The Word for Sunday: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/052216.cfm
Proverbs 8: 22-31
Romans 5: 1-5
John 16: 12-15
Good
conversation is in an art between two people.
We may think the best way to get to know another is to tell them
everything about myself. Maybe they will like what I have to say and find
something about me interesting.
While
self-revelation is a part any conversation the best conversationalists are the
best listeners. To really listen
attentively to another person takes a certain amount of personal
discipline. In order to engage a person
in friendship for example, I have to show interest in them. If I spend our time
talking about myself with no effort to show real interest in anything the other
person has to say, well that’s a formula for a doomed relationship. And, truthfully, the same principle I think
applies with God. In order to get God’s
attention, we need to listen to what he says.
The
opening prayer for our Mass on this Feast of the Holy Trinity, sometimes called
the feast of God’s love, is essentially a reminder of the conversation God has
had with humanity. It reflects what we say each Sunday in our Creed about what
God has said to us. Let’s listen carefully:
God our Father, who by sending into
the world
The Word of truth and the Spirit of
sanctification
Made known to the human race your
wondrous mystery,
Grant us, we pray, that in
professing the true faith,
We may acknowledge the Trinity of
eternal glory
and adore your Unity, powerful in
majesty.
That
prayer is packed with God’s attempt to engage humanity in conversation. In fact it implies an effort on the part of a
God who is not content to remain hidden.
He has invited us to listen to him and so he uncovers the truth of his
very nature which is the truth we mark today on the Feast of the Most Holy
Trinity. What has God said to us?
That he
offers us a parental image of himself: Father. Something we can all picture. That he is engaged in action, a God who is
active and involved when he “sent” someone to the world. Who?
The Word
(capital letter), so it implies a person who would speak on his behalf, the
Word of truth but who would be separate from the Father. There was another sent: the “Spirit of
sanctification.” A third person is
implied here – a Spirit whose work is to make us holy. So this opening prayer
reflects what we hear in our Gospel today from the mouth of Jesus: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot
bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all
truth.” If Jesus is the Word of truth the Spirit speaks that same truth to
us.
While this exercise may sound like a test of theological theory, it supports all we believe about God in our Christian faith. Our God language is different and unique from other religions around the world. And what we believe about God makes all the difference as to how we view one another.
God in our
Christian belief is forever three in one: Father, Son and Holy Spirit – one God
in three separate but equal persons. In
Jesus, the Father’s Word, we hear God speak to us; he desperately wants us to
know him and so he became one of us, and he invites us to listen to what he
says: that he is love and he loves us, that he is mercy and invites us to
conversion of heart and life, that he has forgiven and healed a broken
relationship we had with him because of sin, that his Son paid the ultimate
price by his death and resurrection, and that their Spirit will continue to
engage humanity in conversation by revealing the deepest meaning and implication
of all that the Father said to us through the conversation he began thousands of years ago with Abraham, Moses, the Prophets and ultimately through his own Son, Christ Jesus. As Paul reminds us in our second
reading: “. . . the love of God has been
poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Our
triune God has spoken and continues to speak loud and clear to humanity and to
history but do we listen and understand?
Do we care? Are we quiet and attentive enough to hear him speak? Do we
immerse our daily lives in so many distractions that we are deaf to God?
This
Sunday’s Feast of the Holy Trinity is a challenge each year that on the surface
alone may not particularly grab our attention.
A baby in a manger, Jesus feeding 5,000, walking on the water, dying on
a cross, even rising from the dead is far more scenes we can sink our teeth
into. But, the “Holy Trinity” leaves us
a bit flat. We may feel as if we are
staring at a stained glass image of a shamrock with St. Patrick or a kind of
triangle with the mysterious eye of God in the middle or some similar artistic
portrayal.
Yet, to
stand for a moment in awe before our God is maybe the right formula in this
Feast. God is not a static being,
however. He lives and is indeed active
and energized with sustaining life in creation, bringing life into birth and
welcoming in death.
This
concept of the Trinity finds its origin in the teaching of Jesus and has more
deeply been unfolded for us in the early centuries of Christianity, finally
settled in the 4th century at the Council of Nicea which gave us the
Creed we recite each Sunday. No other world religion would define God as
Trinitarian except for Christianity.
That alone makes us unique among world religions. Though we share the understanding of God as
totally other and only One with our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters,
only Christian understanding departs from this in defining the One God as three
persons.
As we mark
this Feast this weekend, we may want to imagine we are Moses before the burning
bush (Ex 3: 1-10) or Abraham in the dark, silent desert pondering God’s majesty
and his strange promise (Gen 15: 5-6), or Elijah on the mountain top waiting in
awe for God to reveal himself (1 Kg 19: 9-13). Moses could hear because he
listened, Elijah could hear because he was anxious to catch God’s presence and
to respond when he sensed God speaking to him in the gentle breeze.
In the
celebration of our Eucharist, we stand before a great mystery yet also an
invitation to listen. So God speaks in a
language we can comprehend in the scriptures but do we listen? And even if we hear do I bother to reflect
what it all means? The Word (capital W,
so the person who is the Word of the Father), offers himself to us not as an
idea or as a theory but in flesh and blood sacramentally present as food! He becomes life for us!
This is
God who speaks, who knocks, who pursues us as St. Augustine so beautifully implied in his Confessions, who constantly invites us to hear his story of self-revealing love and
invites us to live with one another in that same love until we are welcomed to his
heavenly home. And who, as we hear today, is incredibly “Awesome.”
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