YEAR B: HOMILY FOR THE TRINITY SUNDAY (2)

YEAR B: HOMILY FOR THE TRINITY SUNDAY

HOMILY THEME: TRINITY – PICTURE OF GOD

BY: Fr. Gerald M. Musa

HOMILY:

Different religions in the world have different pictures of God. A careful study of these pictures shows the most primeval and the profoundest ideas about God. Christian Scriptures paint a picture of God who is omnipotent (all- powerful) and omniscient (knows all) and a God who is transcendent and immanent.

Transcendence means that he is over and above all creatures. He demonstrated his transcendence in the work of creation. He made the heavens with his Word; He spoke and everything came into existence (Psalm 33:6). Immanence of God speaks of a God who is near and not far away from his creatures. The book of Deuteronomy summarily describes God’s transcendence and immanence by stating, “The Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath” (Deuteronomy 4:39).

In Jesus, we see a God (Immanuel) who is near and dwells with us (Isaiah 7:14; 8:8; Matthew 1:23; 7:14.21-22). The scriptures emphatically says, “God is love” and “Loves the world” so much (John 3:16). Through this love, his creatures could relate closely with him as children and He to them as Father. St. Paul says, God’s children can relate with him God affectionately through prayers (Romans 8:14-17).

Christians believe in one God who is the Father of all and creator of the Universe, and the same God who came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ as Redeemer, and the same God who comes to comfort, inspire, sanctify, empower and enlighten us in the person of the Holy Spirit. Thus, according to Scheffczyk, God is above us as Father, God is with us as Son (Jesus) and God is in us as Holy Spirit. Jesus specifically commissioned his disciples that anyone who wishes to be his follower must be initiated into the fold through baptism and this baptism must be done with the Trinitarian Baptismal formula: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). This instruction of Jesus is commonly known as the Great Commission. Christians worship one God in the Trinity and they are baptised in the name of the Trinity, because it is in this Trinitarian God that they “Live, move and have their being” (Acts of the Apostles 17:28). A Jesuit Priest and great spiritual writer George Maloney says, it is this indwelling Trinity that lives within and transforms Christians into divinised children of God.

How is it possible to believe in one God in Trinity? This is indeed a mystery, because God is much more complex than our little brains. Various spiritual writers have attempted to explain the Doctrine of the Trinity. Among these writers, John of Damascus paints a vivid picture of one God in Trinity. He says, “Think of the Father as a spring of life begetting the Son like a river and the Holy Spirit like a sea, for the spring and the river and the sea are all one nature. Think of the Father as a root, of the Son as a branch, and of the Spirit as a fruit, for the substance in these three is one. The Father is a sun with the Son as rays and the Holy Ghost as heat.”

What can we learn from the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity? First, in the Trinity we learn that God is a mystery that cannot be fully understood by the simple human mind. John Wesley says, “Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I will show you a man that can comprehend the triune God.”

Second, the nature of one God, operating in three persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) speaks eloquently to a divided world, divided families and nations about the meaning of unity in diversity and the strength of cooperation.
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Most Holy Trinity Sunday/ Year B/ Deuteronomy 4:32-34.39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20