Holy Trinity Homily

**To listen to this homily, click on the title**

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

First Reading: Proverbs 8:22-31
Responsorial Psalm: Psalms 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Second Reading: Romans 5:1-5
Gospel: John 16:12-15

On this Memorial Day weekend I would like to start by thanking all of you who are veterans. You who are veterans are the ones who have protected for us the right to be here today to celebrate our faith in freedom – so thank all of you for serving.

We gather this morning to celebrate the beautiful solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. I thought what I would do this morning is attempt a deep, 20-30 minute theological dissertation and explain to you finally the Holy Trinity. Is that OK? Should I try that? Actually in 2000 years the great minds of the church haven’t been able to fully do that so I’m not going to do go that direction at all. In fact what I’m going to attempt to do is take another direction.

As I began to pray about the homily today, as I picked up the readings and began to pray, I asked the Lord to give me some kind of sort of mental picture, some kind of image for us in our spiritual journey to, maybe not understand how the Holy Trinity is the Holy Trinity, how one God can be 3 persons and yet still one God, but to have an image that can help carry us in our spiritual journey a little bit better, have a little bit better close intimate relationship with God and the Holy Trinity. God who is Creator God, God who is Redeemer God, God who is Sanctifying God. How do we get closer to that God?

Now some of you know, a few of you know, that I’ve just returned from another trip to the Holy Land so you’ll be either shocked or glad to know that I’ve got 4 more years of new material. In fact I even have a new stole that the priest guide gave me at our closing dinner as we were preparing to leave. So I thought that I would attempt in prayer to see if there was a way to tie in something from that trip, some of the beautiful profound experiences that 40 of us pilgrims had. Actually there were more than 40; there were 40 of us that left from here plus our Franciscan priest guide plus our Arab Muslim bus driver, Ahmed, who became part of our group. There were 42 of us really that were this beautiful community that traveled through the holy land.

So I picked up the first reading and I read that beautiful reading from Proverbs and there is that personification of God in wisdom and this beautiful poetic language. Wisdom is talking bout how she was there before even the beginning of the earth, even the creation of anything and wisdom was there. And so I realized that the first reading takes us back all the way even prior to the creation of the world. And wisdom talks about the delight that she took in the creation of people and how wisdom played before the Lord on the Lord’s earth. There was that intimate beautiful relationship already existing at the beginning of time. So I looked and went well okay, we’re talking about before time so I looked and remembered how we went to Jericho and Jericho is the oldest, existing, living city on the face of the earth right now. We went to Jericho and we looked out at the desert and there we looked at the Mount of Temptation. But I didn’t really grasp anything from that. Then I thought about how we went to another sort of an Old Testament place. We went to the cave of Elijah where Elijah stood and he looked for God, he was looking for an experience with God and he discovered that God wasn’t in the fire or the wind of the earthquake, but God was in the still, small voice of his heart. It was the Spirit speaking to Elijah there and there is a beautiful intimacy between the Father and the Spirit there. But still, no special image for us this morning. We went on then into more of the “Jesus” area of the Holy Land and we went to the place where the Word became flesh – we went to the Church of the Annunciation. We went to the place of the birth – Bethlehem. We went to the place where Jesus stayed much of his ministry – Capernaum. We rode in a boat on the sea of Galilee and went to the Jordan where Jesus was baptized. We went to the place of his death and resurrection. We went to the place of His ascension. And all of those were God’s revelation of Himself. All of the life of Jesus was the revelation of God’s love to the world. But still no special little something for today. And then I read the Gospel and in the Gospel Jesus talks about the coming of the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit will come and reveal truth. There is that again, the relationship of the Father and the Son and the Spirit that is there revealed in Scriptures, revealed in the places. We went to, again, the Jordan. That was a very special time when God the Father spoke, Jesus was baptized and the Spirit appeared as a dove. We went to the upper room where Pentecost took place and the Spirit came. Still no special image. So I was about to give up and go a different direction saying, “Well Lord maybe that’s not where you wanted me to go”. Tuesday morning I was sitting in mass, before mass and praying. And all of the sudden I realized very clearly and very profoundly the image that I want to share with all of you and the Lord shared with me that morning and crystallized what I was feeling what I was sensing.

Now you got to understand that one of the things that I’ve heard in my life, something that I heard and I don’t remember where or whether I read it or whether I heard it but I remember hearing that God the Trinity is a community of love. Father, creator God. Son, Redeemer God. Spirit, Sanctifying God. Now all together, always a community of love. And I realized that in the image that I wanted to have for all of us that I saw a glimpse of the reality of God the Trinity in the community of pilgrims that went on that journey. Now what do I mean by that?

In that community as I look back, I see very clearly a community of love. There were very many differing ones of us. There some older, and there were some younger. And as an example, there were some that had a little bit of a struggle walking some of the trips and some of the journeys that we had to make. But every time I would look back and I would see that those that were struggling along that journey had some other pilgrim arm in arm helping them along. There was an action of love among those who were helping take care of the others. It was a community of love. Different people had different roles. But all of us together were there to go on that journey. And there was even a time, well actually there were many times, but there was one very particular time when that community of love erupted into a community of joy. Now I realize that this is one of those circumstances where you really kind of had to be there, but I’m going to tell you anyway. We were out of the boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee. The people who owned it, who ran the boat, gathered us all together and got us into two circles, an inner circle and an outer circle and they played Hava Nagila. Now I don’t know if you know that song or not, but it’s a pretty moving song. And they had those 40 pilgrims doing something equivalent to Texas line dancing on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. Great joy and great laughter and great fun and in any other circumstances, I doubt you would have gotten 40 people doing that same thing, but there was a community of love, a community of joy. And then they shut the music off, they turned off the boat and they shut off the motor and we floated on the Sea of Galilee and we prayed. And we experienced the presence of God, the Trinity. God the Father, the Son and the Spirit - loving us to a closer relationship with Him.

Now my point for us today, my dear friends, is that God wants us to recognize that He is a community of love. God wants us to realize that he continuously, every single day, continues to reveal Himself to us. Sometimes He reveals Himself to us through other people. And sometimes He reveals Himself to us in many different ways. And whether we encounter God the Father, or we encounter God the Son, or we encounter God the Spirit - however we encounter Him that particular moment, we encounter the fullness of God’s love. We can never fully understand how that can be. But God’s revelation to us is that He is One God. And He is a loving God. And He invites us to be part of that community. Every single moment - He invites us to be in love and to be loved by Him.