The Most Holy Trinity Sunday: [c]Prv 8:22-31;Rom5:1-5;Jn16:12-15

The Most Holy Trinity Sunday: [c]Prv 8:22-31;Rom5:1-5;Jn16:12-15

Introduction: The Easter season is over. It was concluded last Sunday with the Pentecost. Today we return to Sundays in Ordinary Time. If there is one theme that marks the Ordinary Time of the liturgical year, it is the theme of growth in Christian living. The liturgical color green symbolizes life and growth, as we know from nature. Ordinary Time will take us to the end of the liturgical year. If the theme of the Ordinary Time is growth, why then does the church choose to come back to it with the solemnity of the Blessed Trinity? Growth is a practical, everyday concern but the Trinity seems to be high up there, a matter of theological and philosophical profundity.

Exegesis: When we are personally caught up in the mystery of the love of God, then we shall find the rationale and the motivation to work for our personal growth in Christian living.  The easiest place to understand trinity is to begin with love.  The First Person of the Trinity is the Father.  Jesus taught us to call His Father, Our Father.  Actually, more than the formal “father” we are to call Him “Abba” or “Daddy”.  This is not the view that many of us have of the First Person.  We tend to see the Father only as the all powerful Creator with a view similar to the way Michelangelo presented Him on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But the Father is Love.  He created us out of love.  He sent His Son to deliver us from the death that selfishness and hatred brought upon the world, to restore us to His Love.  The Abba loves us.

We can certainly understand the Love of God in the Second Person, the Son.   Jesus Christ is Love Incarnate, Divine Love taken on human flesh.  There are many ways that He pours His Love on us; certainly the central way was through the sacrificial love of the Cross.

Our ability to respond to the Creative Love of the Father and the Compassionate Love of the Son is infinitely more powerful than any love the human soul can produce.  We have been given the Spirit of Love, the Power of Love, the Holy Spirit.

Event: There is a very old and much-repeated story about St. Augustine, one of the intellectual giants of the Church.  He was walking by the seashore one day, attempting to arrive at an intelligible explanation for the mystery of the Trinity.  As he walked along, he saw a small boy on the beach, pouring seawater from a shell into a small hole in the sand.  "What are you doing, my child?" asked Augustine.  "I am emptying the sea into this hole," the boy answered with an innocent smile.  "But that is impossible, my dear child,” said Augustine.  The boy stood up, looked straight into the eyes of Augustine and replied, “What you are trying to do - comprehend the immensity of God with your small head - is even more impossible.”  Then he vanished.  The child was an angel sent by God to teach Augustine a lesson.  Later, Augustine wrote: "You see the Trinity if you see love."  According to him the Father is the Lover, the Son is the Loved One and the Holy Spirit is the personification of the very act of Loving. This means that we can understand something of the mystery of the Holy Trinity more readily with the heart than with our feeble mind. Evagrius of Pontus, a Greek monk of the 4th century who came from what is now Turkey in Asia and later lived out his vocation in Egypt, said: "God cannot be grasped by the mind. If God could be grasped, God would not be God."

Joke:   One parishioner said, “Our pastor is a lot like the Trinitarian God because he is invisible in the rectory during week days and incomprehensible on Sundays because I don’t understand his sermons.”

Practical Applications:  1) Let us respect ourselves and others because everyone is the temple of the Holy Spirit where all the three Persons of the Holy Trinity abide.

2) Let us have the firm conviction that the Trinitarian God abides in us and that He is the source of our hope, courage and strength and is our final destination.

3) Let us practice the Trinitarian relationship of love and unity in the family relationships of father, mother and children, because by baptism we become children of God and members of God’s Trinitarian family.

 4) Let us practice the I–God–my neighbor vertical and horizontal Trinitarian relationship in society by loving God living in others. 

Introduction: The Most Holy Trinity

Message: We are at peace with God our Father through our Lord Jesus Christ.  God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.  This Spirit, who is Wisdom itself, will lead us into all truth.  How wonderful the name of our God in all the earth.

Saints and Events in this week: 27-Monday-St.Augustine of Canterbury, bishop; the Memorial Day;  31-Friday-The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary; 1-May-Saturday-Saint Justin , martyr.