HOMILIES PREACHED BY FATHER ALTIER ON TRINITY SUNDAY

As we celebrate today the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, this is something that, as Catholics, we have grown up with and take for granted; but we do not always recognize the necessity and the importance of the Trinity. We recognize that all three Persons of the Trinity are God, equal with one another. There is but one God, so all three are completely perfect. There is nothing in one that is lacking in another. All three are God.

Yet there is a necessity that there be three instead of one. What we see in the Old Testament is that God chose for Himself a people. Of all people on the face of the earth, He revealed to one people, the Jewish people, that He is one. Every other society had a multiplicity of false gods. The Jewish people themselves initially had all kinds of false gods. Over the years, they were able to work all of those things out to believe in one God. And so it was necessary that God had to show Himself to be one.

But even then there were indications that God was more than just one. It was a necessity that God be more than just one because one cannot be merely in love with one’s self.

That is what we would call narcissism, and we would say that is a sin - and it is. Even the psychologists would say that narcissism is a psychological problem. Are we going to suggest that God is just sitting up there being a narcissist, focused on Himself and nothing else? No, one cannot be in love with one’s self. It cannot happen.

May 26, 2002

Trinity Sunday

Reading I (Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9)

Reading II (2 Corinthians 13:11-13)

Gospel (St. John 3:16-18)

But even then there were indications that God was more than just one. It was a necessity that God be more than just one because one cannot be merely in love with one’s self. That is what we would call narcissism, and we would say that is a sin - and it is. Even the psychologists would say that narcissism is a psychological problem. Are we going to suggest that God is just sitting up there being a narcissist, focused on Himself and nothing else? No, one cannot be in love with one’s self. It cannot happen.

When we look in the Old Testament, we see that there are different names for God. One of the names that is very commonly used, even very early on in the Book of Genesis, is "Elohim". Elohim is plural; God’s name is "El". So on any of the names that come out of Hebrew like "Daniel" or "Gabriel" or "Michael" - all those words that either begin or end with "el" like "Elizabeth"- that "el" is "God". That is what it means. But when you put that into a plural form it becomes "Elohim". That is the way God is known, as "Elohim". There is a plurality of Persons, not a plurality of gods. God is one. That is what the Jewish people understood: that He is one God. But He has demonstrated many times over, even in the Old Testament by promising that He would send His Son who is also God, that there are more than one.

We know that God’s Holy Name is not to be pronounced. The Jewish people had such a profound respect for the Name of God that even now they do not pronounce it. The Church, recognizing that same thing, has also passed that along to us. If you look at the first reading today, you will find the word "LORD". God passed by Moses and pronounced His Name and it says, "LORD". Then he says, "The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God." The word LORD is not actually there. That is why the Church has put that in uppercase letters, because it is not the word for Lord; it is God’s Holy Name that is there. Out of respect for the Holy Name of God, as the Jewish people would never pronounce His Holy Name lest it came out even with the slightest imperfection, the Church, continuing in that tradition, gives it to us in a translated form and just simply puts "LORD". But you will notice further down in the same reading that the name "Lord" comes up again. While the "L" is in uppercase, the "ord" are all in lowercase letters because it is a different word that is used there. When you are reading Scripture, always keep that in mind: Whenever you find the uppercase letters, the word that is there is not actually "Lord", but rather it is the Holy Name of God that is not to be pronounced.

Even with these different names - the Holy Name saying that God is one, "Elohim" telling us that God is a plurality of Persons even though He is but one God - why do we need to have a multiplicity? As I have mentioned already, by the very nature of love, by the way that God has made things, God, who is love, is the One who shows to us what love is about. For us, love cannot remain in one person. As I have mentioned, you cannot just simply be in love with yourself. It is narcissism. But neither can love remain merely with two. You can be in love with another person, but the nature of love is that it is a relationship. It is a reciprocal, benevolent relationship. It is two people looking out for the good of one another and giving themselves to one another.

We know, therefore, that by the nature of love, God has to be at least two Persons because love cannot reside merely in one. But love overflows any boundaries; all one needs to do is look at a family. A man and a woman who are in love with one another and are joined together so that the two become one in imitation of the Holy Trinity are going to be life giving. That love overflows the boundaries of the two and becomes life giving for children. Even in those couples where there are struggles with fertility, the love still overflows and becomes life giving in other ways because that love is going to overflow the individual. Therefore, there must be at least three. There need not be any more than three for the perfection of love, but there must be at least three by the very nature of love. And God, who is perfect, must therefore be at least three Persons to be able to love perfectly.

