Sunday 26th of May 2024 - The Most Holy Trinity

Deuteronomy 4:32-34,39-40/ Psalm 32(33)/ Romans 8:14-17/ Matthew 28:16-20

When we pray who is it that comes to Mind? Who is it we are talking to? Prayer is the way we communicate with God. Through prayer we praise God, we thank God, we ask God for things for ourselves and for others, and we offer sorrow for those times we have offended God. Prayer is a conversation, conversation has to be two way, it is difficult or impossible to have a conversation with someone we cannot see or at least visualise.

The image of God for the ancient people of the Old Testament was of an all-powerful being whose name could not even be spoken. This is not the image of an approachable loving God. The incredible thing that God did for us was to become human, to become like one of his own creations, who could live, love, suffer, and die just as we do. This presented a problem for human thinking, existing as it does within the limitations of a created universe. The God who became human is known to us as Jesus, God the Son. Jesus introduced us to God the Father and in becoming human Jesus made us his brothers and sisters and therefore sons and daughters of God the Father.

Jesus demonstrated that he was God through the things he did and said. He worked miracles displaying his mastery over creation and he forgave sins, understood as a privilege only available to God. He said to Philip, ‘if you have seen me, you have seen the Father’… ‘I am in the Father and the Father is in me’. This leads us to an understanding that although there is a God the Father and God the Son, they are somehow also one and the same. If you see or experience one, you have seen or experienced the other.

To further complicate the issue surrounding the nature of God we have the Holy Spirit to consider. John recounts how Jesus said, ‘The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything. Paul in his letter to the Romans tells how The Spirit comes to help us in our prayers. When we struggle to find words to pray The Spirit expresses our pleas in a way that could never be put into words. These pleas on our behalf, expressed by the Holy Spirit, are in accord with the mind of God because they come from God the Holy Spirit who is one with the Father and the Son. This is what Jesus means when he refers to the Holy Spirit as the Advocate, someone who supports us and speaks on our behalf. The Holy Spirit comes to us through the sacraments and is the way that God dwells within us in our times. It is through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that our broken human bodies become temples of that Spirit which is God.

Our faith teaches us that we have one God made up of three persons. Each of these persons are God but individual beings. Many of our formal liturgical prayers are made to God our Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. It is beyond our limited human understanding to fully grasp the nature of God. We know that God is the definition of love. Love cannot exist in a vacuum. A single entity cannot be love because love needs to operate between beings, there needs to be a relationship. Love cannot be self-centred and not shared or it would be meaningless. Our God is love because that love is between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God is three divine persons that live in the fullness of the divine nature, they live in a perfect communion of love.

The love between the three persons of the one God is so great that it pours out enveloping the whole of creation. It even called for God the Father to allow his son, Jesus, to suffer and die as one of us to wipe away every sin committed by humanity throughout all time. The love generated between the persons of the one God is immeasurable and beyond our comprehension. The relationship is so unique and unlike any relationship we could describe that we use the unique word ‘consubstantial’ to describe the three persons of the trinity being separate but of the same substance, essence or nature. They are coequal, coeternal and of the same nature. Each is God, whole and entire.

The Gospel today is the final passage from St. Matthew in which Jesus commanded his disciples to make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This is the mission given to us, his church on earth, which we continue to carry out to this day. The Trinitarian God is the central mystery of our Christian Faith. All things are from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. God cannot be completely understood by us because God is beyond his creation whereas we are part of creation. God is beyond or above the range of normal or physical human experience something we call transcendent. One day we will understand more fully because we will be like God ourselves and will see God as he truly is. An incredible thought to us now but it is what we aspire to become in eternity.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

God Bless Brendan.