THE MOST HOLY TRINITY
30 MAY 2021
For ninety
days, the liturgy has focused our attention on the Mystery of how God loves us. The forty days of Lent prepared us to
celebrate the Sacred Paschal Triduum – the Lord Jesus showing how to love by washing
the feet of his disciples and dying on the cross. For fifty days, we deepened our faith in the
resurrection. Having received a new
outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we now focus our attention on the
identity of God in today’s readings.
In
Deuteronomy, Moses addresses his people about to enter the Promised Land. He tells them that there is only one God –
the God who created the world and breathed life into human beings. The one God led them from slavery in Egypt to
freedom in the Promised Land. The New
Testament Scriptures reveal that Jesus Christ in the only begotten Son of God
who has accomplished the work of redemption.
In his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul reminds us that the Holy Spirit has
adopted us as sons and daughters of God in Baptism, making us heirs of
Christ. At the highest level of being,
there is one God and three distinct Persons.
We have
been taught from our religious education classes that the Trinity is a mystery. We often understand “mystery” in terms of
complicated situations that need to be solved.
I have become interested in a series of murder mysteries produced by the
BBC. As each episode unfolds, I have to
sort out the clues and put the pieces together to figure out which of those
characters is guilty of the murder. At
the end of each episode, the mystery is solved.
A better
definition of “mystery” involves examining relationships with other
people. Couples who fall in love begin
the process of revealing themselves and getting to know the mystery of the
other person. Couples who have
celebrated their fiftieth anniversary of marriage speak of their continued
efforts to know better the one they love.
If we
understand “mystery” in this sense, the Trinity is not a complicated puzzle
that professional theologians ponder in their ivory towers. The Trinity is not a reality that we cannot
know. Rather, we can continue to know the
relationship at the highest level of being between Father and Son and Holy
Spirit into eternity. We are drawn us
into a deeper relationship with the Father and through the Son and the Holy
Spirit. Just as God invited Moses to
know him more intimately and lead his people to the Promised Land, God invites us
to enter more deeply in a love relationship with the Trinity and leads us to
the Promised Land of eternity.
Saint
Matthew tells us that the risen Christ gathers the eleven on a mountain in
Galilee. They worship him, signaling the
power of the resurrection. But they have
doubts. Despite their doubts, he
commissions them to make disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching
them all he has commanded them. He does
the same with us. Convinced of the power
of the Paschal Mystery, we may harbor our own doubts and hesitations about
washing feet and dying to ourselves. As
sons and daughters adopted through Baptism, we share such an intimacy of love
that we can address God as Abba, or in English, “Daddy.”
The risen Christ sent the first
disciples into a hostile and dangerous world.
This last year has revealed the hostility and dangers of our world: a world of arguments, violence, and loss of objectivity. We live in a world that substitutes
subjective opinions for objective truth.
We may be distinct individuals with diverse and different gifts. But we are created in the image of the one
God who is manifested in absolute love. For
ninety days, the Lord has been teaching us what authentic love looks like. Now the risen Lord promises to be with us
until the end of time. We are not alone
in our efforts to love as he loved us.
Gifted by his presence through the Holy Spirit, we can rebuild the life
of our parish and community as we emerge from this pandemic.
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