Therefore, we have the revelation of the Most Holy Trinity – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: perfect love, giving and receiving one another so perfectly that the Three are One without distinction, without separation, without division of any kind, the only distinction being the distinction between Persons. In no other way is there any distinction. There is one mind in God. There is one will in God. Even if you want to look at it that way, for God to make an act of the intellect and for God to make an act of the will are two separate acts. And so, the Father making an act of the intellect is the Son, and for the Father to make an act of the will to love is the Holy Spirit. So again, you see that we have three for the perfection of what a person truly is. A person is a living being with a mind and a free will. God is three Persons with a mind and a free will; so we see the Three who are One.

Now, the question we need to ask is what does this have to do with each one of us? It is a wonderful thing to know that God is one God who is three Persons, but what difference does that make for us? It makes all the difference in the world. First of all, because we can begin to understand the nature of love as I have already explained, but it also shows to us where the relationships with God are. All we need to do is look at Our Blessed Lady and we can see that. If you ever look at an icon - those beautiful pieces of art from the East - whenever you see Our Lady, normally she is going to be shown holding her Son and you will see upon her head, and upon the other shoulder where her Son is not held, a star. If she is not shown with her Son, you will see three stars: one on her head and one on each shoulder. The one on her head is because she is the daughter of the Father. The Son that she is holding demonstrates that she is the Mother of the Son. The third star on the other shoulder demonstrates that she is the spouse of the Holy Spirit. And so [it is] her relationship with the three Persons, a human person in relationship to the three Persons of God.

But the Holy Trinity also dwells within you because you are baptized - not merely into Jesus Christ, but you are baptized in a Trinitarian formula: In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Note what Jesus teaches us in that: there is one name. He does not say, "Baptize them in the names of…" but rather "...in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." One name for God. And so you have entered into Jesus Christ. But Jesus is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, therefore, you have entered into a union with the Most Holy Trinity in your baptism. God is our Father; that is how Jesus has taught us to call Him. Therefore, Jesus is also our Brother; we are one with Him. He is God and yet He is man; so He is our Brother in that sense. And the Holy Spirit has been given to us to unite us with one another and with God. For each one of us, there is something of a spousal relationship with the Lord who has united Himself with us in our souls and made us one with Him.

And so we see that we have something of that relationship to the three Persons similar to the way that Our Lady had it. For her, it is perfect. For us, we recognize it in a relative form. Nonetheless, [we need] to be able to see that it is there and to be able to enter into a relationship, then, with each of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. To pray to one is ultimately to pray to all three. But each of us needs to be able to recognize the headship of the Father and the lordship of Jesus Christ and the union and love which is ours in the Holy Spirit and the working of the Holy Spirit in each of our lives. We cannot reject or deny any one of them. We cannot truly have a relationship with Jesus apart from the Father and the Holy Spirit. "No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit," Saint Paul said. So if we are going to acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Master, if we are going to recognize that He is God and man, it is only through the Holy Spirit that that can be done. Saint John, in the Gospel, tells us that we have salvation because of Jesus and anyone who believes in Him and His Name has salvation.

Now to believe in His Name is not merely to say, "Intellectually, yes, I believe that Jesus is God; therefore, I’m going to Heaven." That is not what it means at all. It means to say, "Jesus Christ is Lord. Therefore, I believe in who He is, and He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Therefore, I believe that every word that comes from His mouth is true, and I will accept every single word that He teaches. He alone is the Way. Therefore, I am going to unite myself with Him because He is the only way to Heaven." He alone is the Life and only when we are in the state of grace do we have the life of Jesus Christ in us. So it is not merely sitting back, believing, and saying, "As long as I believe in Jesus I can go out and do anything that I want. I’m going to Heaven anyway." Not at all. It is to say, "If I profess my faith in Jesus Christ, I must change my life and I must live the life of Jesus Christ, who came, empowered with the Holy Spirit, to do the Will of His heavenly Father." That is precisely what God wants from each one of us: to live the life of Jesus Christ, which can only happen by the power of the Holy Spirit, and to seek in all things to know and to do the Will of our heavenly Father.

That is the glory that God has called each one of us to. That is what He wants for each one: salvation in Jesus Christ. But that salvation is going to be found only through union with the Lord, [by doing] His Will. And that Will is going to be done only through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Each one of us, then, can look to Our Blessed Lady as the exemplar for our lives to be able to see how she did it - the spouse of the Holy Spirit, perfectly united to Him, so perfectly that Jesus Christ could become incarnate in her and be made in her image and likeness as she is already made in His because she did the Will of God perfectly.

