TRINITY SUNDAY YEAR "B"

TRINITY SUNDAY      Year  "B"

INTRODUCTION       To celebrate the Holy Trinity, let us begin by invoking the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Each time we celebrate this fundamental mystery of our faith, we are drawn more profoundly into the intimate life and love of the Three Divine Persons.  That is why we can only stand in thankfulness (for this is what Eucharist means) and pray God to make us worthy by taking our sins away.

THE HOMILY The Feast of the Holy Trinity goes back to 12^th. Century England and St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Some historians say the great Thomas celebrated a liturgy in honour of the Trinity in his cathedral. So was born the observance. In the 14^th. Century it came to be observed by the whole Church. Belief in the Holy Trinity goes back, of course, to the New Testament; and try, as we might, we would not be able to keep the Trinity in a closet, any more than we can keep love a secret. We open and close the liturgy by invoking those three most holy names of the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit.

A priest was instructing a man for baptism, and taught him the names of the persons of the Trinity. The following week he asked the man to repeat the three names. The man said, “The first is the Father, the 2^nd. Is the Son, and.....excuse me, I can’t remember the name of the 3^rd. gentleman.”  Gentleman, indeed !  We may not be able to enumerate the three Persons, but let us be aware that we are in the presence of pure and sweet gentleness.

To comprehend God is out of the question. To worship Him is the need of the heart.  A priest was sitting in an airport departure lounge waiting for his flight. A fellow passenger, wanting to kill time, struck up a conversation. Said he, “Father, I believe only what I can understand. So, I can’t buy your Trinity. Maybe you can explain it to me.”  The priest out down the New York Times he was reading. “Do you see the sun out there ?”  “Yes.”  Very well it’s 83 million miles away. The rays coming through the window are coming from the sun. It’s a very cold day. And the warmth we are enjoying comes from a combination of sun and rays. Well, the Trinity is like that. God the Father is that blazing sun. His Son is the ray he sends down to us. Then both combine to send us the Holy Spirit who is, in this context, the warmth we feel on our bodies. If you can figure out the workings of the sun, the rays and the heat, it will help you get a faint idea of the Trinity. And as for trying to understand the Trinity, it’s like staring wide-eyed into the noonday sun in order to understand it. All you get for your efforts is a serious headache and blinded eyes, requiring aspirin, eyes drops and a pair of Ray-Ban.” So the priest turned to the fellow passenger and asked, “You get the point ?”  The man muttered something about catching a flight and took off.

Neither St. Augustine, nor St. Thomas Aquinas of Paris University nor Mr. Albert Einstein could comprehend the Trinity. St. Paul mentions the Trinity 30 times in his letter. In chapter 11 of the Book of Job, the old man says, “Can anyone penetrate the deep designs of God?” Who said that God has to tell us everything?

He tells us only on a need-to-know basis. Take it on faith and you’ll muddle through somehow.

You and I should have no difficulty buying into a God who loves us passionately, a Son who is willing to die for us, and a Holy Spirit who helps us become saints. The Father played creator and was overjoyed that the world turned out so attractively. The Son played redeemer to put everything right again in the wounded world by stretching out his arms on the Cross. The Spirit played sanctifier and joyfully made room in the heart of each of us for the entire Trinity as large as they are. Today the Trinity invites us to keep playing with this delightful game of life and love. And why not ? We have nothing to lose but our chains.

The 14^th. century Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, expressed his thought on the Triune God in verse. His Italian runs off the lips like honey:

“O trina luce, che in unica stella.”

And for the benefit of the very young children, I translate into barbaric Anglo-Saxon: “O triune light, which in a single star contents all upon whom it shineth.”

PRAYER        O God, Father, moment by moment you hold us in being; on you we depend. O God, eternal Son, friend and brother beside us, in you we trust.

O God, Holy Spirit, life and love within us, from you we live.

O God, beyond us, God beside us, God within us; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three Persons in one God, we adore you, we thank you, we love you.

THE SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY

MATTHEW 28:16-20

Friends, here is the curious thing about the Trinity: at one and the same time, it is the most extraordinary and the most ordinary of Christian doctrines, simultaneously the most inaccessible and the most obvious.  On the one hand, there is a highly developed, technical language regarding this great mystery. On the other hand, the most ordinary Catholic simply and regularly invokes the Trinity every time he crosses himself. Our Gospel for Trinity Sunday is taken from the very end of Matthew’s Gospel. The risen and glorified Lord speaks to the new Israel of the Church: "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me." This is not an ordinary prophet speaking. This is the very Word of the Father, the exact replica of the Father’s being. Jesus then tells them to go forth and to do the work of gathering in, of drawing people into the very dynamics of the divine life. Now, how all of this fits together theoretically is indeed a fascinating question, but we should never allow the arcane language of theology to obscure the revolutionary meaning of the Trinity: it is a summons to mission, a call to action.