Believing and Living the Central Mystery of Christian Faith and Life, Trinity Sunday (A), June 4, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Trinity Sunday, Year A
June 4, 2023
Ex 34:4-6.8-9, Dt 3, 2 Cor 13:11-13, Jn 3:16-18

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• Often when I ask people — students at Columbia and other Catholics in various adult education sitautions — what is the most important teaching in Christianity, I get various answers. Some will reply with Christological dogmas like the Incarnation or the Resurrection. More often people will respond with moral teachings, like “You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, soul and strength,” “Love one another as I have loved you,” “Whatever you did to the least of my brothers, you did to me” or “do unto others what you would have them do to you.” But the top of the hierarchy of Christian teachings is, by far, the revelation of God as the Blessed Trinity.
• The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in an extraordinarily important paragraph (CCC 234), emphasizes, “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.” It is what most distinguishes Christianity from every other religion. Ancient Greek and Roman pagans were polytheists, believing in many opposed gods. Buddhists are agnostic. Hindus are pantheistic. Jews and Muslims are monopersonal monotheists. We Christians, on the other hand, are Trinitarian monotheists, which is why the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity isthe central mystery of the Christian religion.
• Because lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, because the way we pray impacts how we believe and how we live, it is very important that we pray our faith in the Trinity. This became clearer to the Church over time. While every Sunday is, in a very real sense, dedicated to God and therefore every Sunday really is Trinity Sunday, since the 1300s, the Church has celebrated on the Sunday immediately following Pentecost a feast dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to help all of us focus more explicitly on God is in his profound mysterious depths, and therefore on who we’re called to be made in His image and likeness.
• The Trinity is first, the central mystery, note, with regard to what we believe. The Catechism tells us why: “It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith.’” The mystery of the Trinity, therefore, enlightens the mystery of Creation, the mystery of Redemption, the Mystery of Sanctification. It illumines every page of Sacred Scripture. It sheds light on the four last things. It reveals what is at the root of all of the sacraments and prayer. The Catechism states, “The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men ‘and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin.” Underneath the history of the world, underneath our own personal history from the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb, until now and beyond, has developed within this mystery of the Blessed Trinity. Therefore, it’s crucial for us as human beings, not to mention believers, to pour ourselves into the mystery of the Trinity.
• This leads to the second point the Catechism underlines: the Trinity is likewise the central mystery with regard to Christian life. The Christian life is meant to be a Trinitarian life. Your life, my life, is meant to be a Trinitarian life. And so the most important moral question we need to ask, answer, and live is how do we live a Trinitarian life?
• We need to start with God who seeks to give us the help he knows we need to live like him. He gives us that help, first, through the liturgy. This whole Mass, for example, is lived in communion with the Trinity. We begin Mass in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We end Mass by receiving the blessing of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Everything we do and say during the Mass is nothing other than a dialogue between us and the Father, through the person of Jesus Christ, in the light and with the help of the Holy Spirit. The priest greets us all with St. Paul’s words from today’s second reading, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” The Mass is supposed to help us to enter God’s grace, love and communion. In the middle of Mass, we loudly proclaim that we have grounded our lives in the mystery of the Trinity, uniting ourselves to the entire Church on earth, in heaven and in Purgatory as we say: “I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth… I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God… I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.” At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, as we lift up Christ’s Body and Blood to the Father and offer ourselves together with him, the priest on behalf of Christ’s whole mystical body summarizes the fundamental orientation of a Christian life: “Through [Christ], with Him and in Him, O God, Almighty Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, forever and ever.”
• As we see in the liturgy of the Mass, our whole life is meant to begin and end in the name of the Blessed Trinity and be a profession of the faith we proclaim together. We see this in the other Catholic liturgies that are likewise Trinitarian. Our spiritual life begins when a minister of God makes us God’s child and a temple of His presence by baptizing us, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” At the end of our life, a priest, in the prayers after the anointing, will say, “Depart from this life, Christian soul, in the name of God the Almighty Father who created you, in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, who suffered for you, in the name of the Holy Spirit, who descended over you.” Between these two extremes — birth and death — our whole earthly existence is meant to be lived explicitly within the life of the Blessed Trinity: in the name of the Trinity spouses are united in holy matrimony; in the name of the Trinity, priests are ordained and consecrated for God’s service; in the name of the Trinity, our sins are forgiven. Our whole Christian existence develops in the company of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: the three Persons are with us, the walk each step of life with us — and when we’re in the state of grace, they do so on the inside!