So too for us, the Holy Spirit has been poured forth into our hearts so that we can cry out "Abba! Father!", so that each one of us can be formed and molded into the image of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and the intercession of Our Lady, so that each one of us can live the life of Jesus Christ. We can follow the example of Our Blessed Mother and we can follow the example of her Most Holy Son and we can live the Trinitarian life, a life of love, because we are created in the image and likeness of God, who is love. Love is not alone by ourselves, but rather, love goes out to others. Therefore, we are to love God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and we are to love our neighbor. That is what God is calling each one of us to. It is only in this that we can truly say that we believe in Jesus Christ: when we are living the life of Christ, loving God, loving neighbor, and living the life of the Holy Trinity- a life of love in union with one another.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

The Transforming Love of the Holy Trinity

June 15, 2003

Trinity Sunday

Reading I (Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40)

Reading II (Romans 8:14-17)

Gospel (St. Matthew 28:16-20)

In the first reading this morning from the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses, after speaking to the people of Israel about all of the things that God had done for them, the signs and wonders He had shown, the things that He had done for them that He had not done for anyone else on the face of the earth, said to them, “Know and fix in your heart that the Lord is God, in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.” At that time, of course, there were many false gods that were being worshiped throughout the world, gods of silver and wood and clay and whatever other form it might be, worship of the sun and the moon and the stars, worship of all kinds of spirits of the air. All of these little false gods have some elements that the devil tries to present as being true, and that is where the trick comes in. We look at some of the forms of false worship that people fall into even today, since we are living in a neopagan society, and we have all this false worship once again, with the media letting everybody know that the worship of what they call “the goddess” is big stuff once again. The worship of all kinds of false gods has become quite popular once again.

The difficulty with this stuff is it would be obvious if someone was bowing down before a statue and expecting that the statue would actually do something. That would be false worship. The problem is, however, that some of these people bow down before their statues and it appears that there is an answer to what they are asking. It actually will sometimes appear that there is something true to what they are doing, and that of course is the way the devil works. The best lie is always nine parts truth to one part falsehood. And so the devil himself tries to mock God. The devil does things in three’s because God is a trinity. He plays all of these little games to try to draw attention from God to himself.

God, as we have seen over and over, although He is all-powerful, He is also completely humble and He does not normally show Himself in extraordinary ways. But rather, what He expects from us is the worship of God in the ordinary events of our daily lives, to know that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth below and that there is no other – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – whether we have any concrete objective evidence of it or not. This is something that strikes us as being very difficult, and yet it is so obvious. All one needs to do is think about a family and how things operate within a marriage. If, for instance, there needed to be some kind of objective proof every day in extraordinary manners that one of the spouses loved the other and you had to come up with something new and innovative day after day after day to try to prove that you loved this person, first of all, it would lose any sense of truth, but secondly, it does not prove the love. The love is demonstrated only in the day-to-day life when things in the ordinary ways of life continue to progress forth, and slowly it begins to filter deeper and deeper into the person that “this individual truly loves me”. Not because they did anything extraordinary, but because they do the ordinary things out of love.

God’s love is the most extraordinary of all, and what He is doing is inviting us into His love. We read, for instance, in the second reading today from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, that we have received a Spirit that allows us to cry out, “Abba, Father!” And then Saint Paul goes on to speak about how we have become children of God, coheirs with Christ, and then says, “If only we suffer with Him so as to be glorified with Him.” God has proven His love in the most perfect manner possible, and that is on the Cross. He continues to prove His love day after day and week after week in what is an absolutely extraordinary thing, but has become so ordinary for us. That is, He gives Himself to us in the form of bread and wine so that we can receive Him into ourselves.

If we think, for instance, of a person who is an adult convert as they look forward to the first time that they would receive Holy Communion, to recognize the love of God, their own unworthiness as they come before the Lord, the way their heart would be able to be open to receive the love that God wishes to pour into them. Then most of us, from the time we were seven years old, week after week and sometimes day after day, go through the exact same ritual. It is still to this day as extraordinary as it was the first time, but for most of us it has become quite ordinary and we begin to wonder. We become, in a way, like the apostles in the Gospel reading where it rather tragically says, “They all saw Him, they worshiped Him, but they doubted.” It that unlike us?

We have all the evidence of God’s love. We have the Scriptures which lay out for us the truth about the Lord, that there is only one God and there can only be one God if God is perfect because two perfect beings are impossible. If they were both perfect then they would be identical. And as I point out in the class for the adults, if God is not perfect there is no sense worshiping Him. You may as well worship yourself because you are imperfect. You may look at it and say, “Well, yeah, I’m imperfect, but God is far more intelligent than I am.” Then worship Einstein if that is the case, he is maybe more intelligent than most of us too, or maybe Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas Aquinas, because, after all, they were very religious and exceedingly intelligent. But they too are imperfect. They too recognize that there needed to be someone who is perfect, someone who is lacking in nothing.

