Homily for Trinity Sunday

7 June 2009
St. Lawrence Catholic Center

AMDG +JMJ

During the priest retreat last week, Archbishop Naumann took a few moments to talk to us about the death of Dr. George Tiller, the notorious abortion doctor in Wichita, who as you all know, was murdered in his church last week by a lone gunman. Archbishop Naumann wrote a column that echoes what he said to us his priests, for The Leaven, and I hope you will read it there, if you have not already done so, but he invited us to comment on the killing this week at Mass as well if we chose to do so. The Archbishop chose to write this last week for the Leaven, even though he does not normally write in the summer, because he has so consistently written about the evil of abortion in his weekly column, and as many of you know, has garnered quite a bit of national attention surrounding the pastoral advice he has given former Governor Sebelius. At any rate, the column to which I refer you is expertly written, and helps us as Catholics to navigate our feelings surrounding the death of Dr. George Tiller. The article is clear that any feelings of justice being done or any triumphalism over such a terrible crime is a matter of conscience for us, for our consciences must be formed in such a way that we know firmly that violence is never solved or changed or healed by more violence. The article comes on the heels of the immediate and unequivocal condemnation of the killing by all the bishops of Kansas, speaking on behalf of all Catholics, and by all the major pro-life groups that have spoken strongly against abortion. The suspected shooter was not a member of any reputable pro-life movement, and clearly acted on his own as a vigilante. Therefore in addition to condemning the killing, the Church also wants to make it clear that any attempt to link this killing to the Church or the pro-life movement is unfair. What is more, the Archbishop’s column expresses genuine sadness for the family of Dr. Tiller, and that this killing, as violence and evil usually do, has the potential to harden the hearts of those who might one day be won for the cause of life. The Archbishop expressed sadness that the pro-life movement, by its prayers and tireless work for justice, has not yet been able to turn the hearts of all toward the cause of life, nor has it been able to restore legal protection for the unborn. He urges all of us not to reduce our efforts for the cause of life, as some in the media might suggest us to do, but to pray and to sacrifice even more for the conversion of hearts, and to work even harder within the confines of the law, for an end to abortion, which continues to be a scourge in our nation.

A few words as well today about the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, our celebration that always follows one week after Pentecost Sunday. This feast has the reputation of being a feast that priests hate to preach, for how does one go about preaching the most inaccessible mystery of the Trinity? How can we have any meaningful access to God’s innermost secret? Clint Eastwood's character in the movie Million Dollar Baby, has a habit of going to daily Mass, and then badgering the priest every day with a question that is hard to answer. In one scene in the movie, he asks the priest to explain the Holy Trinity to him. The priest replies that he doesn’t have time to do so, and that Clint’s character should stop bothering him, and finally, he says that the only people that go to daily Mass as much as Clint’s character are the people that can’t forgive themselves for something. This feast has the same reputation, that the priest is just trying to get through preaching the Trinity without spouting any heresy. He is always glad when it is over. How do you help people to understand the Trinity?

The answer, I think, does not lie within any human philosophical genius, no matter how much philosophy or theology one has studied. For geniuses, the Trinity is indeed a worthy subject for contemplation, an inexhaustible mystery that is worthy of pursuit by the best minds. But explaining the Trinity is not so much about finding a way to teach deep philosophy and theology to regular folks, it is about listening to God’s revelation in such a way as to see and to hear that we are right in the middle of the Trinity. That’s right, the mystery of the Trinity is not only a deeper and more remote attribute of God. It’s not that we say that God is omnipotent, eternal, divine, completely unlike you so much so that you will never understand Him, and oh yeah, even if you think you are getting close to understanding Him, He is also three persons in one nature, even more unlike you, so that you never have any chance of understanding Him. No, although the Trinity is like that, that is not what this Feast is about – celebrating that God is unlike us in every way! No, this Solemnity is given us by the Church for us to celebrate, not any frustration or distance between us and God, but that we are in the middle of the Trinity. We are at the heart of the mystery of who God is. God is love, and He is an eternal exchange of love between three distinct persons, and we His beloved children are right in the midst of this exchange.

Let’s try to understand the Trinity this way. God the Father sends His Son on a mission. The mission is this – for the Son to go to the very edge of God-forsakenness. The mission of the Son is to go as far away from God as He can, to allow Himself to be crucified and counted among the wicked who seem the very farthest from God. To go so far away from God that part of his conversation with His Father is this – My God, why have you forsaken me. And then the Son goes even farther away after his death. As we say in the creed, he descends into Hell, to go farther away from God than even those who were thought to be outside of God forever. As our seminarian Nathan reminded me this morning, it is as if the mission of the Son was to stretch a rubber band as far as it could possibly be stretched, before snapping back to the Father from which the Son came. Even in the depths of Hell, the Son spoke to the Father – Father, I praise you for all things! These people are your gift to me! Let them be one in us!

This conversation between the Father and Son is the Holy Spirit. In the Trinity, there is the one who loves, the one who is beloved, and the exchange of love between the two. This exchange of love between Father and Son, the love that they share, is the Holy Spirit, and is a conversation that we are in the middle of. It is an exchange of love that includes the mysteries of creation and redemption. It is a conversation we have access to, as God has revealed to us his innermost secret. We have access to this mystery most intimately as we celebrate the liturgy. We pray to God the Father, with Christ the Son who has taken on our humanity, and we pray in the Holy Spirit. We pray not only to our Father as children, not only with the Son who is our brother, but also in the Holy Spirit, as we listen to the Father and the Son speak to each other! All of this is present in the prayers we are about to pray together. Listen! This is the celebration of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. We are here to listen to the Father and Son speak to each other. We are able to hear with our own ears the innermost conversation God is having within Himself. And we are able to do this not because we have broken some encrypted code, but because God has first loved us, and chosen to include us at the very heart of who He is! +m