31st May. Feast of the Most Holy Trinity

The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is not celebrated this year

1st Reading: Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40

The great God of heaven and earth has offered us a loving relationship with him

For ask now about former ages, long before your own, ever since the day that God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of heaven to the other: has anything so great as this ever happened or has its like ever been heard of? Has any people ever heard the voice of a god speaking out of a fire, as you have heard, and lived? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by terrifying displays of power, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

So acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. Keep his statutes and his commandments, which I am commanding you today for your own well-being and that of your descendants after you, so that you may long remain in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.

2nd Readings: Romans 8:14-17

By the Holy Spirit we become children of the Father, and co-heirs with Christ his Son.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ-if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20

Jesus tells his followers to baptise in the name of the three divine persons.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Not a Remote God

There was a time when practically all peoples in Europe were more or less agreed about the existence of God. In that era, religious divisions arose from conflicting beliefs about God, and the bitterness between the different groups indicated the intense passion with which they held to their beliefs. This is not the case nowadays, when so many openly deride all faith in God. Indeed the very lifestyle we pursue often tends to promote a kind of atheism in us all. Especially in our large cities, surrounded by technological gadgetry and all the signs of human inventiveness, we can be at a distance from the things of nature. Within this Zeitgeist, even the rural-based of our population are bound to feel in some degree God’s apparent remoteness from our situation, God’s silence, remaining hidden to the end of our earthly days.

And yet the beautiful living things of nature, and the marvellous elements of the universe can speak to us of God in a powerful way. Many of the great saints, like St John of the Cross, regularly withdrew to the countryside to encounter God. For most of us, it is in times of sorrow, pain or anguish, that we find ourselves instinctively turning to the God who cares about us, who has a bond of kinship with us, since he has identified with the suffering of mankind in the person of Jesus Christ, who bore his Cross for us.

Today we celebrate the most Holy Trinity, the rich mystery of God’s inner life. This remains a mystery beyond all understanding for us while we live in this world, even though the veil which covers it is lifted ever so little. Our Bible assures us that not only is our God a personal God, but that God exists as three interactive, loving Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, while yet remaining one divine reality, one God.

Even if we cannot even begin to give a logical explanation for this, our faith enables us in some small measure to experience the presence of God. This experience is described by St Augustine in a most beautiful passage from his Confessions when he asks, “What do I love when I love my God?” What he finds is “not material beauty or beauty of a temporal order; not the brilliance of earthly light, so welcome to our eyes; not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self.” So he asks the beautiful things of this world, “tell me something of my God,” and loud and clear they answer, God is he who made us.

Some scientists who study the origin of the universe have held that, keeping in mind the complexity of the world we live in, it requires a more blind act of faith to be an atheist than to believe in the existence of a divine creator. God is still creating us, continuing to create and to shape our lives, and all we need do is cooperate with this creative force. If we place our lives in God’s hands, we are promised that in the end we will share in the blissful existence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Indeed, in St John’s mysterious phrase, “We shall become like God, because we shall see him as he really is.”

Seeing God will change us utterly, and this salvation is a pure gift that (in Christian terms) comes from the Father, announced by his divine Son, and made effective in each of us through the action of the Holy Spirit. St Paul tells us that “in one Spirit we have access through Christ to the Father” (Eph 2:18). But God’s reaching down to us must be matched by an up-reaching of our soul towards God. By the grace of God we must break free from the sins 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 (2 Cor 3:17f). For this great prospect, we give glory to the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Fullness of Love

They say “Two is company, three is a crowd” but today’s feast 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, for the life of Jesus constantly reflected the Trinity of God. The Holy Trinity, the mystery we celebrate today, is beyond the reach of time and the grasp of human reasoning.

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 behaviour of three passers-by, the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan; the sower sowed his seed in three different types of terrain, yielding three different levels of harvest. The end of his life, as the beginning, has again the three motif. During his Passion, Peter denied him thrice. On the road to Calvary, he fell three times. 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.