• And so we need to learn to pray the Mass and pray the Sacraments in a Trinitarian way. St. John Paul II wrote in his Treatise on Holiness in 2001, “Learning [the] Trinitarian shape of Christian prayer and living it fully, above all in the liturgy … but also in personal experience, is the secret of a truly vital Christianity.” For our life as Christians to come fully alive, we must learn how to pray in the Trinity, how to pray to the Father through with and in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. But liturgy must never be separated from life. As the Catechism says, we’re called to live as we pray, to put into practice what Triune God has come to reveal to us and make possible. And so this Trinitarian Life that is emphasized and effectuated by the Sacraments and experienced in personal prayer is meant to overflow into our entire existence, which is meant to be an existence made prayer, or a life made Trinitarian. Jesus has come to reveal to us who God is so that not only we may come to know him and experience his life and love throughout our daily existence into eternity but so that we can also grow to know and become fully ourselves, who have been created by Him in his image and likeness.
• What does this mean? St. John wrote in his first letter something so simple but yet so theologically deep. He said, “God is love” (1 John 4:16). This statement strongly implies that the one God somehow had to be a Trinity of Persons. For God to be love, he could not have been solitary, because no one can love in a vacuum. In love, there is always one who loves, one who is loved, and the content of their love for each other. God the Father and God the Son, in all eternity, loved each other so much that their love generated (“spirated”) a third person, the Holy Spirit. They exist in an eternal communion of persons in love, in which the three persons exist in mutual self-giving that not only makes them united but makes them truly one, three persons in one God.  Because love is naturally expansive, their mutual self-giving was bound to overflow. Out of no necessity, our Triune God created the world — and created us — to share his love. We are made in God’s image and likeness and hence are created in love and for love. We’re created in the image of the divine giver and called to live in a communion of persons in love. We see this image reflected in the way he created man and woman to exist in a communion of persons in love so strong that their love for each other can actually generate a third person, similar to what we see in the Holy Trinity. Saint John Paul II used to state that this is the deepest thing that can be said about the human person made in God’s image: we are in God’s image most not by our reason and our capacity freely to choose, but by our nature and call to live in a loving communion of persons. This image of God as communion is meant to be reflected in the family, in the Church, and in society. And each of us, on this Trinity Sunday is summoned to ask whether we really strive to live in as a loving communion of persons in God’s image and likeness, or whether we live selfishly, egocentrically and individualistically.
• We need to make the Trinitarian shape of Christian life to which we’re called ever more practical. How do we enter more deeply into God’s loving communion and share it with others? In today’s second reading, St. Paul tells us that we will understand and experience God’s love to the extent that we imitateit, that when we love and live in peace with each other, the “God of love and peace will be with you.” It’s like swimming; we can really only learn in the water. The way we experience God’s Trinitarian love is by jumping into the ocean of his loving communion and sharing it, so that others will jump into the deep end of that ocean of love with us as well.
• Love, however, is a word used so often, and misused so often, that to speak of God’s love is no longer very clear. Today, love has been hypersexualized and even perverted, such that people have come to believe that a valid expression of love is sex without commitment or without anyone else or contrary to nature. So if we’re going to say that God is love and that we’re created in love and for love, we need to ponder what love really is in order to understand God and ourselves. Today we can focus on three aspects of God’s love that we are called to imitate so that we can grow more and more into the image of that love:
• First, God’s love is sacrificial— We read in today’s Gospel, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” God loved us enough that he died so that we might live forever. This is why the greatest symbol of love is not Cupid with his arrow piercing a heart, but the Crucifix with arrow-like nails piercing Christ’s flesh. “No one has any greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13), Jesus told us on Holy Thursday and put into body language the following afternoon. To the extent that our love will be true love — one that leads us into communion with God and with others — we need likewise to lay down our lives, to sacrifice. We see this first in the family. For a family to grow in love, the members of the family must be willing to sacrifice for the others. They need to be able to sacrifice their own individual wants for the good of the whole, to put others’ interests first. That capacity to love through a willingness to give up something good for the sake of someone becomes contagious in a family. I remember one couple celebrating a 50th anniversary who told me their secret for a happy marriage: their motto was, “Honey, you got your way the last time; I want you to get it again!” That type of loving sacrifice of their own preferences is so much in contrast to the “you got your way the last time; now it’s my turn” of the world. When egocentrism and selfishness invade a marriage, when spouses start stressing what “I want” more than what the family needs, that’s when things get rocky. We see this need for sacrificial love also in God’s family the Church. The Church will thrive to the extent that people offer their gifts and their very selves for him and for others. We likewise see this need in society. Many of those who enter into public service as politicians do so today not out of service but out of ambition. Rather than serve everyone, they serve themselves and their supporters, they become partisan, they create and increase divisions. And many faithful Christians, called to be salt, light and leaven, stay on the sidelines, lamenting the situation as it worsens, but not really entering the fray to remedy it. Love is sacrificial. The more we give, the more we sacrifice to enter into communion with others, the happier we are, because we can only be fulfilled by love and true love doesn’t exist without sacrifice.