So look at what Jesus says in the Gospel reading: “All power in Heaven and on earth has been given to Me.” All power. Just stop and think about that for a moment and couple that with the second reading which we have already seen: “You are a member of Jesus Christ.” All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus, which means all power in Heaven and on earth is at your disposal. Now we obviously do not run around trying to grab for power for some selfish reason. But the reality of the matter, and we see it in the lives of the saints, is that extraordinary things happen when we love in an extraordinary way, when we trust the love of God and when we believe in that wholeheartedly and we allow the Lord to work in our lives. Then He is able to do extraordinary things in us and through us, as we read in the life of one saint after the next. The saints were ordinary people just like us who loved in extraordinary ways, who did not doubt God’s love, who did not doubt the reality of God. All power in Heaven and on earth is in Jesus Christ and you are in Jesus Christ.

When we put that together with the next part of what Saint Paul says, he tells us that we are heirs of God and coheirs with Christ. When we think about the love of God for each one of us, we can look through the Gospels and see so many places: Jesus telling us that we did not choose Him, that He chose us; Our Lord telling us in His high priestly prayer as He prayed to His Father and said, “They,” meaning you and me and all of the others who would follow Him, “are Your gift to Me”; He tells us that where He is, He desires that we would be there also and that He is going before us to prepare a place for us; that He and the Father with the Holy Spirit would come to us and tabernacle within us. We could go on and on and on about all of the references, but think about what Saint Paul said to the Romans: “We are heirs of God.” Now the Psalmist said of the Messiah that God would bequeath Him the nations as His inheritance. If there is any question about whether or not God loves you, just look at the exchange that happens here. You are the inheritance that God gave to Jesus, and God is the inheritance that Jesus gives to you. It does not seem like a particularly fair exchange, does it? Indeed, it is not. But all that God wants is to love us, and He wants our love in return. And since He created us to be loved, he has chosen us for Himself. The Lord has given us as an inheritance, and then He simply asks us to accept the love and the dignity He has given to us and to be able to enter into the inheritance which is ours – which will be union with God.

Now these are things that on the natural level are kind of mind-boggling. We tend, typically, to shake our heads and say, “This can’t be. It doesn’t make any sense.” Love does not make any sense; that is the nature of it. If you reason it out, it is not love, because then it is just being portioned out as you choose. Love, when it is true, is complete; it is giving totally of the self. Not giving a little bit and testing the waters and seeing how it goes. It is giving it all. All you need to do is look at your spouse if you are married, look at your parents if you are not, at your friends, and then look at yourself and just ask yourself, “Why? Why does this other person love me?” And you will make no sense of that question either because it is not about reasoning it out.

So we cannot question why the Lord loves us. We cannot question why He chooses us for His inheritance while giving Himself to us as an inheritance. All we can do is look at the reality that we have received the Holy Spirit, that we are members of Jesus Christ, that we do call God our Father. And so we recognize the truth of what Our Lord tells us in the Gospel when He says, “Go out and teach all nations and baptize them in the Name,” – singular, the Name – “of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Not three names – one Name – because He is one God Who is three Persons. This is the very essence of Christianity and it is the very essence of who we are, invited into the very intimacy of the love of God.

And as we know, if we are in the state of grace, the Holy Trinity dwells within us, which means that the three Persons of the Trinity are loving one another right in your soul. You are invited to enter into your soul and be caught up into the love of God, even now. If we marvel that God would be allowing us to enter into Heaven where we can worship Him and experience His love, think what is going to happen when you receive Jesus in Holy Communion in a few moments. Where one Person of the Trinity is, all Three are present. So it is the Body, the Blood, the Soul, and the Divinity of Christ that you will receive, and the divinity is shared equally by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so you will receive all three Persons of the Holy Trinity when you receive Communion and your soul will become Heaven. You are the inheritance of God! He makes your soul Heaven and that is where He chooses to dwell and invites you into that divine intimacy, to enter into that heavenly place and to be caught up in the love of the three Persons of the Trinity. That will be our glory for all eternity but it has begun now if only, as Saint Paul says, we are willing to suffer with Christ in order to be glorified with Him.

That is what we are celebrating today, the reality that there is only one God and that all these false gods that are present within our society and in our world are just that – they are false. They are gold or silver or wood or figments of the imagination or celestial bodies; they are created things. And nothing created is God. Nothing created is worthy of worship. Only God, Who is uncreated in Himself and has created everything else that exists, is worthy of our worship. There is only one God, and we must know and fix in our hearts that He is God in heaven above and on earth below and that there is no other, and that the one and only God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the God in Whose image you are created, and the God Whose inheritance you are. That is the One we worship, and the only One.

