11 June, 2017. Feast of the Most Holy Trinity

(Saint Barnabas, apostle)

1st Reading: Exodus 34:4-6, 8-9

On the heights of Sinai, Moses perceives God as compassionate, kind and faithful

Moses cut two tablets of stone like the former ones; and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name, “The Lord.”

The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. He said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

2nd Reading 1 Corinthians 13:11-13

Abandoning childish ways, we seek the moral nobility of faith, hope and love

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Gospel: John 3:16-18

Jesus came to show God’s love in this world: whoever believes will not be condemned

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

The Intimacy of God

(José Antonio Pagola)

Many Christians may not realise that adoring our God as Trinity means that God’s most profound reality is welcome and kindness. Ours is a God whose very essence is love. Perhaps the most vital conversion for most believers is to move from mainly considering God as All-powerful, to a God joyfully adored as Love.

Remember: an all-powerful being could be a despot, a destructive tyrant, an arbitrary dictator, a threat for our small and weak liberty. Could we really trust in a God whom we perceive mainly as almighty? How can I abandon myself to someone infinitely powerful? It would seem easier to mistrust, be cautious, be defensive of our independence. But our Gospel presents God as Trinity, an inter-relating mystery of Love. God’s power is that of one whose love is unfathomable and whose kindness is infinite. It is the love of God that is all-powerful. Only God can love infinitely. And each time we ignore this and forget that God is love, we fabricate a false God. Until we discover that God is only love, we relate superficially to God out of interest or fear. Our self-interest moves us to influence God’s omnipotence for our own gain, or our fear makes us seek every means to defend ourselves from God’s threatening power. But such a self-interested and fearful religion is closer to magic than to true Christian faith.

Only when we start with knowing that God is Love, and discover with fascination that God can’t be anything but Love that is present and beating in the deepest part of our lives, only then does trust in a Triune God begin to grow in our heart. This God of intimate, loving relationship whom Jesus reveals, and whom today we celebrate, can do nothing but love us.

Not such a remote God

In bygone times practically everyone agreed on the existence of God. Back then, religious divisions came from conflicting beliefs about God, rather than being a conflict between theism and atheism. This is not the case nowadays. Not only do many profess to be atheist, but the many aspects of modern life tend to promote a kind of atheism in all of us. In our large cities, surrounded by works of human ingenuity, people are less aware of the the God who created nature’s beauty. Even the rural-based population feel in some degree God’s apparent remoteness from our situation, God’s silence, remaining hidden and beyond our ken.

Today we celebrate the Most Holy Trinity, the mystery of God’s inner life.  Scripture tells us not only that our God is personal, but that God exists as three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Although we cannot even begin to give a logical explanation for this, our faith enables us in some small measure to feel the relationship that exists within God’s nature.

Our hope of salvation is a pure gift that always comes from the Father, enfleshed in his divine Son, and enkindled in each of us through the Holy Spirit. St Paul links the three Persons when he writes that “in one Spirit we have access through Christ to the Father”. And God’s reaching down to us must be answered by an up-reaching of our soul towards God. To grow in spirit we must break free from any sinful chains which hold us captive. Then as Paul says, like mirrors we will reflect the brightness of the Lord, until finally we are changed into that image which we reflect. For this great hope and promise, glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, forever, Amen.

The Fullness of Love

Over the past century much debate has centred on the thought of three outstanding figures, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, whom some have called “the unholy trinity.” They pushed us into the modem world, often in spite of our protests. Darwin’s theory of evolution was greeted with howls of derision by the established churches, and had to battle for recognition. Freud opened up the universe of the unconscious and profoundly affected conventional attitudes. The social theories of Karl Marx have dominated almost half the world and considerably influenced the other half. Of the three, only Darwin’s theory of evolution remains fairly intact. The developed world has largely discredited Marx and the theories of Freud are more and more contested. Time has taken its toll of “the unholy trinity.”

The Holy Trinity, whose feast we celebrate today, is outside the reach of time and beyond the grasp of human reasoning. It is a mystery of our faith. We can only fumble in the dark in search of glimmers of light. “Two is company, three is a crowd” is a popular expression. The gospel would have it otherwise. There, the figure three symbolises completeness and perfect symmetry, and re-appears at all the key moments of the Christ story.

The life of Christ constantly reflected the Trinity. Three figures make up the nativity scene in Bethlehem — the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Their first visitors were the three wise men. Later, in the desert preparing to begin his public life, Jesus was tempted three times by the devil. A good story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Christ was a storyteller par excellence and three figures prominently in his parables. The Prodigal Son is about a father and his two sons; the Good Samaritan tells of the three passers-by, the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan; the sower sowed his seed in three kinds of soil, yielding three kinds of harvest.  The crucifixion scene has three figures, Christ between two thieves. Before his resurrection, he spent three days in the tomb.

God is love. There are Three Persons in the Trinity, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. Together they represent the fullness of love. The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father. The Holy Spirit is their love for each other. We are made in the image of a triune God. God the Father, who created us, his Son who saved us, and the Holy Spirit who continues to guide us. Our lives should reflect the Trinity. We should be always creative like the Father, compassionate like his Son, and dispose our talents in the service of others like the Holy Spirit…

Saint Barnabas (falling on a Sunday, his feast is not celebrated this year)

Barnabas was among the most enthusiastic and admired members of the early Church, seen as “a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.” Trusted by the apostles, he shared his property with the poor, and managed to have the the conversion of former persecutor, Saul/Paul, accepted as genuine by the Christians in Jerusalem. Later, he animated the young church in Antioch, and went abroad on mission with the apostle Paul. Barnabas showed the sort of unselfish, reliable, encouraging personality that made him an ideal ambassador for the Gospel.