Commments on Holy Trinity Sunday readings

Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

by Fr Mario De Battista ofm

This feast of the Holy Trinity we celebrate today is clearly a celebration of who God is. We Christians, unlike other world religions, say that God has revealed himself to be one God, but that this God is three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each Person is wholly and totally God and yet there are not three separate Gods, but one God.

Brothers and sisters, this God of Christians that we believe in and worship is we say, a mystery. When we call God a mystery we are not saying that God is so far above us human beings that we cannot know anything about him. No, if we could not know anything about God, then our faith would be something strange, even useless. Rather, when we call God a mystery and put our faith in Him, we are placing our trust and hope and lives into the hands of a God whom we can know more and more about, but without ever reaching the end of our knowledge. This is God as mystery, a being without end, a being we can never know completely, a being who shows Himself to us without end.

It is perhaps for this reason that in today's Gospel, we hear Jesus say that he still has many things to say to the disciples (and to us), but that they would be too much for us now. The knowledge of the mysterious God that Jesus himself knows completely cannot and should not be known by us completely, at least not at once. Rather, we must wait for the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, who will lead us to the complete truth, to the complete knowledge of who God is and what God is like.

Brothers and sisters, God knows us infinitely better than we know Him and certainly better than we even know ourselves. God knows that even if he were to give us the complete truth about himself (and about ourselves), we would still not be able to receive it and understand it. As St Augustine once said, for us to know the total mystery of God, it would be like a boy trying to empty all the water of the ocean into a small hole he has dug on the seashore.

So today's feast is not one in which we pretend to know or fully understand the mystery of God as Trinity. More important than this is to celebrate this feast as part of the slow journey of the human family to know more of the truth of who God is. We are on a journey of knowing God, a journey that will only end when we ourselves are one with the God who made us; one with the God who is three Persons but One.

As we travel this journey led by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth who is given to us by the Father through his Son, Jesus Christ, we are also on a journey to know ourselves more and more. I say this because one of the first things we know about God is that He created us. He created us from His own desire that we exist and have life, and He created us from His own desire to love us as His very own children. We, each and every one of us, only exist because God himself wants us to exist and because God loves us enough. Without God wanting us and loving us, none of us would be here at all.

And this is why we can say that each one of us is made in the image and likeness of God. Each of us is made from God's desire and love. Each of us comes from and out of the God who is and the God who is love itself. This also is the truth that Jesus wants us to learn through his Holy Spirit. This truth is one that we each need to learn and understand and take to our hearts in how we live with one another. Because this truth teaches us of the infinite goodness and worth that we each have in the mind and heart of God.

Brothers and sisters, our parish theme today is "Living the Truth as God's Family." Living the truth means at least that we know the truth of how precious and loved we each are to our God … that we know we are not important or valuable to God because of the things that we human beings tend to value in each other, such as our wealth and possessions, our power and influence, our physical attractiveness or personality. No, we are valued and loved because of God's loving desire that we exist, and everything we do and how we live should be to give thanks to God for so great a gift.

Finally, it is when we try to live this truth, is then that we live truly as God's family. To live as God's family means we live as God made us to be – his beloved sons and daughters, brothers and sisters to one another. Living the truth as God's family, as the Spirit of God teaches us, means there can be no place in our Christian communities for the sorts of divisions that affect our nation. I do not need to name these I think.

God is three Persons but one God. We are many persons, but because we are made in God's image and likeness, we too are called to be one. Let us continue the journey to become one, placing our hope and trust in the God we profess as Trinity.