We need to be very careful when we read that Gospel passage because we see the human frailty: “They worshiped Him but they doubted.” We must banish all doubts from our minds and recognize that there is and can only be one God. Everything else is of the devil, plain and simple. So as we celebrate today this Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, we celebrate the glory which is ours, to know the truth of Who God is, to be drawn into the worship and the love of God, and to be united with Him, with the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ and through Him to the glory and honor of the Father. That is what we celebrate over and over again at the Mass, as we keep hearing references to the Trinity. It is what we celebrate in our daily lives. It is what we pray at the beginning and end of every one of our prayers in the Sign of the Cross. It is who we are as Christian people, and to deny this truth is to reject every single thing that it means to be Christian because above all else it is to recognize the truth of God and to enter into that truth and to worship Him.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

June 6, 2004

Trinity Sunday

Reading I (Proverbs 8:22-31)

Reading II (Romans 5:1-5)

Gospel (St. John 16:12-15)

Today as we celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, we stop to consider something that we simply take for granted: We are baptized in the Name of the Holy Trinity; every time we make the Sign of the Cross, we remind ourselves of the Trinity; every time we pray the Glory Be, we honor the Holy Trinity. There are so many times in every day when we call to mind this mystery, yet it is something that most of us generally do not think about. Most of us, if we are going to address a prayer one way or another, it is simply to a Person of God, perhaps to God the Son, some to God the Father, some to the Holy Spirit, but it is rather unusual that people think about the Trinity. Yet it is the Holy Trinity more than anything else which sets us apart as Christian people, apart from the Jewish people to whom God had first revealed Himself as being one God, and certainly apart from the Muslims who claim to have the same God and yet do not believe that Jesus is God and they do not believe in the Holy Spirit. So, as Christian people, our belief in the Trinity is what sets us apart from any others who believe in one God.

This teaching about the Trinity is something that is a complete and total mystery, theologically known as an “absolute mystery”. That means it is something beyond our comprehension in this life, and it will be beyond us for all eternity. But that does not mean that we cannot say anything about it or that we cannot understand anything about it; it just means we will never understand the Trinity completely.

But what can we say about the Trinity? First of all, we are told in Sacred Scripture, in the First Letter of Saint John, that God is love. Love by its very nature must be a reciprocal, benevolent, communion of persons. Therefore, to believe in one God is something which is essential for us, and yet God cannot be all alone because if God were just simply in love with Himself (because God is love) that would be narcissism; narcissism is a sin, and we certainly are not going to try to project that onto God. And so we would have to say, therefore, that there has to be more than one person in God in order for God to love. God loves Himself, but in loving Himself, He loves His Son.

But love, again by its very nature, has to overflow the boundaries of just two. You cannot just get caught up within your own selves, but it overflows the boundaries of the two and becomes life-giving for others. When we look at God being love, by the very nature and essence and concept of love itself, God has to be at the very least three. Now it is possible theoretically that it could be more, but it is not, because all that is necessary is that it be three. And that is precisely what has been revealed to us: God is one God in three Persons. And so it is to be able to understand first that there has to be at least three persons – and there are only three Persons in God – but then to take it the next step and say, “But yet there is only one God, so how is it possible that there can be three persons in a perfect unity of one being, one God?”

We can understand that to some degree, for instance, when we look simply at the beautiful sacrament of Holy Matrimony where two persons become one. You could ask the question, “How is it possible that two human persons can become one being, one reality?” It is because of love. What happens when two people love one another is that they give themselves entirely to one another and they receive the gift of the other entirely to themselves. In that total giving and receiving, when you give yourself one hundred percent there is nothing left to take back, when you receive the other one hundred percent there is nothing left to reject; you take on the identity of the other person and therefore the two are one. In the Trinity, we have three Persons who give themselves entirely to one another as a gift and receive the gift of the other perfectly to themselves. It is an absolute giving and receiving, and therefore the three are one.

Now when we look at our own selves and we recognize that we are made in the image and likeness of God – and God is love – it means, of course, that we are made to love and to be loved. And so this concept of the love of God is something which is inherent in our own being, which is why there is that natural desire for a man and a woman to unite themselves to one another in love, to give themselves perfectly and to become one, because it is something within. But even if we are not called to marriage (or even within the context of marriage), there is still a greater unity that is being presented, a unity which is symbolized by marriage, a unity that is pointed to by the union of the couple in marriage, but a unity that is far greater and even far more intimate than that of marriage.

When you think of two people who are completely in love with one another, what they will say to one another is that they want somehow to get inside of the other one. If they could simply bore a hole in the chest and into the heart of the other one and crawl right in, that is what they would want to do. Of course, we cannot – but God can, and He has. He has given Himself to us in the Eucharist, but He has given Himself to us in the indwelling of the Trinity. This is the promise of Our Lord. He says to us in John 14: Anyone who loves Me, My Father will love him, and we will come to him and we will make our dwelling within him. This is something that we do not tend to accept, but it is a reality. It is an absolute teaching of the Church, and it is a teaching right from the mouth of Our Lord.

