homily notes: Most Holy Trinity

Two years ago, on this solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, I was a deacon, preaching in my assignment parish for the first time. I mentioned then that it was a sort of difficult Sunday to preach in a parish for the first time - the feast of the Trinity. It's an intimidating topic.


And I don't think much has changed since then. The Trinity is still a mystery - it's the mystery.


We're talking about the inner life of God - Who and What God is in Himself. These are things that great, brilliant men and women have thought about all through the history of the Church. The Trinity is a concept that will never be exhausted.


But, because we've been given the gift of reason, we can think and talk about this mystery.




When we say that God is a Trinity we are saying, as many of you can say with me, that there are three persons in one God. That who God is, is a relationship. The thing that's existed at all times without changing or fading is the relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.


That relationship is self-sufficient. God doesn't need anything to exist or be happy, but He made us. He made the world and all that is in it out of the abundance of love that exists in the Trinity.


That teaches us a first lesson: We we're made from a relationship and for relationship - and we know that. Despite what anyone says, know one is meant to be alone. We're only truly alive and able to be truly happy within a relationship - family, friends, fellow parishioners, coworkers.
Our first relationship, though, is with God. God made us to share in the love between the Father, the Son and the Spirit.




Through the history of God's relationship with humanity, there have been many important points. We hear about those in the Old Testament. People like Abraham and Jacob made special covenants with God, solidifying that relationship. In the first reading we hear about the culmination of those covenants - God chose Moses and the people of Israel to make into a nation, his nation. Through this little bunch of people in the desert, God was going to truly be with humanity. That happened through Jesus.


In Jesus, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, God became one of us. He lived with us. He taught us to love like He does. And when humanity turned on Him, He offered everything back to the Father, just as He had done for all eternity.


That sacrifice, that offering allows us to live in the life of the Trinity. It opened the way for the Holy Spirit to come down at Pentecost and make us into sons and daughters of God. We can cry out "Abba, Father" as Paul says in the second reading, because we have been adopted. By Christ coming down to us, we've been pulled up into God.




The Trinity may be a mystery. It may be impossible for us to understand "three persons in one God" as we are right now. But we all know relationship. We thrive on it, we need it. And that mystery of coming to know another person, of revealing yourself to another person, comes from our built-in relationship with God.


It's up to us to nourish that relationship. To do the work of prayer, spending time with God, and following the commandments He's given us to keep that relationship alive.