Homily for the evening Mass on Trinity Sunday
Readings for Year A: Exodus 34:4-9; II Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18
When we pray, we always begin “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. In our second reading Paul greets the Christians of Corinth with the words, “The Grace of Our Lord Jesus, Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all”. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the disciples are commanded to go and preach the Gospel to all nations baptising them in “the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. From the beginning Christians have preached and acted in the name of their God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. However, it took several centuries for the Church to be clear about the relationship between the persons of the Trinity, that doctrine we proclaim when we recite the Creed. The temptation in those early Christian heresies reject by the Church was to go for something easier and simpler. Simpler and easier if Christ was not really God but some sort of creature. Much simpler if Christ had never really become a human being, become one of us. Much simpler if we had a unitarian view and were not really dealing with three persons in one God.
That temptation to God for a God who is easier to understand, more the sort of God we might think up for ourselves is still there for us. It was there for the people of Israel in the desert when God took his time giving the law to Moses. The Golden Calf was much more accessible, much more on our scale. In our second reading we have God’s response. With the new copies of the Law Moses goes up the mountain and God reveals himself “A God of tenderness and compassion” but an awesome presence.
We can want to make God in our own way, because it suits us or because we fit in with others varied ideas. We can see God as remote and uncaring, especially perhaps when we encounter circumstances like our experience of coronavirus today. Yet the Gospel tells us “God so loved the world that he sent his own Son into the world.” Alternative God can be some kind of puppet master, playing games with us. We can too easily see the events we experience as some kind of punishment or reward. Again this does not fit with the God of the incarnation or with a God of tenderness and compassion. Again we can use God as a kind of teddy bear, a comforting, undemanding presence when we are in need.
This is not the God of Christian faith. The God we worship is the God revealed though the love of God expressed through the death and resurrection of Christ. This is how we can understand what tenderness and compassion really mean. This is who God really is, revealed to us as a community of Love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A God who is really God. Not some construct to suit our wants or our fears. Not a God our understanding can really grasp, but the God we celebrate today. The God revealed to us by those events we have been celebrating over the last few months. The God revealed to us by the Holy Spirit at work in the Church over the centuries and in our hearts. As we praise God today let us ask for real faith and trust in the God who has revealed himself though the working out of his love shown in Jesus Christ.
Fr Chris Pedley SJ