Now if this strikes us as being strange, just look back at the first reading from the Book of Proverbs today. We hear about Jesus, Who is the Wisdom of God, and we hear that He is the delight of the Father. That is right at the very beginning. God delighted in Him. And yet in Creation we are told that the Son of God found His delight to be among the children of men. Imagine that: God’s delight is to be among us! Again, that strikes us as being rather difficult to understand, because after all if we look at our sinfulness and we look at the grandeur and glory of God, we say, “How could God delight to be among someone who is less than a speck of dust?” Well, first, if you look at the rest of the material creation, there is nothing that is capable of loving. In the beauty of all the planets, the stars, the sun, and so on, there is nothing there; it is just a material body with no intellect and no will and no capacity to love and to be loved. In all the material creation, we are the only ones who are able to love. And God made us in His own image and likeness, which means He made us for the very purpose of loving us, and so He does – and that is all that He does. He loves us, and He loves us so much that He gives Himself to us.

Any parent would understand that. When you simply look at those beautiful children of yours, you ask yourself, “What limit would I put upon my love?” You would not. There is nothing reasonable that you would not do for your children. God, Who created the children, loves them even more than the parents who cooperated with God in the creation of the children. And if human parents are willing to give anything even to excess to their children in love, God is going to give even more in love to His children. That is why He gives Himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament. That is why He gives Himself to us in the indwelling of the Trinity.

You have to be able to understand that this is the truth: God dwells in you if you are in the state of grace. The Most Holy Trinity lives in your heart and loves in your heart, in your soul, if you are in the state of grace. That means that your soul has become heaven. Your soul has become the very dwelling place of God Himself, and it is the place where God has chosen to be, where God Himself has chosen to live and to love. You are caught up into the very love of God within your own self. Look at the dignity which is yours when you consider what it is that God is doing for you and in you. There is one day going to be an inversion of this, that is, when we go to heaven. But right now, as long we cannot be in heaven with God, God has come to us to be with us. Right now, God dwells in us; in eternity, we will dwell in God. Right now, God has been caught up into our being; in eternity, we will be caught up into His being. Right now, God loves within us; in eternity, we will love within God. There is this beautiful juxtaposition that takes place, but already it is foreshadowed by what is happening within us.

What we need to be able to do is to accept our dignity, to see what it is that God is doing for us and in us, to see how much He loves us, and to be able to accept that love. We heard in the second reading today that the love of God has been poured forth into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us, the Holy Spirit Who is God, Who is equal with the Father and the Son. Jesus, in the Gospel reading, told us that the Holy Spirit is going to take from what is the Lord’s, the fullness of truth, and give it to us. Jesus is the fullness of the truth, but He says the reason He can say that is because everything that the Father has is Jesus’ and everything that the Holy Spirit has is what has been given to Our Lord. So you see that it is in everything; it is an absolute. The three Persons are One, but the three Persons have come to dwell in you. They have made you in their own image and likeness; they have made you to love and to be loved; they have caught you up into the very love of God Himself.

Now what they want is for you to be able to share in that love, to share in the divine life fully even in this world as you prepare for the next. In eternity, we are going to love and to be loved, completely and totally. In this world, we are to prepare for that, we are to learn how to do that. God has already outdone us in any kind of generosity that we will ever be able to offer to Him. He loves us so much that He has found a way to literally enter into our hearts so that He could live there, because He loves us. And so you need to look at your own self and you need to be able to say to your own self, “Christian, look at your dignity. Accept your dignity. Become what you are.” It is already a reality, yet if we do not accept it and do not live it, we need now to work our way into that reality. It already exists within us; now we need to be transformed into what is happening within our own souls. We need to be transformed into the very love of God Himself. That is our dignity. That is our call, each and every one of us. So as we prepare now and ponder on the reality that will be ours for eternity if we live this love of God and we die in the state of grace – being caught up into the love of God – it is already taking place within our own souls. We simply now need to enter in and to be able to accept the love of God which has been poured forth into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.

This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

May 22, 2005

Trinity Sunday

Reading I (Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9)

Reading II (2 Corinthians 13:11-13)

Gospel (St. John 3:16-18)

If we were simply to look objectively at what it means to be Christian, there are quite a number of things that we can point to as being critical to our faith. However, the central tenet of our faith is the belief in the Most Holy Trinity; everything else revolves around that single point. It is something which, on one level, we tend to take for granted, and, on another level, most of us probably rarely even think about it. It is something that is so critical that without it we could not even call ourselves Christian.

