May 30, 2010
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
By Rev. Joe McCloskey, S.J.
“When he established the heavens I was there, when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep; When he made firm the skies above, when he fixed fast the foundations of the earth; When he set for the sea its limit, so that the waters should not transgress his command; Then was I beside him as his craftsman, and I was his delight day by day…” Proverbs 8:27-30
“…[H]ope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Romans 5:5
“…[T]he Spirit of truth…will guide you to all truth.” John 16:13
Piety
God is the purest of mystery. How three can be one and one can be three is an impossible concept to grapple with. What God is, is a fantastic secret. What we know about God we have from Christ. Christ is the most perfect human expression of the mystery of God. In the humanness of Christ we have the fullness of the human expression of the mystery of God. Christ tells his disciples that he has loved them with the same love that the Father has for him. He challenges us to know the Father through knowing himself. Christ tells us that he has held nothing back from us. All that the Father has revealed to him, he has passed on to his disciples. He kept no secrets from us. He lived in a time when there would be no distraction from what he was saying. He was the only show in town. Each of the miracles he did were the testimony of the Father about the truth of the mission of Christ. Christ gives us the perfect love on the cross when he dies for us without humanly seeing who he was ding for. In dying for our release from the guilt of our sinfulness, he gives us the forgiveness of the Father on the silver platter of the Sacraments.
Study
We know God as Trinity because of his revealing self as Trinity. The Father sent the Son. Together with the Son, the Father sends the Spirit. Pentecost reveals the Spirit that the Father and Christ sent so we could appreciate the mystery of divine life. We know God as love. God loved us so much that God wanted to be one of us. The Son is the love of the Father made flesh in the mystery of Nativity. We study all that Christ reveals about his relationship to the Father. The Gospels allow us to feast on all that is revealed about Christ. We know God as love in Christ’s relationship to the Father. Christ is the word of that love made flesh. If we love Christ we will keep the commandments because the commandments reveal the nitty-gritty of love.
Action
The action of God is in how God reveals himself to us in sending his Son. Our action needs to be the way we are willing to be one with the Son. It is not enough to be like Christ. Our spiritual journey takes us to becoming one with Christ so that we like Paul can say it is Christ we are.(Gal. 2, 19-21.) Baptism gives us Christ’s life to live in his name. The Sacraments flow from the heart pierced on t he Cross. We can only save our lives by giving them away. We can only hold unto the Christ that indwells within us by sharing him with each other. The Spirit gives us all that belongs to Christ, declaring us Children of God. It is true to say that the real life we possess within us is Christ’s life. We have to die to ourselves so that we can live in Christ.
