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Homily for the Most Holy Trinity Sunday

READ: (Exo 34: 4-6, 8-9; 2 Cor 13: 11-13; Jn 3: 16-18)

REFLECT: A call to experience – Mercy, unity and love from the Holy Trinity…

Dear friends, today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. The Blessed Trinity is the mystery of one God in three Divine Persons. It is the central mystery of our Christian faith and life. We call it a mystery because reason does not alone suffice us to understand but an eye of faith that transcends reasons, questions and doubts.  The word ‘Trinity’ was at first recorded with the Latin word ‘trinitas’ by Tertullian, one of the Church Fathers in about 200, to refer to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or, in general, to any set of three things.  The early church fathers even came up with a special concept ‘perichoresis’ which explains the indwelling and mutuality of the three divine persons Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The word “Perichoresis” is the derivative of the two Greek words ‘peri’ and ‘choreo’, which put together gives the meaning ‘to go around or to come around.” So this term explains the relationship within the trinity that moves to each other in the form of a circle, without any block or hindrance. Such is the relationship shared reciprocally among three divine persons as Trinity. Moreover, God reveals himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Therefore, the Trinity Sunday invites each one of us to understand the significance that our life begins and finds its destiny in the Trinitarian God.  So based on the importance of Trinitarian God in our lives and the liturgy of the word, I would like to share with you three points of reflection;

1.     A call to experience God’s mercy:

God is always merciful and does not consider our weakness to condemn us. He always waits for us with eager longing whether we would turn back to him with a renewed mind, repentant heart and rekindled spirit. Pope Francis very beautifully shares that “God could intervene to judge the world, to destroy evil and castigate sinners. Instead, He loves the world, despite its sins. God loves every one of us even when we make mistakes and distance ourselves from Him.” Yes, that’s how God is and that’s the way God treats us. He does not count our sins but counts on us that we would listen to him and come back to him from our waywardness, because his name is mercy and he is always merciful to the one who seeks him.

Something similar we find in the first reading from the book of Exodus God manifests his name and nature declaring how merciful and gracious God is, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. God pronounces his name as mercy and reveals himself to be merciful, and yet Israel remains sinful. We see here Moses seems almost to trick Yahweh, slipping in the idea that God must after all dwell in the midst of Israel. After God declaring himself as merciful, Moses seeks the Lord to pardon the iniquities and sins of the stiff-necked people Israel and take them as his inheritance. Here we see that Moses not only seeks God’s forgiveness and mercy for the sins of Israel rather accepts that they are sinners and have sinned against God. Therefore he seeks God’s pardon, so that God continues to remain with them and becomes part of their very existence.

The triune God manifests their nature as merciful persons in their own individuality although they are three but one. The Father shows his merciful face in and through the son and the spirit by his sending and saving act; the son shows the merciful face of the father and the spirit by his coming, doing his ministry, undergoing passion, death and resurrection; the spirit shows the merciful face of the father and the son by continuing the mission of God and the son, animating our lives. That’s what perhaps we see in the entire bible from Genesis to Revelation, how God has been merciful and has shown the ways of mercy to us all.

Very beautifully, Pope Francis makes us understand the importance of mercy in our lives as Christians by asking, “Where does our mercy come from? Jesus told us: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). The more one welcomes the Father’s love, the more we can love. Mercy is not a dimension among others but rather the centre of Christian life. There is no Christianity without mercy If all our Christianity does not lead us to mercy, then we have taken the wrong path because mercy is the only true destination of all spiritual journeys. It is one of the most beautiful fruits of mercy.”

Yes, The Triune God, all together stand for mercy and show us mercy, clothe us with mercy in order that we obtain God’s offer of grace and forgiveness and be totally belong to God. Perhaps, we Christians are given the gift and the privilege of experiencing God’s mercy in the triune God in every sacrament, especially through the Sacrament of confession or reconciliation. Let us not take for granted God’s mercy nor deprive others the offer of mercy. Let us become the visible expressions of God’s merciful face to one another by the words that we speak and the deeds that we do. It may be small or big act, it does not matter but with mercy, kindness and compassion matters a lot.

