Most Holy Trinity

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle C (2)

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The Gospel reminds us today that all the Father has, all the Son has, and in turn all the Holy Spirit will declare to his disciples is of the whole Trinity.  The hallmark of our Christian faith is that there is One God in Three Persons, or we risk writing off God in one way or another by considering the Father as aloof, utterly transcendent and beyond our daily lives and interests, authoritarian; considering Jesus Christ just another rabbi or wise man, sharing some human teachings with us and giving good example, nothing more than a social worker; or considering the Holy Spirit as just another one of those flighty inspirations and sentiments that never results in anything.

Today’s readings remind us that everything we are, everything for which we hope, and everything expected of us and that we expect from God comes to us from the whole Trinity. What are expectations and what are the Trinity’s?

In the First Reading we see the Trinity relishing in the creation of the world. The wisdom of God is speaking and reminiscing of the moment of creation. He describes himself as the forerunner of God’s wonders, before the earth was made. In these words, we are reminded that God the Father made the world with his Son in mind, gazing upon him in eternity with love.

The Son in turn, begotten by the Father, as we profess every Sunday in the Creed, delights over creation and the human race. This hearkens back to the first chapters of Genesis, when the Spirit of the Lord hovered over the face of the deep, ready to begin creation with “let there be light.” When the Lord creates man, he breathes his own spirit into him, a Spirit of life, making him a living being and wanting to create men in his own image and likeness. We see that spirit of play and artistic relish that reminds us of God’s total freedom to create us, without any need and restraint, and with us in mind as his true masterpieces, made in his image.

In creating man, the Trinity had an even more special masterpiece in mind, a masterpiece that would in part craft itself. He gave us the freedom to conform our lives to this masterpiece of life that he wanted to see brought about in each of us. In faith and love we could trust in him to show us the way to be a true masterpiece, a masterpiece of moral beauty, truth, and love. When Adam and Eve sinned they chose their distorted image of God as the model to imitate, and the image of God was disfigured in them. As a result, just as God warned them before eating of the fruit, spiritual death ensued. Nevertheless, God’s delight in us and desire for our glory would not let the story end there.

As the Second Reading reminds us, God became man to show us that true masterpiece and image of God that he had in mind from all eternity. As Paul reminds us, through our Lord Jesus Christ we have peace and access to the glory of God again. God created the world with his Son’s image in mind, and Jesus, by becoming flesh, by becoming a man, shows us exactly what God had on his mind when he created us. That image of God found in Christ shows us how we can restore the image of God in us that was disfigured by sin. By Christ becoming man our likeness is restored as well: the flow of spiritual life is reopened by Jesus’ Passion and death, and poured into us by the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, as we profess in the Creed every Sunday. Full of that divine life, we happily put up with the sufferings and struggles of daily life, knowing that the glory of God will come for us.

As the Gospel reminds us, God is not just the origin of our existence, but the purpose of it as well, the end toward which we’re all headed. It is not the end in terms being finished, it is the beginning of eternal life with the Trinity. Jesus became man and suffered and died to reconcile the world with God, the Father of mercies. He does this by sending the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised the disciples during the Last Supper that the Holy Spirit, of which Jesus was full during his entire earthly mission, would come after Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven to constantly keep Christ among us and give us life through the sacraments, as well as guidance and strength to be faithful to the image of God that Jesus Christ had restored in us. As the Lord, the giver of Life, the Holy Spirit continues to keep the Church united around Christ, proclaiming the Gospel to the world through her words and example. Jesus reminds us that the Holy Spirit will not say anything apart from what the Father and Son share. The Trinity is and always will be united as the source of our existence, our hope, and our life.

The Lord delighted in creating you. Have you ever asked yourself what he had in mind when he created you? He has endowed you with the freedom to decide how you live your life, but also revealed to you the ways you can end up on a road to nowhere. If the Lord has a purpose for you, what would it be? Ask him this week.

Readings: Proverbs 8:22–31; Psalm 8:4–9; Romans 5:1–5; John 16:12–15. See also Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle C and Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.

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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle B

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We always start our prayers by making the Sign of the Cross to remind us of the greatest mystery of our faith: the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. It’s not a mystery as seen on TV where CSI checks a crime scene, fingerprints and DNA evidence, witnesses: it’s something so big that it doesn’t fit into our head. We couldn’t have ever figured out on our own that God was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God revealed himself to us as the Most Holy Trinity. Jesus came and said he was God’s Son, and that meant God was his Father. And Jesus promised to send his Spirit after he ascended into Heaven, so the Holy Spirit was God as well. This is something so mysterious that we believe it because Our Lord taught it to us and we believe in him.

