. In short order, we celebrated the revelation of God’s Son to the Magi, the Child Jesus’ coming of age as a member of the Holy Family, as also the his Baptism in the Jordan, when the Holy Spirit came upon him and the Father’s voice was heard, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him!”
Soon thereafter, we followed the Lord into the desert where he fasted, and prayed to his heavenly Father, and where he overcame the Devil’s fierce temptations. With Lent giving way to Passiontide, we walked the way of the Cross as the Incarnate Savior suffered and died for us and for our salvation. We experienced the depth of the Father’s love, for, to ransom us who are slaves to sin, he gave away his Son. Indeed, we experienced the immensity of Jesus’ gift of self, for greater love no one has than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
With the triumph of the Resurrection, our minds and hearts were overwhelmed by the sure and certain hope that Father’s love, revealed in Christ, is ‘stronger than sin and more powerful than death.’ At Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit opened our eyes anew to all that the Lord taught and to the centrality of the mission he entrusted first to his Apostles and now to the whole Church: “Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
What Kind of God?
This is where we have been. This has been our journey: from the promise of Advent to its fulfillment in the Paschal Mystery. Looking back on this journey, the Church invites us to ponder a question on this, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity:
What kind of a God is our God?
What must God be like if he would do all this for us?
What must God be like if he would create us in freedom, prompt us to hunger for truth, equip us to love?
Who is the God that forgives when his creatures sin, even to the point of sending his Son to give his life in love, even to the point of pouring out his Spirit to fill us with his own life and love?
Ours is God of eternal truth, self-giving love, immense majesty and beauty! God is not an abstraction, nor a first principle, nor a necessary idea. God is the really real Reality who showed himself to Moses, who demonstrated his power and majesty as he led the Israelites into freedom. “This is why you must know and fix in your hearts,” says Moses to us, “that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on the earth below, and that there is no other” (Deu 4:39). The God of majesty & glory: there is no other!
Yet, as we have journeyed through the mysteries, the events, of the Lord’s life, have we not discovered afresh something more of who our God is? I say “something of who God is” because, in this world, we can never capture God completely by thought or word or artistry, for his beauty and goodness and truth exceed all we could ever know. But this we do know, because God has revealed himself to us: God is love. If only we continually dwelled on this simple yet profound truth! For when Scripture says, “God is love”, it does not mean to say that God is a mere bundle of fleeting emotions and affections. No, the One God in Three Persons is bound together in truth and love: the Father eternally begets the Son, the Son perfectly reflects the Father, and the bond of love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit.
What Does This Mean to Us?
But what does this mean to us? Living as we do in a world that is often harsh, we celebrate the God who is love. Living as we do in a world that is often cold and impersonal, we celebrate the One God who is tri-personal, who is really relational. Living as we do in a world where we sometimes feel alone and abandoned, we celebrate the God who is full of compassion and kindness. And more than that, as St. Paul teaches us in his Letter to the Romans, in the Holy Spirit, we are the adopted and beloved children of the Father, who sees and loves in us what he sees and loves in his only begotten Son. Yes, we are God’s children and thus we are heirs to the love God has for us…& heirs to the love that IS God: the love of the Father for the Son in the Holy Spirit.
This is what we share in common as members of the Church. It’s true that God loves each of us as individual persons but he also calls us to be members of the Church, the Church which is herself a communion of truth, life, and love, modelled on the Trinity, and sharing in God’s own Triune life. That is why we read Scripture, why we pray together in the name of the Trinity, why we are baptized in the name of the Trinity, why we receive the Son of God in the Eucharist sanctified by the Spirit, why we go out on mission, teaching, bearing witness, and baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
“All Lost in Wonder”
Trinity Sunday is not about “breaking the code”, a vain attempt make the mystery of God less mysterious or “un-mysterious”. No, it’s about allowing ourselves to be “all lost in wonder” as our eyes of faith behold something of God grandeur and glory, as we experience something of his love, as we allow the love that reigns supreme in the Trinity to reign supreme in us. And may God – Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – bless us and keep us always in his love!