2.     A call to experience God’s Unity:

There is an undivided unity in the most Holy Trinity. Although God is one and three persons as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yet they work without disunity. We see their work in the salvation history as undivided in mind and heart, seeking always for unity and harmony. At the time of creation, at the time of God’s intervention through patriarchs, prophets in the Old Testament, Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament, God always seeks to unify us because the nature of God is union and communion with each other as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Pope Francis very beautifully makes us understand the unity of the Trinitarian God saying, “consider each name of the three persons of the Trinity, which we pronounce every time we make the sign of the cross: Each name contains the presence of the other. “The Father would not be such without the Son; likewise, the Son cannot be considered alone, but always as the Son of the Father. And the Holy Spirit, in turn, is the Spirit of the Father and the Son.”  And so Pope Francis tells us that the Trinity teaches us that one can never be without the other. We are not islands, we are in the world to live in God’s image: open, in need of others, and in need of helping others.”

Yes, the second reading from the letter of St. Paul to Second Corinthians gives us glimpses of such unifying acts, by which we can be united with each to help and support, to encourage and empower others as brothers and sisters in the Lord. We hear from the first reading that we are called to rejoice, aim for restoration, comforting one another, agreeing with one another and living in peace, so that the God of love and peace will remain and greet one another with a holy kiss. Perhaps these are the aspect that we manifest in life with other to show our affinity and unity.

We all of us know and have experience the signs of unity in life. They are reconciliation, forgiveness, living in peace and allowing others to live in peace, accepting others as God’s children as created by God. Today what brings division and disunity in the family or society is that we are not ready and prepared to accept others as they are created by God, do not come forward to forgive and reconcile with others, because, we have created or imposed our ideas or identities on others. When there is an idea or identity clash, there is a conflict leading to disunity and division. So the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity challenges us and calls us to live in unity with one another as God’s children in peace and harmony.

 3.     A call to experience God’s love:

The love of God is an essential aspect of his creation and sustenance over us. God created us because he loved us; he sent prophets and in the fullness of time his son himself to save us because he loved us. Therefore the first and foremost principle or act of God is love. That’s what we hear in the Gospel reading too. Pope Francis considers the affirmation of Jesus’ words “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life,” as words indicating the action of the three divine Persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a single plan of love that saves humanity and the world.”

Yes, the passage from the Gospel of John that we have for the day’s reading can even be considered as crux message of the entire salvation history. In a summary form we are given the message of God’s salvation in Jn 3:16-18. It is the passage that occurs in the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus; it is a passage that manifests nature and essence of God is love. Indeed, God’s love for the world is unconditional and unfathomable; God’s love for the world crossed every boundary that we could imagine to be by the total self-giving love of his only Son Jesus; God’s love for the world indicates to save us and not to condemn us; God’s love respects our human freedom and choice to believe in Jesus and be saved. But the freedom of choice has a consequence, if we do not believe in Jesus, we will be already and automatically condemned. We have in the first letter of St. John, “God is love, the one who lives in God, God lives in him and he in God.” Therefore, the nature of God is love and to love,” (1 Jn 4:16). So such is the love of our Triune God.

Pope Francis underscores the importance of the Holy Trinity and their love saying, “God, One and Triune must be shown with deeds rather than words. God is transmitted not so much through books, but rather through the witness of life. He further says, “Think about good, generous, meek people we have met; recalling their way of thinking and acting, we can have a small reflection of God-Love. And what does it mean to love? Not only to wish them well and to do good, but first and foremost, at the root, to welcome others, to make room for others, to give space to others. This is what it means to love.”

Yes, our love for God and others is not to be manifested merely by words but deeds as well. The expressions and manifestations of our love for God and for others show that we are moulded and modelled after the image and likeness of God. Just as our Triune God is an embodiment of love without hatred for one another, so also we need to make this prime aspect of life of love as an embodiment in our lives. Then we will be able to say that loveliest thing in life is to love God and to be loved by God, to love others and be loved by others. We are made up of love by God and so let us exhibit our nature of love to God and to others.

RESPOND:

Do we believe in the concept of Trinitarian God and their relationship with each other and with us?

Do we experience God’s mercy, unity and love and express it to others?

What steps shall we take to make God’s visible faces of mercy, unity and love with brothers and sisters we live?

Let us experience the mercy, unity and love of the Holy Trinity and make it visible in our lives by living it and expressing it to our brothers and sisters in the world. Amen.

God bless us all! Live Jesus!

Fr. Ramesh George MSFS

rameshvkmsfs@gmail.com

9500930968