Homily for Trinity Sunday 2021
Throughout history people have believed in many deities,
numerous gods. The Jewish people were
unique. God revealed Himself to them as
one and only. We see that in today’s
first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 4: “you must know now, and
fix in your heart, that the LORD is God in the heavens above and on the earth
below, and that there is no other.” This one God is the Creator. But God is not a clock-maker-god, as many
people known as Deists thought. God did
not simply create, wind creation up, and then step back, putting creation on a
shelf and no longer caring about creation or being involved in it.
No, God is not simply a creator but a Father who cares about
and for creation. God is intimately
involved in creation. God does not
ignore or reject creation. In this
sense, God is for us, not against us.
God is so involved in creation that when sin led to its
alienation, God did not destroy creation but entered into it more deeply. God took flesh and, in that way, became
“Emmanuel,” or “God-with-us.” Through
His Incarnation and Birth, God became one with creation to the point of even
suffering the death that all flesh must undergo. But His death was not the end. Rather, it was a new beginning. He rose from the dead and promised, as we
hear in today’s Gospel, the last verse of Matthew: “behold, I am with you
always.”
God is with us always in the Most Blessed Sacrament, a
mystery which we will celebrate next Sunday.
But even that was not enough. At
Pentecost, the feast we celebrated last Sunday, the Holy Spirit came into the
world and entered into all the baptized, making them, as we hear in our second
reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, true “children of God.” As Paul teaches elsewhere, we are “temples of
the Spirit.” Now God dwells within us.
This is the great mystery of the Christian faith that we
remember and celebrate today. God is for
us, with us, and within us.
This is the mystery of the One and Three: One God and Three Divine
Persons.
Unfortunately, we tend to hear the word “mystery” and think
of something that can be “solved.” If we
get enough clues we will get to the “bottom” of it. The mysteries of our faith are very
different. We will never get to the
bottom of them. They are not problems
that are to be solved. They are
realities into which we can only go deeper and grow in appreciation but, on
this side of eternity, never fully understand.
They require humility and a sense of child-like wonder, rather than a
“prove-it-to-me” attitude. This is
faith, rather than proof. It requires
accepting the revelation of One who loves us more than any human being can,
rather than scientific analysis.
Believing, rather than fully “seeing” or understanding.
Now all this may seem very esoteric or abstract and,
perhaps, impractical. But our belief
that God is One and God is Three, that God is a Communion of Love and not an
assembly of isolated individuals, has profound and very practical implications
for us.
In the first chapter of the first book of the Bible,
Genesis, we read: “God created man in his image, in the divine image he created
him; male and female he created them” (1: 27).
In other words, human beings are made in the image of the Trinity. We are made to be a “communion of love”
rather than an assembly of isolated individuals. We are made to be one without losing our
distinct personalities.
The Lakota have a saying with which they end their prayers:
“Mitakuye Oyasin” or “All My Relatives.”
In other words, as human beings we are all related and connected. We are not disconnected individuals but a
family. We are all God’s children, made
in the image of the Creator who is One and Three.
This Communion of One and Three is the meaning of Love. It is why St. John can write in his First
Letter that “God is Love.” God’s very
nature as One and Three is Love.
Now we humans made in the image of Love itself need to be
true to our nature. We are made by Love
and for love. It is who we are and what
we do.
Years ago, the author Malcolm Boyd wrote that the beginning
of love or charity is, very simply, two words: “No Them.” In the Unity of the Trinity there is
Diversity, but there is no “Them.” There
is only “We” or “Us.”
We live in such a divided and polarized Church, nation, and
world. We see other people as “Them” and
not “Us.” Our celebration today reminds
us that this is not what it means to be made in the image of God. For a true child of God, there is only “Us,”
never “Them.”
