Homily
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
3 June 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings
Today's meditation for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity can be taken in two different directions. The first direction is the necessary reminder that God is God and we are not God. In celebrating the Most Holy Trinity, we can be reminded that even though God has perfectly revealed himself through the gift of his only Son and the sending of the Spirit, he does not become any less mysterious. In his eternal perfections God is still more unlike us than he is like us. This way of taking the Solemnity reminds us that we will never figure God out, and if we think we are understanding him, we are understanding something else, not God. Although we might through diligent meditation and study make some progress in grasping the resonability of God being one nature shared by three persons, and how this can be so given that the Son is essentially the opposite, two natures shared by one person, we must admit at the end of the day that since God is God and we are not, we will never understand him by deduction, but only approach understanding through faith.
Yet another direction to take the celebration of the Trinity is to celebrate how simple God is. God is the ground of all reality not because he is complex, but because he is simple. To say that God is trinity is to say simply that God is love. It is to say nothing more, but nothing less either. To say that God is trinity is to say something simple. It is to say that before we contemplate God as that which nothing greater can be thought, before we think of him as being creator of the world but completely free and independent, and not a part of the world, before we think of him as an eternal and indissoluble unity of three persons in one nature, or as the only thing whose essence is the same as his existence, we say simply that God is love. That is the most important thing we ever say about God. It is the first thing we must say. And to say this is to say something simple. Before we say that God is the greatest thing we say that God is the greatest person. Deeper to the mystery of God than being the greatest thing, is the mystery of his being the greatest relationship.
Our celebration of the Trinity then is not resigned to a confession of how distant and mysterious God is to us as a thing unlike us; no, it is a simple celebration of personhood. Our own understanding of what a person is, is grounded in the personhood of the Trinity. In the Godhead a person is defined as one known and loved by another person, so much so that a communion of persons is created sharing one nature. So too the proper definition of us who are human persons created in the image and likeness of the Trinity, is that we become persons when we are known and loved by other persons. Jesus tells us to baptize in the persons of the Trinity because this grounds us in the trinitarian foundation of personhood. Those adopted by God in baptism receive an even more profound personhood, for they are loved and known by God in ways that human persons cannot love and know each other. The Christian faith, and its understanding of personhood grounded in the Trinity, perhaps provides the last great hope for understanding the inviolable dignity of every human person, against a torrent of ever more arbitrary and less personal definitions of what a human being is.
While first confessing that God in his essence is unlike us and so mysterious that we will make little or no progress in understanding him by deduction, still the solemnity of the Trinity is a celebration of intimacy with God. We cannot own God or put him in our pocket by studying theology, but we enjoy a greater intimacy by being called children of the Trinity through baptism, and by being placed through adoption and the sharing of the Holy Spirit at the very heart of the mystery of who God is. In the sacred liturgy we are sharing, we are placed not at odds with the Trinity, but at the very heart of the Trinity. We cry out to God together not as slaves, but as Romans says, as children crying 'Abba, Father!" We pray to the Father with the Son in the Holy Spirit at every liturgy. And in the same Spirit, we ourselves not only pray but we are privileged to listen from a front-row seat to the conversation being had between the Father and the Son, a conversation and a sharing of love that is itself the Holy Spirit. Above all, then, the liturgy of the Most Holy Trinity is a reminder not of our distance from God, but a simple realization that really couldn't get any closer. Amen.
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
3 June 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings
Audio
Today's meditation for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity can be taken in two different directions. The first direction is the necessary reminder that God is God and we are not God. In celebrating the Most Holy Trinity, we can be reminded that even though God has perfectly revealed himself through the gift of his only Son and the sending of the Spirit, he does not become any less mysterious. In his eternal perfections God is still more unlike us than he is like us. This way of taking the Solemnity reminds us that we will never figure God out, and if we think we are understanding him, we are understanding something else, not God. Although we might through diligent meditation and study make some progress in grasping the resonability of God being one nature shared by three persons, and how this can be so given that the Son is essentially the opposite, two natures shared by one person, we must admit at the end of the day that since God is God and we are not, we will never understand him by deduction, but only approach understanding through faith.Our celebration of the Trinity then is not resigned to a confession of how distant and mysterious God is to us as a thing unlike us; no, it is a simple celebration of personhood. Our own understanding of what a person is, is grounded in the personhood of the Trinity. In the Godhead a person is defined as one known and loved by another person, so much so that a communion of persons is created sharing one nature. So too the proper definition of us who are human persons created in the image and likeness of the Trinity, is that we become persons when we are known and loved by other persons. Jesus tells us to baptize in the persons of the Trinity because this grounds us in the trinitarian foundation of personhood. Those adopted by God in baptism receive an even more profound personhood, for they are loved and known by God in ways that human persons cannot love and know each other. The Christian faith, and its understanding of personhood grounded in the Trinity, perhaps provides the last great hope for understanding the inviolable dignity of every human person, against a torrent of ever more arbitrary and less personal definitions of what a human being is.
While first confessing that God in his essence is unlike us and so mysterious that we will make little or no progress in understanding him by deduction, still the solemnity of the Trinity is a celebration of intimacy with God. We cannot own God or put him in our pocket by studying theology, but we enjoy a greater intimacy by being called children of the Trinity through baptism, and by being placed through adoption and the sharing of the Holy Spirit at the very heart of the mystery of who God is. In the sacred liturgy we are sharing, we are placed not at odds with the Trinity, but at the very heart of the Trinity. We cry out to God together not as slaves, but as Romans says, as children crying 'Abba, Father!" We pray to the Father with the Son in the Holy Spirit at every liturgy. And in the same Spirit, we ourselves not only pray but we are privileged to listen from a front-row seat to the conversation being had between the Father and the Son, a conversation and a sharing of love that is itself the Holy Spirit. Above all, then, the liturgy of the Most Holy Trinity is a reminder not of our distance from God, but a simple realization that really couldn't get any closer. Amen.
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