HOLY TRINITY HOMILY YEAR B

 

HOMILY FOR 26 MAY 2024 SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY YEAR B

Deuteronomy 4: 32-34, 39-40;  Psalm 33: 4-5, 6, 8, 18-19, 20, 22; Romans 8: 14-17; Matthew 28: 16-20

UNDERSTANDING THE MYSTERY OF HOLY TRINITY

I pray for you: May you continue to be drawn into the relationship of our God: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! AMEN

Today we are celebrating the relationship among Godhead, and the relationship among Children of God. Our God is primarily a relationship. God relates within Godhead. God is similar to a healthy family of parents and child(ren). Each member interacts with each other. Although distinct, there is also a profound oneness that is indivisible. We are called and invited to participate in the life of the Triune God by being in relationship with the Relationship of the Three-in-One. In all the readings there is evidence of the Triune God in action.

Our readings present to us a view of the Most Holy Trinity, whose solemnity we celebrate today. The First Reading from Deuteronomy enables us to see the actions which could be attributed to God the Father. It summarizes the role of God from the beginning (Genesis) until the present.  The Lord God of the Hebrew Scriptures (OLD TESTAMENT) is often thought of as God the Father. In the reading of today, God is proclaimed as the creator, the savior, and the life-giver to the people who are called by this one God. These three actions (creating, saving, and giving life) speak about the desire of God to have a relationship with humans. In this reading, we see three facets (faces, personas) of God which are often individually attributed to one of the three persons of the Holy Trinity. God the Father is known as the creator. Jesus, God the Son, is truly the Savior, and it is God the Holy Spirit who gives life. Even though these different characteristics are linked with a particular person in the Trinity, they are all the acts of the One God.

The Second Reading, from the letter of Paul to the Romans, focuses on the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul addresses the role of the Holy Spirit. It is by the leading of the Holy Spirit that we are welcomed into the family of God, not just as friends or acquaintances, but as children of God. By the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we can call God our Loving Father. Through the working of the Holy Spirit we become co-heir with the Son of God, Jesus. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives creates the link, the relationship, with God, not just as creator, but as Savior, and as the giver of life; the very life of the Triune God. We have a share in divine life through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives; we are truly daughters and sons of God (not by blood but by adoption).

In the Gospel, Jesus Christ gathers with His disciples for the last time of His earthly existence.  He commissions His followers to go out and continue His ministry and mission by welcoming more members into the community of faith.  They are to do this by baptizing (baptizo - plunging) them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is when we take on the name of the Most Holy Trinity that we become sharers in the mystery of salvation. This is the command which Jesus Christ received from His Father and which He now invests His followers to continue.

Dear Sisters and Brothers, the mystery of the Trinity is both simple and complex.  Simply stated, it is that there is only one God, yet that one God is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The complexity comes from the struggle our mere human minds have when trying to adequately understand Who God is. But Trinitarian Life is not meant to be a problem to be solved or an understanding to be figured out.  

The Trinity and the adoption into the family of the Triune God is a mystery to be lived. We are invited to participate in the very being or essence of God and have our lives enriched and lifted up to the divine level. But, better than knowing and trying to figure out how God is one yet three, I am called to know and be known by our Triune God. This knowing and being known comes only from living in relationship with our God Who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Not only is creation the result of the loving relationship of God, but God has also taken an active role in the continuing relationship with humanity. Because God graced humans with free will (so they could freely choose to be in relationship with God), humans also have the ability to (and in practice, do) refuse the loving relationship of God. Once again, the loving relationship of God spills out with a desire to re-establish the loving relationship with those who have refused to accept the gift of God through their human sinfulness. It is the desire of God for a loving relationship that led to the Son of God becoming human, in order to save us through His life, suffering, death, and resurrection.  

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith. Pope St. John Paul II recovered the notion of the Holy Trinity as a Divine Family. While the more philosophical explanations of a community of persons or an ontological union of individual subsistent persons within a shared divine nature are accurate, the depth and significance of these formulations could be lost on the average believer in the pews. And so, we go back to the retrieval of the notion of the Divine Family. 

The Divine Family achieves the essential point of the Trinitarian teaching, namely, God loves us and desires fellowship with us. The teaching on the Divine Family presents God as a family, Father to Son, and Son to Father, and the Holy Spirit as the Love between them. As in a marriage, the love between two spouses brings forth life in a child, so the Holy Trinity exists as this Love between the Father and Son. As three family members are equal in dignity, so the Persons of the Holy Trinity are equal in divinity and splendor. And so, God the Divine Family created the heavens and earth and crowned this creation with the human person, made in the divine image, male and female, he created them. 

As members of the human family, therefore, we are all welcomed into this Divine Family. No one is excluded or left out. The door is always open. God in his innermost essence is not solitude, but family. God is personal, but lives a communion of life, three persons in a mutual communion of life, the lover, the loved and the bond that joins them together. Therefore, we must love our fellow human being, be united in the family and in the entire society, and share what we have with those who do not have.

There is no yours and mine in the Godhead, it is only ours. What is yours is not just yours, it is mine, it is ours, it belongs to God. This is the truth we have to try to take in if we really begin to accept the reality of our God is a God who is one but in three persons in a communion of life, a bond of love we will share.

Dearly beloved in Christ Jesus, as we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, let us remember the Trinitarian model of communion and love. Let us remember also as believers in the Triune God, we are called to be in communion with God and with others. To be made in the image of our Triune God means that we are called to participate in, and in some small way, reflect the life of love, relationship and community of God.

MEDITATION What is my understanding of the Blessed Trinity?  How do I relate to the three person of the One God?  Does my prayer life reflect my belief in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as distinct persons, but still united in one Being?  How do I proclaim my relationship with and understanding of the Triune God to others?  

PRAYER Lord God, through Your Goodness, You reveal Yourself to us over the course of our human history, inviting us to come into Your relationship  Your essence. We want to give You glory, honor, and praise and exalt in Your Name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Through Christ Our Lord.  Amen.

O DIVINE WORD WHO TOOK FLESH FOR HUMAN SAKE, REDEEM US IN OUR SITUATION

© Rev Fr Utazi Prince Marie Benignus Zereuwa