Trinity Sunday
Homily for the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity
Back on January 19th, on the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, I began my homily by noting that the greeting of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, which was the second reading for that day, was one of the options given for the penitential rite; namely, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” As it happens, the very last lines of St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, today’s second reading, are another of those options: namely, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” It is a fitting greeting for Trinity Sunday which we are celebrating today.
This particular greeting highlights the Church’s understanding of who God is. In the person of Jesus, God is the free gift of salvation. In the person of the Father, God is Love; and in the person of the Holy Spirit, God is personification of fellowship or communion, that which binds us together with one another and with God.
The first reading from the Book of Exodus is another understanding of who God is. The children of Israel never thought of God as a Trinity of Persons. Yet this reading shows us the foundations for how our understanding blossomed into this notion of Trinity. We hear of God's self-revelation. God "comes down" upon the mountain. Moses goes up. God initiates this encounter. Moses responds. God's self-revelation is so powerful that it became a credal statement for the Israelites. "The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” Moses realizes that he is in the presence of God and falls down in adoration and worship. These few simple verses prompted the early Christian community to consider the three persons in one God. First, we hear of the God who comes down; namely, the Father and Creator. Second, God communicates; namely, the Word or the Son, Jesus. Finally, God evokes the response of worship which is inherently the work of the Holy Spirit.
Moses then addresses this self-revealing God and invites God to come along with the people. Moses realizes that this God is transcendent, that in order to speak to Moses, God had to “come down” to the mountain top. Realizing what God has done, the sacred author, through this invitation, reveals that God is also imminent as well as transcendent. God is present among the people. This is what God wanted. Moses’ response is exactly what God had intended from the very beginning. When the Creator made Adam and Eve, it was God’s intention that they should live with God in the garden. However, sin created a gulf between God and Adam. Adam was forced to leave the garden.
Before Adam was expelled, God told him and his wife that a plan would be set in motion that would ultimately result in the restoration of God’s original idea. Moses’ invitation to God to travel with the people of Israel was part of the plan that God set in motion in the Garden of Eden. In today’s Gospel reading we hear those familiar verses of how God’s Love resulted in Jesus coming to earth as a human being, living with the people and dying so that they would once again have access to the God who is Love. Moses invitation can be seen as a first glimmer of that very Incarnation.
When Jesus returns to the Father, the Holy Spirit comes among us so that, although Jesus is no longer physically present among us, God is still in our midst. It is the Spirit that helps us to place our faith in Jesus so that we join in fellowship, in communion with those who believe in him. God’s plan has restored our relationship, which was God’s original intention at the very first moment of creation.
Today we celebrate that Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who loved us into being, who died for us, and who joins us together as a holy people destined to live with God forever.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator
747