Given at St. Patrick's in Wareham
By Rev. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL
There is something perfect about a three day weekend….
Somehow the fact that Saturday is three days from Tuesday, when we have to go back to work, and Sunday is not the end but the middle of the weekend, and the fact that we are relaxing on Monday rather than working makes a three days so much more restful than two. Even Monday, the end of a long weekend, seems more peaceful… because it’s a little gift, we are truly thankful for it, and so we enjoy it all the more. Three day weekends give us permission to enjoy the weekend to be truly renewed and rested, in a way that sadly we fail to enjoy and rest most weekends.
Today as we celebrate this memorial weekend, the Church appropriately recalls the perfection of three as it celebrates the Feast of the Most Blessed Trinity. You know (SIGN OF THE CROSS) that name which as Catholics we begin and end all things.
Like three days, for some reason, makes a weekend perfect the mystery of the Trinity is the revelation of the perfection of God.
We believe in one God, and yet God reveals, as we heard today in the Gospel, that one and three are not mutually exclusive.
Our God is one God, one being, Eternal, all powerful, and all knowing. There is no division in God, because you can’t have part of perfection and still be perfect, and yet because of, (not inspite of,) God’s perfection the one God is FATHER, SON, and HOLY SPIRIT.
All three persons God, all three the same, of the same nature, except the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father nor is the Son or the Father the Spirit. There is no difference or division between what these three persons are, and yet one in being they are none-the-less three persons, three real relationships that define the three persons not by what, where, or how they are but by who they are in relationship to each other.When we think about our faith, and especially the mystery of God, the mystery of the Trinity, it is so important to remember that God is not like us! He is completely different that all created things and so while He might reveal a glimps of who and what He is we can never fully understand it.
Even in Heaven when we see God face to face and we, in a sense, know God, we will only know God as boundless mystery. Each day in Heaven is an exploration into the depths of God’s love, which has no limit.
In our experience three persons are always three distinct beings. Humans were not meant to be more than one person! Most likely because it is hard enough for an imperfect being to be one person well, because personhood is about relationship and relationship is about love, and it is hard for us to love, sinful as we are!
Even when God became man, He became man as only one person of the Trinity, the Son, because while God by nature is perfect love, which must manifest itself always as relationship, as Trinity, man by nature is an imperfect lover that must work to love, even himself.
This difference between the perfect lover God and us makes it so hard to understand the Trinity and so it was only with great difficulty that the Church reflected on the many passages that refer to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit and yet always, as the first commandment reminds us, one God.
And it’s not possible to just ignore the revelation of the Trinity, because it’s hard, as some suggest; we believe that ALL that God has revealed is necessary for our Salvation, and so out of a desire to be faithful to the revealed Word of God the Church struggled to come to grips with the reality of the Blessed Trinity. A reality, that we still don’t understand today 1600 years after
the Church put in into words in the 4th century Creed of Nicea and Constantinople, which we profess each Sunday.
The question we must ask ourselves on this Trinity Sunday, and indeed, every time we involke the Trinity, is what does it matter?
Why did God reveal the mystery of the Trinity, a truth that has caused so much division in the world? Not surprisingly the answer to this question, as with all life’s important questions is found here at the Mass!
At the Mass our Sign of the Cross is explained and expanded so that all might understand what God is doing in creation.
From all eternity, we believe that the Trinity loved—the Father loved the Son, the son was beloved of the Father, and His reponse to the Fathers love, the love of the Father and the Son for each other, was the Spirit of God. This is and was perfect love and it is all that God needs for perfection and happiness, and still out of a surplus of love but out of no need or necessity, God created the world, and man in His image and likeness.
If you think about the Trinity as a pouring out of love, the Father who pours Himself, out on the Son, and the Son ho response by pouring Himself out to the Father, and the Spirit who pours out on both the Father and Son, the creation is an additional pouring out, which demands a response in love.
God pours out His love on the world and on us so that we can respond as the Son does, and so enter into His Trinitarian love. Perfect love proved too hard for man, and so we needed a savior to restore us to this destiny.
This is what Jesus does for us as He approaches the Altar. Jesus went up to the Altar of the Cross to show man how to be thankful to God. How to respond to God’s gift. God gives man everything, so what can and must we give God? Everything, just like the Father gives the Son everything and the Son responds by doing the same.
At the Altar Jesus shows us what true Trinitarian Love demands, and challenges us to bind up our sacrifice of praise, our entire life, with the offering of His body and blood, which through the power of the Spirit is offered up to the Father.
All creation comes from God, the Father, and at the Mass, in Christ, and through the Spirit all creation returns to the Father to give Him thanks and praise. The Trinity is so important not only because it tells us about God and His Love, but also because it shows us the way through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit to be one with God, as the Father is one with the Son in the Spirit. Like His Son, God the Father loves us, if we are to enter into paradise, into His Trinitarian life we must love God with our whole heart, mind, and soul as Jesus taught us on the Cross, and this Love must bind us together with the Father, but also with each other in the Church through the Spirit.
The Trinity is not just who and what God is it’s who and what God wants us to be part of.
Lets make it our prayer today that we might be one, unified by our Love of God God and all mankind in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen,
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