glory to the father, the son, and the holy spirit; to god ... · glory to the father, the son, and...
TRANSCRIPT
May 31, 2015 THE MOST HOLY TRINITY May 31, 2015
Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; to God who is, who was, and who is to come.
Glory be to the Father, to
the Son and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever will be world without end.
We are at a wonderful time in our scripture readings, last Sunday, was Pentecost; this week, Trinity Sunday; next week, the Body and Blood of Christ, or “Corpus Christi.” The mystery of the Trinity, today’s feast, is really the heart of God’s revelation of Himself to us. Anyone who hopes to approach God as He really is must approach Him as Trinity.
People all over the world and all generations affirm the existence of God in many ways and call Him by many titles. The early American Indians on the plains, the Incas in South America, the people of Islam, all cultures affirm the existence of God in one way or another. But it is given only to the Christian to know the secret of God’s inner life and to know Him as truly a Trinity of Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Catechism says quite bluntly: “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in Himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith.” In other words, the mystery of the Trinity makes Christian faith distinctive. The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.
Even though it is a mystery, one God in three Persons, each distinct but still one God, a mystery that defies rational analysis, still it is a mystery with which we are all familiar. We all know the prayer called the doxology, “Glory to the Father, to the Son and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever will be, world without end.” God always was three in one, is three in one, will always be three in one. “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever will be.”
In our first reading, the Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land and Moses reminds the people never to forget all that God had done for them. We too experience God the Father in the miracle of creation and in the miracles of providence as God guides our life. As Father, God manifests His life‐giving power, His majesty and transcendence through creation. It takes as much power to keep the universe in being as to create it. And so, the Father not only brought us into being but also sustains every beat of our heart. This should evoke respect for the fact that, like
the rest of creation, our lives are also in God’s hands. To see God in the world around us is to experience God the Father.
As Son, God shows Himself as our Redeemer, a Savior. He is the Son faithful to the Father, Who lived a life like ours but in perfect fidelity. He taught us how to live in love and die in peace as we journey to our eternal home with the Father. The Son knows how easily we can fall and damage that image of God, which we all carry from birth. He died to give us the grace to live as He did and to come to eternal happiness. To know His forgiveness, to hear His truth is
to know God the Son. Jesus tells the Apostles in today’s Gospel “Go make disciples of all the nations. I am with you always.” Here in the sacramental life of the Church, He touches, He heals, He enlightens, He gives strength, He corrects, He renews, just as He did in His earthly life. To live within the life of the Church is to know the powerful touch of God the Son.
As Holy Spirit, God binds us to Himself as Father and Son. Because the Holy Spirit has been given to us, we can be drawn into the very life of God. In the second reading, St Paul calls Him the “Spirit of adoption” that makes us a member of the very family life of the Trinity. By Baptism, we become by adoption what Jesus was by nature, a part of God’s inner life.
For the first disciples, the Trinity was not primarily a doctrine but an experience. This most profound doctrine of the Church is indeed hard to explain but that should not deprive any of us of experiencing its truth, the ways God is part of our life creating, sustaining, redeeming and guiding us.
We all can do something more important than trying to explain the Trinity. We can live in its power. We can anchor our lives in the guiding providence of the Father. Who created and sustains the universe and our heartbeat. We can all know the redeeming, cleansing love of the Son, so powerfully close to us in the Sacraments. We can all know the living presence of the Holy Spirit in us, linking us to the Father and the Son, binding us to the Church.