For instance, you can think about the Jehovah’s Witnesses who run around banging on your doors, and also the Mormons who do the same thing. They call themselves Christian, but they are not. They do not believe in the Trinity. And because they do not believe in the Trinity, neither do they even believe in the same Jesus. They talk about Jesus, but they do not believe the same thing about Him. The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus is Saint Michael the Archangel, and the Mormons think that Jesus is just one of us, that He is not God but He is just a human being like the rest of us. They talk about Him as being a “nice guy” but that is all they can really say. They will claim He is the savior of this world, but that is because the Mormons claim that each one of us will be a savior of our own world, so we are no different than He is and He is no different than we are. This is just the world that God gave Him to save; we will all have our own.

So we see that to deny the Trinity is to deny everything that we believe about the Person of Jesus Christ. This is why it is so critical in the Gospel reading today that Saint John tells us that God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him, and that everyone who believes in the Name of the only Son of God has eternal life and anyone who does not believe has condemnation because they did not believe in the Name of the only Son of God. It is not just believing generically in the Name of Jesus, but it is believing in the very Person of Jesus Christ. To believe in the essence of Christ is to believe that He is God and that He is one with His heavenly Father, Who revealed His Name to Moses upon the mountain as He passed by.

Of course, it is translated in the reading that we just heard as “Lord” but that is not what it says in Scripture. What it says in Scripture is “Yahweh” – I AM, the One Who is eternal. So if we believe that Jesus Christ is one with His heavenly Father, then He also is eternal. He has no beginning and He has no end. In His humanness, there is a beginning but there will be no end, just like our souls have a beginning but they will have no end. But His Person as God has no beginning and has no end. God is eternal, and eternity means no beginning and no end. Our souls are immortal. They have a beginning, they were created at a specific time, and they will have no end. Our souls cannot die, so they will continue to live in one of two places for eternity; and as is made clear, that is going to depend upon our belief in Jesus Christ.

Not the kind of belief that so many Christians would say, “As long as you believe in Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior you are going to heaven.” That is not what it means. It means to believe in the very Person of Jesus Christ, to believe in Who He is. If we believe in Who He is as the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God Who lives and reigns forever, then that means we have to believe in every single thing that He has taught and everything that He is. It is no longer merely an objective belief that we can look at a series of propositions to ask, “Do I believe that or do I not?” But it is about entering into a relationship with a Person. The only way to enter into a depth of a relationship with the Person of Jesus Christ is through the Holy Spirit because no one can even say “Jesus is Lord” except through the Holy Spirit. So we see how the entire thing works together.

There are only two other religions in the world who believe in only one God, that is the Jewish people and the Muslims. But, again, even though they believe in one God, both reject the concept of the Trinity. The Jewish people believe in God Who revealed Himself in the Old Testament. But the idea that God revealed Himself as one was to be able to show the pagans, who were worshipping all of their false gods, all of their little idols, that it was wrong and there is only one God. There are certainly indications in the Old Testament about the Trinity, but what was made clear in the Old Testament was the oneness of God. In the New Testament, the fullness of the revelation of God is in the Person of Christ and in the sending of the Holy Spirit.

So what we have to look at is this belief in the Trinity. So central, in fact, is this belief to who we are, that already in the Mass (not just today’s Mass because of the Trinity, but every single Sunday) we have expressed our belief in the Trinity on five occasions. We began with the Sign of the Cross. In the greeting, we repeated exactly what we heard in the second reading from Saint Paul when he wrote to the Corinthians: The grace and peace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. That was the second point at which we pronounced our faith in the Trinity. Then in the Kyrie, three times we prayed: Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy in honor of the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity. And then in the Gloria, once again we prayed to our Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Then at the end of the Collect, or the opening prayer, we asked through Our Lord Jesus Christ that the Holy Spirit would pray to the Father. So we see that just in the first couple of moments of Mass we expressed this belief in the Trinity five times. All of our prayers are made in the Trinity. It is critical to who we are and who we understand ourselves to be.

If the Trinity is not a reality then our faith in Jesus Christ is blasphemy. If God is not a Trinity of Persons then everything we believe about the Eucharist is completely false, because if God is not a Trinity then Jesus is not God. If God is not a Trinity then the Holy Spirit could not have overshadowed Our Lady for the conception of Jesus Christ, He could not come down upon the bread and wine to change them into the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and He could not be given to each one of us to lead us into all truth. We begin to see that this point is so central that without it every single thing we can say about our faith is false. It is so central that without our belief in the Trinity everything else completely falls apart.