Moses in today’s First Reading reminds the Israelites, as he reminds us, that this great mystery of faith is totally God’s initiative. God chose to reveal himself to us as he is: the one true God. At the time of the Israelites, every nation had its god, and they all believed along with the big wars of nations there were always big wars between the gods as well, big gods and little gods: a whole pantheon of gods. God revealed himself to the Israelites as the one and only God, and he showed it by going into Egypt, that had, according to the Egyptians, the most powerful gods, and he took Israel out of Egypt showing his power and made them into a nation with him as their God.

The nation of Israel showed the world that not only was their God the most powerful God, he was the One and Only God. That revelation was a preparation so that one day God would send his Son and reveal to us that not only was there One God alone, which was what the Israelites believed, but that God is the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s the greatest mystery of our faith.

In today’s Second Reading Paul describes what happens to us at Baptism. On the day you were baptized, a minister poured water on your head (or immersed you in the water) three times, and each time he poured it he said “I baptize you in the name of the Father … and of the Son … and of the Holy Spirit.” In that moment you received the Holy Spirit, who made you into an adopted son of God. God became your Father. Jesus became more than your best friends: he became your big brother. The Holy Spirit was poured into your heart so you’d call God Abba—“Daddy!” Whenever we start our prayers, we remember this day of our baptism by making the Sign of the Cross and remembering the Holy Trinity and how God came into our hearts through our baptism.

Near the end of today’s Gospel Our Lord tells the disciples to go out and baptize everyone in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but it also says the disciples “doubted.” “Doubted” is translated from a Greek word used only one other time in the Bible: when Our Lord pulls Peter out of the water into which he was sinking: “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31). Peter stepped out onto the water with the faith he could muster but was overwhelmed. The Eleven in this moment of “doubt” are about to witness the Risen Lord’s Ascension; they don’t know what’s going to happen next. In other accounts of the Ascension from their questions they think what we call today the Second Coming was going to happen then and there.

The mystery of God is what we believe, and it is what we, as believers, share. We may not completely understand the Most Holy Trinity, but we believe. Everything we do as believers we do in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Lord reminded the Eleven, and he reminds us, that it is in the power of the Most Holy Trinity and counting on his presence that we spread the Gospel and baptize. There’s no reason to doubt.

Thank each Person of the Most Holy Trinity this week. Thank God the Father for creating us and revealing himself to Israel as the One True God. Thank God the Son for obeying his Father in Heaven and coming down and becoming man to show us that God was Our Father and enabling us to become his adopted children. Thank the Holy Spirit for transforming us into God’s adopted children and for bringing the Holy Trinity into our hearts and helping us to understand and live this great mystery of our faith.

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:32–34, 39–40; Psalm 33:4–6, 9, 18–20, 22; Romans 8:14–17; Matthew 28:16–20. See also Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.

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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle A

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Easter ended last Sunday with Pentecost, and this week we have returned to Ordinary time. Today we cap off these first few Ordinary days by going back to the beginning, when everything created started, even history itself: to the Most Holy Trinity. We know God has no beginning or end; he even created beginnings when, as the first words of the Bible in Genesis remind us, he said, “let there be light.” Even now he is always with us, no matter where we are or what we’re doing. We being every prayer reminding ourselves of his presence by making the Sign of the Cross and invoking the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In today’s First Reading Moses implores the Lord to remain with him and his people no matter how stubborn they have been or will be. The Golden Calf incident has just happened in today’s First Reading: the people had made a covenant with the Lord at Sinai and broke it by worshiping a golden calf. Moses, upon coming down from Mt. Sinai and seeing what they’d done, smashed the tablets containing the Ten Commandments (first and only edition) in anger at what the people of Israel had done, rightfully disgusted with them. Moses had the repentant regroup with him to show their return to the Lord, and those who didn’t perished. Even then, Moses was unsure whether the Lord would ever be with them again.

In today’s reading he goes up the mountain to see the Lord’s glory. The Lord promised to take the new tablets he’d made and “reprint” the Ten Commandments again, a sign that the covenant with his people would stand. When Moses beholds the Lord’s glory he sees the Lord for how he truly is: “a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” He knows neither he nor the people of Israel are entitled to have the Lord be with them, yet he also knows, in faith, that the Lord will remain with him due to his sure goodness and mercy.

