Homily - Trinity Sunday

Homily – Trinity Sunday – May 26, 2002 Year A – John 3:16-18

This week, the church throughout the world celebrates Trinity Sunday, a celebration of the mystery of the true nature of God. God the Father, Creator of all, God the Son, Jesus the Redeemer, and God the Holy Spirit, the Advocate and Sanctifier. I have sat through many homilies over the years and heard all kinds of analogies to try to explain the Trinity, using models such as triangles - three angles, one shape, or water which can be ice, liquid or steam and still be water, and others as well. Well I can’t tell you what the Trinity means by itself, but I can ask you take the time to think and pray about what the Trinity means to you.

I find it amazing that something as difficult, as impossible to understand and as open to so many interpretations has survived. And yet, virtually every Christian denomination believes in the Holy Trinity, and believes the same way we do. Even though arguments over authority and interpretation of scripture and denial of tradition outside of scripture have driven wedges between Christ's followers to the point that there are large differences in doctrine on many important issues, yet the Trinity, the identity and essence of God, remains the same for all! Almost as if God, in allowing our humanity to divide us in lesser issues has insured that our faith in His true nature would remain undiminished.

When I was living in Los Angeles as a teenager, I remember reading that there were 638 different Christian denominations inside the city limits of Los Angeles, some of whom disagreed with each other over the tiniest half sentences in the Bible, and yet every one of them accepted the Father, His Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit! One God, three persons.

I was given this book by my older brother Bob, who is a Basilian priest and a Rhodes scholar. It is entitles simply TRINTAS, or an encyclopedia of the Holy Trinity. There is the summary of philosophy on the Trinity of over 100 people, dozens of definitions and historical developments and it also describes many many philosophies themselves - both accepted and heretical with exotic names like adoptianism, appropriation, circumincession, the Economic Trinity, Homoeanism, homoiousion, modalism, monarchianism, patripassianism, pneumatomachi, priscillianism, sabellianism, subordinationism, tritheism, unitarianism, and each article has thirty footnotes to works from the third century to the present day.

These many great and holy people, men and women of tremendous intellect have struggled to understand how this can be, three in one, and if they have failed to find the formula, I am certainly not going to insist on knowing and understanding everything perfectly before I believe.

The exercise of trying to describe God is one of futility before we begin. We must fail. But that hasn't stopped us from trying. As humans we want to control things and what better way to control God than being to explain exactly who he is, how he works, what he's made of and how he operates. Because, you see, once we have God in a box, then we are back in control as humans.

But God defies this and asks us to believe in him in faith, to accept his will without full understanding, to trust his love without being able to control it. Despite all the words that people have written, Scripture does not record a lot about the Trinity, probably because the writers had such strong faith in the principal and it seemed so essential to their faith that they couldn't even imagine anyone questioning it.

In fact it was nearly five hundred years after Christ when the Leaders of the Church felt it necessary to clearly write down and define the Trinity in words, or at least as far as they could. It took five hundred years for the basic power of the faith we had received from Jesus to begin to be challenged by the intellectuals of the times who felt sure they could do better than God in defining his true make-up, who had to be able to define God more efficiently, logically, so it became necessary to write down clearly what everyone to that time had simply believed.

I said scripture does not say a lot about the Trinity, and that also means that Jesus didn't say a lot about it, or if he did, the gospel writers didn't feel it needed more than the few sentences we get, just to remind us of a certainty of faith.

One of my favourite stories of the Saints is about the Trinity and is told of St. Augustine, one of the Church's most distinguished doctors of the faith. One day, St. Augustine was walking along a sandy beach, pondering the Trinity and how to explain it. He came upon a small child on the beach and the child had dug a hole in the sand and was running to the water with a tiny bucket and bringing the water back and pouring it into the hole, watching it drain away, and then returning to the sea again.

St. Augustine asked him what he was doing and he replied "I am emptying the ocean into this hole I have dug!". St. Augustine smiled and said "My son, you can't possibly empty the entire ocean into that small hole". And the boy answered, "Augustine, it would be easier for me to empty the seas here than for you to fully comprehend the mystery of the Trinity!"

The story didn't say whether the child on the beach was an angel, a vision or even the Christ Child Himself appearing to Augustine but the message is the same, don't try to understand - believe!

But then what - after we decide we can and must believe? Then what? Well maybe we can turn that faith into something which will turn into God's saving action after all.

Start by praising the Trinity, and have courage to offer that praise in public! Make the sign of the cross. When we make the sign of the cross, we say “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!” By acting in God’s name, it is like we are claiming power of attorney, the ability to act here on earth on God’s behalf. Just as the one who acts for us can’t know everything about us, we still trust that they will act in our best interests.

When we act in the name of the Trinity, we can act as God wants us to even though we don’t understand him completely. We can acknowledge Him in public, make the sign of the cross and say grace, even in a restaurant, giving thanks in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

One of the best ways to live our faith is to proclaim it, without embarrassment. Think about it - are we more afraid of what a stranger may think than our own God? Are we worried someone will think of us as religious nuts or superstitious or do we want your God to know that we are acting in his name and we are committed to our faith! The real truth is that most people will not laugh, they will respect you for your integrity and commitment.

God the Father promised Moses in the first reading that he would be merciful, faithful and full of steadfast love! Jesus reminds us that God has been true to all three of these promises by sending Him, Jesus, the only Son, to be our salvation. A salvation which can be obtained through simple faith in Him. A salvation that can be strengthened by the special gift of the Eucharist when we share in God’s life by receiving the real Body of his Son here at Mass.

Finally, as we saw last week, so powerfully on the feast of Pentecost - especially for the young people of St. Mary’s who were confirmed and now must struggle to live and defend their faith as spiritual adults - Jesus introduces us to His Holy spirit, who has come to be with us until the end of time, to keep us in God's grace and to guide our steps towards our goal.

Our goal should not be to understand what the Trinity means so we can explain it, but to take the time to set our Goal to believe what it means to us so we can live it, so we can reach our life in eternity together with God, our One God, with the one who is our Father, our Creator, the God who is Love, who is our brother Jesus, who has saved us, the God who is one of us, and who is the Holy Spirit, our Giver of Grace, and the God who comforts us.

Deacon Steve

Deacon Steve