Homily Feast of the Most Blessed Trinity Year C Mystery
Homily:
Trinity Sunday C
Reading
1: We say God is all-wise. The Holy Spirit is personified as Wisdom. The Old
Testament people were not able to grasp the mystery of God let alone the
reality of a Triune God—three persons—but One God. At first, they struggled with
the human perception that there were many gods and one had to placate these
different gods.
God
revealed to Abraham that there is only One God and no other. It took
generations for this revelation to take root in the hearts and minds of the
people. If God would have revealed there is One God but three divine persons,
they would have understood this to be three gods. So God continued to formed
them in the truth of the One True God who is the I AM. At the same time, God
was laying the foundation through the prophets and other writers for the fuller
revelation of the Trinity.
Here
in the first reading we have a glimpse of this revelation. It speaks of the
Wisdom of God, who was with God before time—for all eternity. Today, we understand
this to be the Holy Spirit. As we acknowledge Jesus as the only begotten Son of
the Father, as the first born of all creation, so we acknowledge that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Paul also says that we cannot know
the mind of God except through the Spirit of God.
Reading
2: Here we have Paul’s attempt to teach about the Trinity to the early
Christian believers in Rome. Nowhere in the New Testament is the word Trinity
used in reference to God. The term comes later in the Church’s understanding of
God. But the reality of the Trinity is present.
Paul
says we are at peace with God through Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are at peace
with the Father through the death and resurrection of the Son, who is Lord.
Then he says the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit, who has been given to us. The love of God is another way of saying the
Spirit of love.
When
we try to explain the Trinity in human terms, we say that the Father perfectly
loves the Son and the Son perfectly returns love to the Father and this love is
the person of the Holy Spirit. When God loves us, he pours out his Spirit upon
us, so that we can in turn love God, not just with our human love, but with his
own divine love. It is this love of God for us in the gift of the Holy Spirit,
which enables us to turn our afflictions into the strength of endurance. This
places our hope in God throughout the afflictions.
Gospel:
We have seen the Holy Spirit called the Wisdom of God and Spirit of Love. Now,
Jesus identifies the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth, who will guide us to
all truth. What truth? God’s plan for us. The truth that will set us free, namely,
only in God does my life have meaning and purpose. The truth that we are sons
or daughters of God. The truth that I am on a pilgrimage. My true home is with
God. Again Jesus speaks of himself, the Father and Spirit.
What
does all this mean to us? How blessed are we to have been given the revelation
of the Trinity! How blessed are we to have been created in God’s own image and
likeness! How blessed to have been reconciled and justified by the death and
resurrection of Jesus! How blessed to have been anointed by the Holy Spirit,
who guides us to all truth and who is the love of God in our hearts!
We
have been given the gift of understanding to comprehend the truth in light of
God’s plan for us. We have received the gift of right judgment to make the
decisions that will enable us to live in the will of God for us. The gifts of
God through the Holy Spirit are present within us. We need to invoke the Holy
Spirit to enable us to come into that fuller, intimate relationship with the
persons of the Triune God, so that our delight is in the Lord, our peace is
steady and our love is reflective of God’s love for us.
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