In today’s Second Reading Paul expresses the hope that we now express at the beginning of every celebration of the Eucharist: that the Lord remain with us all. In the First Reading it was through Moses that the people reconciled with the Lord and renewed their willingness to be faithful to the covenant they had struck with him at Mt. Sinai. In every celebration of the Eucharist the celebrant, invoking the Most Holy Trinity, greets the faithful by expressing his desire that the “communion of the Holy Spirit” be with them all, using the same words of Paul: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Along with this communion we pray for the grace of Christ and the love of God, because we know if those things are not present, neither is the communion of the Holy Spirit. Woven in this desire we see every Person of the Most Holy Trinity involved: it begins with the love of God the Father, even before creation, it is restored after we’ve broken it through the grace of God the Son, and it is sustained and fortified through God the Holy Spirit.

In today’s Gospel Our Lord reminds us that God never distances himself from us; we distance ourselves from him. Despite this, he comes in his Son to help us draw close to him again. God is always present to his creatures, including us, in an existential way: he sustains us in existence every moment. If he were to ever stop thinking about us we’d cease to exist. He never stops thinking about us. We distance ourselves from God in our hearts, and he always tries to close the gap, even though he respects our decision to distance ourselves from him. The Father sent the Son into the world to reveal to us that we had distanced ourselves from him and to give us a way to close the gap. The Son doesn’t condemn us. The distance speaks for itself. Through faith in the Son we close the gap and enable the Lord to be with us not only existentially, but in our hearts.

The Sign of the Cross reminds us that we should do everything in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Let’s make the Sign of the Cross this week like we mean it: by making it a real invocation of the Triune God who loves us. If you weren’t planning on making the Sign of the Cross anytime this week it means you weren’t planning to pray at all, at least not in a Trinitary way. Bad sign. Try starting and ending each day this week by praying the Sign of the Cross. You’ll be amazed how it changes your perspective on how you should live your day.

Readings: Exodus 34:4b–6, 8–9; Daniel 3:52–55; 2 Corinthians 13:11–13; John 3:16–18.

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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle C

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When I consider the Holy Trinity I remember a conversation over coffee I had with a friend at work before I entered the seminary. She was a recent convert and asked me, “Who’s your favorite – Father, Son or Holy Spirit?”

The Gospel reminds us today that all the Father has, all the Son has, and in turn all the Holy Spirit will declare to his disciples is common. With the Persons sharing everything in common it is easy to think that God is just giving us options to choose from. We can be attracted to each Person of the Trinity for some reason: the Father because he reminds us of our loving origins and always hearkens us to future rest in not just a place, but a home, a home made more than a dwelling by the family we share it with; the Son because he is a true friend and big brother, who was willing to give it all for us, and because he put a human face to God and reminded us of his solidarity with our daily lives and sufferings; and the Holy Spirit because we always feel a need to rise above and beyond the immediate things in our life, to be taken up by the impulse of inspiration, to feel and be free from the confines of day to day living.

However, we can’t forget that God is One in Three Persons, which is the hallmark of Christian faith, or we risk writing off God in one way or another by considering the Father as aloof, utterly transcendent and beyond our daily lives and interests, authoritarian; considering Jesus Christ just another rabbi or wise man, sharing some human teachings with us and giving good example, nothing more than a social worker; or considering the Holy Spirit as just another one of those flighty inspirations and sentiments that never results in anything, just a free spirit.

Today’s readings and Gospel remind us that everything we are, everything we hope for, and everything expected of us and that we expect from God comes to us from the whole Trinity. In the First Reading we see the Trinity relishing in the creation of the world – the wisdom of God is speaking and reminiscing of the moment of creation. He describes himself as the forerunner of God’s wonders, before the earth was made. And in these words we are reminded that God the Father made the world with his Son in mind, gazing upon him in eternity with love. The Son in turn, begotten by the Father, as we profess every Sunday in the Creed, delights over creation and the human race. This hearkens back to the first chapters of Genesis, when the Spirit of the Lord hovers over the face of the deep, ready to begin creation with “let there be light” and when he creates man, he breathes his own spirit, a Spirit of life, into man to make him a living being, wanting to create men in His own image and likeness. We see that spirit of play and artistic relish that reminds us of God’s total freedom to create us, without any need and restraint, and with us in mind as his true masterpieces, made in his image – by showing him to others, and likeness – by sharing the life he has in abundance.

