Homily Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity

 

Reading 1: We say God is All-wise. The Holy Spirit is personified as Wisdom. The Old Testament people were not able to grasp the mystery of God, let alone the reality of a triune but one God. At first, they struggled with the human perception that there were many gods and one had to placate these different entities.

 

God revealed to Abraham that there is only one God and no other. It took generations for this revelation to take root in the hearts and minds of the Old Testament people. If God would have revealed there is One God but three divine persons, they would have understood this to be three gods. So God continued to formed them in the truth of the One, True God, who is the I AM. At the same time God was laying the foundation through the prophets and other writings for the fuller revelation of the mystery of the Trinity.

 

Here in the first reading we have a glimpse of it. It speaks of the Wisdom of God, who was with God before time, namely all eternity. Today, we understand this to be the Holy Spirit. As we acknowledge Jesus as the only begotten Son of the Father, as the first born of all creation, so we acknowledge that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

 

Gospel: We have seen the Holy Spirit called the Wisdom of God and the Spirit of love. Now, Jesus identifies the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth, who will guide us to all truth. What truth?  God’s plan for us. The truth that will set us free. The truth that reminds me that only in God does my life have meaning and purpose. I am a son/daughter of God.  Again, Jesus speaks of himself, the Father and the Spirit.

 

What does all this mean to us? How blessed are we to have been given the revelation of the Trinity! How blessed are we to have been created in God’s own image and likeness! To have been reconciled and justified by the death and resurrection of Jesus! To have been anointed by the Holy Spirit, who is the love of the Father in our hearts. We have been given the gift of wisdom to know the mind of God for us, the gift of knowledge to come to the truth revealed by God. We have received the gift of understanding to comprehend the truth in light of God’s plan for us; the gift of right judgement to make the decisions that will enable us to live in the will of God for us. We have received the gifts of God through the Holy Spirit to enable us to come into that fuller, intimate relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that our daily life in in the Lord, our peace is steady, our love is reflective of God’s love for us.

 

 

Reading 2: Here we have Paul’s attempt to teach about the Trinity to the early Christian believers in Rome. Nowhere in the New Testament is the word Trinity used in reference to God. The term is a later understanding of the Church. But the reality of the Trinity is present. Paul says we are at peace with God through Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are at peace with the Father through the death and resurrection of the Son who is Lord.

 

Then he says that the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. The love of God is another way of saying the Spirit of Love. When we try to explain the Trinity in human terms, we talk about the Father perfectly loves the Son and the Son perfectly returns love to the Father and this Love is the person of the Holy Spirit. When God loves us, he pours out his Spirit upon us, so that we can in turn love God, not just with our human love, but with his own divine love. It is this love of God for us in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which enables us to turn our afflictions into the strength of endurance. This in turn places our hope in God throughout our afflictions.