So it is something that we really need not merely to take for granted, but to enter into. The Trinity is one of the mysteries that is known as an “absolute mystery,” which means it is something we will never be able to understand fully. It could not have been known without specific revelation from God, and once it is revealed there are some things that we can say and understand about it but we will never be able to grasp it completely – even in the next life. Part of what is going to make heaven so wonderful is that there is always more, because God is infinite and our minds are merely finite. Consequently, the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. So there will always be more for all eternity. And since God is love, it is more love. Our hearts are going to be completely filled with the fullness of God, and there is always more. It never, ever will end. And what is it that we are going to be caught up into? The very love of God, Who is One in Three Persons.

Now we might say, “That sounds illogical. How can three be one?” Well, first of all, by the very nature of God. God is love. You cannot be in love with yourself; that is narcissism. So if God is one (and it is made very clear in the Old Testament that there is only one God), He cannot be alone because that completely contradicts the definition of love. Love requires a relationship; therefore, there must be at least two. But love by its very nature transcends the love of just two, as any husband and wife know. It is not enough just to be there and look at one another for the rest of your life. Love becomes life-giving; love transcends the two and becomes life-giving for others. Once again, just by its very nature, love cannot remain with two but it must go beyond that. For love to be complete, it requires at least three. It could have been more than that, but in the Trinity it is three. So the Three, loving one another perfectly, and the Three all being God, and God being perfect and the Supreme Being, that means there is nothing in one that is lacking in the other. Therefore, the Three are identical and they are One. The only difference between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit is their relationship with one another; otherwise, all Three share the same Divine Substance. That would be as if somehow there were three of you but only one soul. Logically, we cannot grasp it, but that does not mean it is illogical, nor does it mean it is not true.

We can understand it by the very nature of what love means and therefore what it must be. We can see it in a variety of different ways throughout creation, the vestiges of God that are shown in so many ways that there are threes in so many things. But perhaps the clearest way to see it is to be able to look at any couple who is married. We see in the teachings of Jesus and of the Church that on the day you are married your souls are united and the two become one. How can two be one? It seems illogical, doesn’t it? Yet every married couple knows it is a reality. And every married couple knows that that love they have and the unity of persons has to be more than just themselves. Now you can ask yourself, “Just exactly how did the two become one?” You did not do that to yourselves. As much as you love one another, you cannot make yourselves into one; only God can do that. So in order for the two of you to become one, it required a third, and that third is God. Therefore, we see that marriage reflects the Trinity. There is a unity of persons and it is a union that is forged in love and that love is life-giving for new persons – just like the Trinity. The unity, obviously, of husband and wife is not quite the same as in the Trinity, because in the Trinity the Three are identical and Their love is perfect. That is not quite the way it works in a marriage. However, any older married couple will recognize, and any of us looking at an older married couple will recognize, that as that couple grows they become more identical. They start to look the same, they talk the same way, they act the same way, they think the same way. The oneness that is there from the beginning of their marriage is perfected and the two become more and more identical. Never, of course, in our humanity will we ever become completely perfectly identical, but we begin to see even in this human reality how there can be a unity of persons, how more than one can still be one, how a multiplicity of persons (Three, in this case of the Trinity) can be one God.

There are not three gods; there is one God. And that one God is Three Persons. And these Three Persons are all eternal. There is never a time that the Second or the Third Person of the Trinity did not exit. All Three have existed from all eternity, and all Three will exist for all eternity. The glory that is offered to each one of us is to enter into the love of the Trinity. We will not become part of the Trinity, but we will be brought into the very life and love of the Three Persons of the Trinity, and we will be caught up in perfect love for all eternity. That is what this is all about. Our very purpose for existence is love, and that is what God desires for each of us: to learn in this life how to love so that we will be prepared for what is to come in the next life.

So if we want to be able to love one another, if married couples want to be able to love one another more perfectly, if we want to love God and love neighbor as we have been commanded to do, then it begins by entering more deeply into the mystery that we celebrate today, to take this up in prayer and to begin even in this life to enter more deeply into the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity; and in that way to prepare yourself for eternity because that is what heaven will be: to be caught up into the love of the Trinity and to be filled to overflowing with the love of God and the love of neighbor. That is what we see in the Trinity: Three Persons loving one another perfectly, and in that perfection of love the Three are One. Each one of us, who is the overflow of the love of the Trinity, made in the image and likeness of God and sharing in the very life of God Himself, is called now to believe in the Name of the only Son of God and live that life of faith so that for eternity the fulfillment of the purpose of our creation will be ours where we will love and we will be loved, we will be caught up into this glorious mystery which will never end and which we will never even comprehend – hardly even a fraction of – for all eternity, and we will be filled to the fullness of the very love of God in the glory of the Three Persons Who are One.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.