In creating man the Trinity had an even more special masterpiece in mind, a masterpiece that would in part craft itself. He gave us the freedom to conform our lives to this masterpiece of life that he wanted to see brought about in each one of us. In faith and love we could trust in him to show us the way to be a true masterpiece, a masterpiece of moral beauty, truth, and love. When Adam and Eve sinned they chose their distorted image of God as the model to imitate, and the image of God was disfigured in them. As a result, just as God warned them before eating of the fruit, spiritual death ensued. Nevertheless, God’s relish in us and desire for our glory would not let the story end there.

So, as the Second Reading reminds us, God became man to show us that true masterpiece and image of God that he had in mind from all eternity for us. As Paul reminds us, through our Lord Jesus Christ we have peace and access to the glory of God again. God created the world with his Son’s image in mind, and Jesus, by becoming flesh, by becoming a man, shows us exactly what God had on his mind when he created us. That image of God found in Christ shows us how we can restore the image of God in us again that was disfigured by sin. By Christ becoming man our likeness is restored as well: The flow of spiritual life is reopened by Jesus’ Passion and death, and poured into us by the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, as we profess in the Creed every Sunday. Full of that divine life, we happily put up with the sufferings and struggles of daily life, knowing that the glory of God will come for us.

Finally, as the Gospel reminds us, God is not just the origin of our existence, but the purpose of it as well, the end toward which we’re all headed. It is not the end in terms being finished, it is the beginning of eternal life with the Trinity. Jesus became man and suffered and died to reconcile the world with God, the Father of mercies. He does this by sending the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised the disciples during the Last Supper that the Holy Spirit, which Jesus was full of from the beginning to the end of his earthly mission, would come after Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven to constantly keep Christ among us and give us life through the sacraments, as well as guidance and strength to be faithful to the image of God that Jesus Christ had restored in us. As the Lord, the giver of Life, the Holy Spirit continues to keep the Church united around Christ and proclaiming the Gospel to the world through her words and example. Jesus reminds us that the Holy Spirit will not say anything apart from what the Father and Son share. In this way the Trinity is and always will be united as the source of our existence, our hope, and our life.

This week, whenever you make the Sign of the Cross, make it a moment of thanks toward each Person of the Holy Trinity for the work of salvation and happiness that God’s bringing about in us.

Readings: Proverbs 8:22–31; Psalm 8:4–9; Romans 5:1–5; John 16:12–15. See also Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.

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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

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We always start our prayers by making the Sign of the Cross to remind us of the greatest mystery of our faith: the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. It is not a mystery as seen on TV where CSI checks a crime scene, fingerprints and DNA evidence, witnesses: it’s something so big that it doesn’t fit into our head. We couldn’t have ever figured out on our own that God was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God revealed Himself to us as the Holy Trinity. Jesus came and said he was God’s Son, and that meant God was his Father. And Jesus promised to send his Spirit after he ascended into Heaven, so the Holy Spirit was God as well. This is something so mysterious that we believe it because Our Lord taught it to us and we believe in him.

Toward the end of today’s Gospel Our Lord tells the disciples to go out and baptize everyone in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. On the day of our baptism a priest or deacon poured water on our head three times, and each time he poured it he said I baptize you in the name of the Father … and of the Son … and of the Holy Spirit. And in that moment what St. Paul describes in the Second Reading today happened: we received the Holy Spirit who made us into adopted sons and daughters of God. And so whenever we start our prayers, we remember this day of our baptism by making the Sign of the Cross and remembering the Holy Trinity and how God came into our hearts through our baptism.

So when we pray this week, as we make the Sign of the Cross, let’s thank each Person of the Most Holy Trinity for wanting to come and be in our hearts and show us God as He truly is. Thank God the Father for creating us and revealing himself to Israel as the One True God. Thank God the Son for obeying his Heavenly Father and coming down and becoming man to show us that God was Our Father and to enable us to become his adopted children. Thank the Holy Spirit for transforming us into God’s adopted children and for bringing the Holy Trinity into our hearts and helping us to understand and live this great mystery of our faith.

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:32–34, 39–40; Psalm 33:4–6, 9, 18–20, 22; Romans 8:14–17; Matthew 28:16–20.