Sunday 4th June 2023 - The Most Holy Trinity

Exodus 34:4-6,8-9/ Daniel 3:52-56/2 Corinthians 13:11-13/ John 3:16-18

Many of us have been fortunate enough to have experienced the love that is generated within a family. If not, we may have experienced the love for us or others that someone close to us has expressed and lived out. Not a shallow, selfish type of pseudo emotion portrayed in many so-called reality television shows. Despite the titles and claimed contents of such shows they do not portray genuine love. The love generated within a family is a genuine love, it is a love of self-sacrifice, of kindness of patience. As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, this type of love in never boastful or conceited, rude or selfish. It does not take offence and is not resentful. Love is always ready to excuse, trust, hope and endure whatever comes. Most importantly this is the love that lasts forever and comes with us through the door of earthly death into everlasting life. This is the true love that is generated between the members of a family because of how they devote themselves to each other, forgive each other if necessary and care for each other through thick and thin.

I say that this true love is generated because it is the product of how two or more people relate to each other. Love cannot be produced by a single person or entity; it must be directed from one to another. Without a relationship love has no meaning, it cannot be shared, it cannot care for or sacrifice itself for another if there is no other to interrelate with. A love within a single being would be a selfish and self-centred affair indeed.

Today the Church gives us the solemnity of The Most Holy Trinity. A day when we can ponder on the mystery that is God. We can ponder all we like but being confined to our earthly created existence we cannot possibly come close to understanding the immensity that is God. A God who created all we see and experience but is not himself trapped within his creation in the way we are. Throughout the time that humans have existed God has been revealing himself to us. We see this through scripture which, we believe, is the inspired word of God. Throughout the Old Testament there is a feeling within the people to which the word of God was initially directed that he is a God of punishment and retribution. A God whose name they could not even utter because it was so holy. This was an image of a God who was to be feared rather than loved.

Through scripture we can see that this ancient image of God was wrong and not what God himself was trying to get over to humanity. An example of this lies in the first reading today which portrays God as being of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithfulness, a God of forgiveness. Instead of fearing God we should be struck with a feeling of awe and wonder. From a relationship of such imbalance how could God become more familiar to us, more accessible, more understandable to us his created people? How could he move humanity from not even being able to refer to him by name to being able to call him Abba, father? In effect so familiar that we can call him daddy.

The answer to this lies in who God is. God is the definition of love. But as we know love does not exist in a single entity, love exists between beings and has no meaning if confined only to one. This leads us to an understanding that God has revealed himself to be one God but made up of three persons. This is the Holy Trinity, one God, three persons. The love that is God exists between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. A concept that is impossible to understand but that is logical to accept based on God being love. The love of God is so great that it resulted in creation allowing God’s love to flow out to all of us. A limitless love pouring out from the relationship of the Trinity encapsulating all of creation. To fulfil this love God became fully human in the person of Jesus so that he could sacrifice himself taking on the entire load of human sinfulness atoning for all our failings. This is the depth of the love God has for us. God has become one of us so that we can identify with him as a human, talk to him, get to know him on our level. Jesus himself said, ‘if you know me you know my Father… to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. We have a God who is not remote and to be feared but a God who is very close to us, knows what it is like to love, suffer, laugh, cry, eat and drink as a human. A God we can identify with and love in return for the love he has for us.

The second reading shows how the understanding of the Trinitarian God was being understood from the earliest days of Christianity. Paul uses the phrase, ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all’ as a blessing. In the last verses of Matthews Gospel Jesus commands his disciples to, ‘make disciples of all nations, baptise them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’. Jesus has revealed to us the nature of God, three persons in one God. A concept that our earthbound thinking cannot fully grasp but is logical to us when we consider that God is love and that love comes out of this divine relationship.

It was the misunderstanding of God that led the council of Nicaea in 325AD to formulate the Creed in which Christians state their belief in God the Holy Trinity. To try and explain the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity we use a unique word to explain a unique relationship. That word is consubstantial, meaning that God the Father and God the Son are of the same substance or essence. Although one God the three persons of The Trinity differ in aspect. God the Father is instrumental in Creation. God the Son became human and through his death and resurrection won our salvation. God the Holy Spirit is with us now and sanctifies us in readiness for eternity.

We can get ourselves in quite a mess trying the fathom the nature of God and our human explanations will always be inadequate if not heretical. It is best simply to accept that God is love and that love flows within God between the three persons making up that one God. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

God Bless Brendan.