• God’s love is other-centered— When we pay close attention to the Gospels, we notice that each of the persons of the Blessed Trinity speaks about the others. God the Father speaks three times in the Gospel, and each time he speaks about the Son. At Jesus baptism, he says, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17). At his Transfiguration, he says, “This is my Son. Listen to him!” (Mk 9:7). During the Last Supper he speaks to say that he will glorify his Son’s name once again (Jn 12:28).  When Jesus speaks, he’s constantly speaking of the Father and the Holy Spirit. When the disciples ask to learn how to pray, he teaches them how to pray, “Our Father.” During the Sermon on the Mount, he focuses on how good the Father is, how he will give good things to those who ask him, that he loves us so much more than the birds of the air or the lilies of the field (Mt 6:26-34). He tells us that he speaks only what he hears the Father say to him and that his whole will is to do the will of the Father who sent him. During the Last Supper, as he’s preparing for his death, he also speaks extensively about the Holy Spirit, and even says humbly that it’s better for him to go so that the Spirit can come. We also see clearly what the Holy Spirit’s mission is. The Holy Spirit’s mission is to help us to cry out, not “Ruah!” (Spirit) but “Abba, Father!” (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15). He comes into our heart not so that we can cry out, “The Holy Spirit is Lord,” even though it’s true, but “Jesus Christ is Lord” and reminds us of everything Jesus has taught us (Jn 14:26). So the Father speaks about the Son, the Son about the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit about the Father and the Son. Their love for each other has no egocentrism, and likewise, if we’re going to share in a loving communion with God and others, there can be no self-centered aspect to our love. We need to live humbly, hoping that others be exalted, seeking to make the other happy, striving to fulfill the other’s will. Think about what would happen in a young family if the father always spoke to the kids about how great their mom is, and if the mother were always stressing what a great dad they’re blessed with; if both always stressed to each other the good qualities in their children, and if the children were taught not to say “mine!” and to be selfish with their toys and talents, but to share and to give to make others happy. What great peace would reign in that family! And this is not an impossible ideal! It starts with each member’s trying to put the other first.
• God’s love is merciful— This is perhaps the greatest and the most important thing we could say about God’s love relative to us (because there’s no need for mercy within the Trinity). It’s also the most important aspect of God’s love that we’re called to imitate if we seek loving communion with God and others. In today’s first reading, God speaks Moses on the top of Mount Sinai how to relate to him: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” God is merciful and we’re called to be merciful. Jesus says to us clearly in the Gospel, “Be merciful, as your heavenly father is merciful” (Lk 6:36). He tells us clearly that it’s easy to love those who love us — even sinners do that much. The love to which he calls us is a merciful love, one we give even to our enemies (Lk 6:35) and those who have made themselves our vested antagonists and adversaries. In doing so, we will be loving others as God loves us, who makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust (Mt 5:45). We see this in the first reading, when God gives the Israelites another chance after their idolatry. We see this in the way he treats us, as Jesus prayed for us from the Cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk 23:34). The greatest destroyer of the communion that is supposed to flow from our being created in the image of the Trinity is sin and an incapacity to forgive, which is why, if we wish to enter into loving communion is to live in a relationship of mercy and reconciliation with God and others. “Blessed are the merciful,” Jesus tells us, “for they will receive mercy” (Mt 5:7).
• God who is love loved us so much that he wanted us to share in this sacrificial, other-centered, merciful love, not just in the next life but in this one. The way we best prepare for heaven is by entering into that type of communion of love here on earth. The means by which we help renew our wounded world most is by seeking that divine love with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and seeking to bring that sacrificial, other-centered merciful love to our neighbor. And we do this best at Mass. Trinity Sunday is a chance for us to hear God calling us anew to live up to our dignity and to enter more deeply into the communion with Him and with others. It’s a time for us to receive the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit, to dwell in it and to let that grace, love and communion overflow!

The readings for today’s Mass were:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download