Beloved
Disciple Catholic Church
Current Homily:
In Festo Sanctissimæ Trinitatis
[Feast of the Most Holy Trinity]: June 7, 2009
Delivered by Most Reverend Roger LaRade, O.F.A.
Beloved Disciple Catholic Church,
© 2009 Roger LaRade
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Romans 11, 33-36; Matthew 28, 18-20.
“Benedícta sit sancta Trínitas, atque indivísa únitas…”
“Blessed be the Holy Trinity, and undivided unity…”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
And so, we have just signed ourselves in the name of the Holy Trinity. We do so whenever we begin a prayer and whenever we being a new religious ceremony. It is also the formula we use to end most prayers in the Liturgy as we say: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” At our Baptism, according to the wish of Jesus, we entered our Christian life “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Our faith as Christians is Trinitarian. Our faith is based on belief in the Holy Trinity. And yet, this seems to be a dogma that is difficult to understand. Certainly, there have been many attempts at explaining the Trinity; many of which are so theologically nuanced as to be incomprehensible to most of us.
While Trinitarian belief is present from the very beginnings
of Christianity, the feast of the Most Holy Trinity itself started in the tenth
century when Bishop Stephan of Liége (d. 920) introduced it into his church.[i] Gradually
it was accepted in the churches of the
The centrality of this mystery to our faith can be seen even more clearly maybe if we consider that it is a combination of the three principal feasts of the Church: Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. At Christmas, the first Person of the Trinity gives the second Person to the world; at Easter, the second Person of the Trinity redeems the world through His suffering and resurrection; at Pentecost, the third Person of the Trinity gives us new life. Christmas, Easter and Pentecost: the trinity of the Trinity. Only after we have journeyed through all three of these feasts in the course of the liturgical year can we celebrate the fullness of the reality of God, God as Holy Trinity.
The dogma of our faith which we celebrate today is this[ii]: There is one God. In this one God there are three divine persons; the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. But there are not three Gods; there is but one, eternal, incomprehensible God. The Father is not more God than the Son, neither is the Son more God than the Holy Spirit. The Father is the first divine Person; the Son is the second divine Person, begotten from the nature of the Father from eternity; the Holy Spirit is the third divine Person, proceeding from the Father and the Son. This is our faith; this is what we profess at every Sunday Mass when we pray the Creed after the homily: I believe in one God. The Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth…And I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God…Who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven…And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
How can we begin to approach this mystery? It seems to me that as we consider our understanding of the presence of God in our lives – as we think of our liturgical journey through Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, that what reveals itself to us is God’s love. At Christmas, we remind ourselves that “God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son” (John 3, 16). Easter is the feast of love of the Son: “In this we have known the love of God, because He has laid down His life for us” (1 John 3, 16). At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit pours divine love into our hearts. And so, perhaps the best expression of the mystery of the Holy Trinity is to be found at 1 John 4, 8 and again at 1 John 4, 16: “God is love”.[iii] The word which is translated into English by ‘love’ is the Greek word agape. Its meaning is that of ‘self-gift’, that is, “a love which is completely centered on the one loved…centered on the other”.[iv]
About three hundred years after the Fourth Gospel and the
first letter of John were written,
From all eternity God is the Lover who gives Godself away perfectly; and the Beloved who accepts being loved and returns it perfectly; and the Love, the endless, perfect bond of mutual self-gift uniting the Lover and Beloved. From all eternity God is an enormous explosion of agape, self-gift, and it is that self-gift which grounds all that exists.[vi]
This is the core of our faith; that God is best understood by the language of loving relationship, the language of self-giving. Our faith is our call: to follow Jesus, to connect with the divine breath within us, we too must live a life based on self-giving relationship. The mystery of the Holy Trinity calls us to this life. Let us pray for one another, that as we are nourished with the Eucharist, that it may strengthen our sense of being loved by God and our desire to love in return.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.