TRINITY SUNDAY A

[cappie]

In the days after Pentecost a number of beautiful feasts and commemorations draw us ever more deeply into the mystery of the Godhead and the joy of the Gospel. This Sunday, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity.

Saint Augustine  spent many years writing about God as a Trinity of Persons, a mystery which eluded his understanding. The story goes, he was walking by the seaside one day, meditating how God could be One essence, and yet, at the same time, three Persons. He came across a little child. The child had dug a small hole in the sand, and with a seashell was scooping water from the ocean into the hole. Augustine watched him for a little while and finally asked the child what he was doing. The child answered that he wanted to scoop all the water from the sea and pour it into the hole in the sand. “That is impossible,” Augustine said. “The sea is too large, and the hole is too small.” And now it was this child who corrected Augustine. The child said, “That is true, but I will sooner draw all the water from the sea and empty it into this hole than you will succeed in penetrating the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your limited understanding.”

Augustine had been put in his place, that he, too, was a child of God, a God whom he would mysteriously experience but never fully understand.

God as a Trinity of Persons is a mystery, not because we cannot explain it but a mystery that God invites us into,  God desires to be in personal relationship with us, a relationship not as a distant God.

God desires to love us as God loves God: Person to person. That is what our baptism is all about, of God coming to live within us – not just beyond us, or around us, but within us: to love us as God loves God. And this eludes our understanding.

As soon as we can define or describe God, we surely have missed God. God is always More. But we can experience God as three Persons, which is what our Creeds, what Saint Augustine, and so many others have tried to describe. Jesus, living a fully human life – Jesus whom we call God’s Son – prays to God whom he calls, whom we call “Father”: “our Father in heaven,” as Jesus says. Jesus is “one” with “the Father,” he says, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” he says.  And as Jesus prepares to leave this earth, he promises to not leave us alone. We will be left with “God’s Spirit,” who will  continue to lead us and empower us.

The best the Church has been able to describe this mysterious experience is to speak of God as essentially One, yet in three Persons, a Trinity.  

Experiencing God as a Trinity of Persons makes a profound difference, not only in how we belong to God, but how we belong to one another. We are distinct persons, all of us, and yet our essence is the same. We are all children of God. We all need water and food, shelter and rest, love and safety, education and encouragement, health and hope to be alive and thrive. We are all so much the same. We will hear geneticists tells us that we all are almost, almost identical. And yet the slight differences evident in humankind seem almost infinite. We must be in relationship with one another. We have been created by a God in relationship – a Trinity of Persons – who invites us all to be in personal relationship – relationship with one another and in relationship with all that God has created – because this is the essence of God, to be in a circle of  relationship with all whom God has created.

Our keeping of Easter shows God has revealed to humanity the very character of his being. We know him as our loving Father, who gave his Son for our salvation, both of whom send the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts and renew creation.

Most of the world will not know or value that today, in the Church’s calendar, is Trinity Sunday. The very being of God is community; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are One in reciprocal self-giving love. So, for us. This is our vocation, our reason for being, in these especially desperate and opportune times.

 

[BarbTherese]

Thank you

[Norseman82]

A lot of homilists tell how they dread preparing a homily for Trinity Sunday.  I think it would be the easiest and shortest homily - just tell the above story about St. Augustine, then tell the congregation, "Give up, people, you won't understand until you get into heaven".

[BarbTherese]

On 6/3/2023 at 8:44 AM, cappie said:

In the days after Pentecost a number of beautiful feasts and commemorations draw us ever more deeply into the mystery of the Godhead and the joy of the Gospel. This Sunday, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity.

Saint Augustine  spent many years writing about God as a Trinity of Persons, a mystery which eluded his understanding. The story goes, he was walking by the seaside one day, meditating how God could be One essence, and yet, at the same time, three Persons. He came across a little child. The child had dug a small hole in the sand, and with a seashell was scooping water from the ocean into the hole. Augustine watched him for a little while and finally asked the child what he was doing. The child answered that he wanted to scoop all the water from the sea and pour it into the hole in the sand. “That is impossible,” Augustine said. “The sea is too large, and the hole is too small.” And now it was this child who corrected Augustine. The child said, “That is true, but I will sooner draw all the water from the sea and empty it into this hole than you will succeed in penetrating the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your limited understanding.”

Augustine had been put in his place, that he, too, was a child of God, a God whom he would mysteriously experience but never fully understand.

God as a Trinity of Persons is a mystery, not because we cannot explain it but a mystery that God invites us into,  God desires to be in personal relationship with us, a relationship not as a distant God.

God desires to love us as God loves God: Person to person. That is what our baptism is all about, of God coming to live within us – not just beyond us, or around us, but within us: to love us as God loves God. And this eludes our understanding.

As soon as we can define or describe God, we surely have missed God. God is always More. But we can experience God as three Persons, which is what our Creeds, what Saint Augustine, and so many others have tried to describe. Jesus, living a fully human life – Jesus whom we call God’s Son – prays to God whom he calls, whom we call “Father”: “our Father in heaven,” as Jesus says. Jesus is “one” with “the Father,” he says, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” he says.  And as Jesus prepares to leave this earth, he promises to not leave us alone. We will be left with “God’s Spirit,” who will  continue to lead us and empower us.

 

 

 

When we receive one member of the Blessed Trinity as in Holy Communion, do we receive all three equally?

 

[cappie]

Yes    The Eucharist and the Trinity - Prof. Michael F. Hull

"In the Eucharist, men eat the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, whose very Self and whose very self-sacrifice, bear up men into communion with the Trinity. The Eucharist and the Trinity are thoroughly united in the divine economy."  

https://www.clerus.org/clerus/dati/2002-03/25-999999/05SAIIEN.html#:~:text=In the Eucharist%2C men eat,united in the divine economy.