Sunday, May 26, 2013

The Unfathomable Mystery of Love and Communion

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

The Father glorified his obedient Son through the Resurrection. The Son returned to his Father and sits at his right hand. From the throne of the Father, the Son sent the Holy Spirit to complete the work of salvation. Now, the revelation of the true God being completed, we honor this great God, three Persons and yet united in Divinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “This Sunday of the Most Holy Trinity, in a certain sense sums up God's revelation which was brought about through the Paschal Mysteries: Christ's death and Resurrection, his Ascension to the right hand of the Father and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” (Benedict XVI, Angelus, 30 May 2010.)

For many, today is a very difficult feast to celebrate inasmuch as our tendency today is to be very “heady” or “conceptual” about the Trinity. To many Catholics, the Holy Trinity is some idea which we memorize through our catechism. We study, discuss, and even debate on the Trinity to the point that we fail to keep in mind that the when we speak of the Trinity, we speak of 3 Persons in 1 God. I think that this is the key to appreciate the Trinity: He is 3 Persons. What is a person? A person is someone who knows and loves. A person is not a something but a someone. I am a person. Each angel or each demon is a person. But God…He is not a person but 3 Persons. Far from being simply an idea that tickles your intellect, God is a Communion of Persons who live in a relationship among themselves and also with us. The interior life of the 3 Persons is very much a mystery to us. This much we know: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in mutual self-giving. The mystery of the Blessed Trinity is very much the unfathomable mystery of Love and Communion. The 3 Divine Persons are not mindless and stoic figures. Their personal names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, tell us that they are in a relationship. The 1st Person’s name is Father because he has a Son. The 2nd Person’s name is Son because he is born of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the mutual love that Father and Son share with each other. The Holy Trinity is a perfect communion of 3 Persons in life and love. In mutual sharing, the Persons of the Trinity glorify each other: “(The Holy Spirit) will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine…” The 1st reading from the Book of Proverbs has an even more moving insight into this relationship between the Father and the Son. The Son (the Wisdom of God) speaks of the creation of the world: “there was I beside him as his craftsman, and I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing on the surface of his earth; and I found delight in the human race!”

The Trinity invites us to enter and share in this communion of life and love. The 3 Persons know us and wish to be known by us. The 3 Persons love us and wish to be loved by us. We enter and share in the communion of the Blessed Trinity through the Holy Spirit who began to dwell in us through Baptism. Being the Spirit of Truth who guides us to all truth, he makes the Blessed Trinity known to us. Being the love of God who is poured into our hearts, the Holy Spirit makes us experience the Trinity’s love for us and transforms our will to love the Trinity who reveals himself to us. The Holy Spirit brings us to encounter the Blessed Trinity. Our Christian Faith is born out of this encounter. We do not encounter an idea, or a concept. We encounter the living Persons of the one God: the Father who adopts us and makes us his children; the Son who redeems us and affiliates us into his mystical Body which is the Church; and the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us and who is our closest and most reliable friend and Sanctifier. Our Christian life on earth should be a lifetime of knowing and loving and serving the Blessed Trinity. How wonderful is our Catholic faith! By this faith, “we have gained access…to this grace by which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.”

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


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