St. Paul of the Cross Monastery

Trinity Sunday Sermon

Homilist: Fr. Don Ware, C.P.

Updated June 2004
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This is Trinity Sunday.  What can we say about the Trinity?  Most of us never even think about the Trinity.  The Holy Trinity doesn’t mean anything to us….  And if I were to preach to you some of the attempted explanations of the Trinity –most of you would quickly nod off.  It reminds me of the story of the preacher who said… There’s so much about the Trinity I could say… the circumincession explanation of the Trinity, the economic interpretation… there’s so much I could say that I don’t know where to start. And from the back of the Church a voice was heard…  “Start as close to the end as possible.”

I The Sign of the Cross

The sign of the Cross which we just made so effortlessly and so automatically recalls the Trinity to us, as we have experienced the Trinity in our lives.  For many of us soon after birth we were signed with the cross and were claimed for God, and blessed with God’s name, and consecrated to God –  then water was poured over our heads….

II  The Trinity

What can we say about this God?  For one thing, don’t think you ever have God figured out… when all is said and done, God is a mystery, and God’s ways are not our ways.  And when all is said and done, probably the best way to think about God is what John said over and over in his epistles which we have just finished reading in the Easter Season just ended…
 God is love… self-emptying love… agape
? God is not some cosmic cop waiting to zap us for doing wrong.
? God is not a little old man with a gray beard watching over us from above.
? God is not the mighty fatherly figure in Michael Angelo’s creation scene in the Sistine Chapel. Simply put, God is love… not even lover, but the very act of loving, of giving unselfishly, of pouring out life and beauty and compassion and well-being. This loving God pours God’s self out in creation and sees and loves what is created – God doesn’t make junk!  Genesis 1 says that God saw that what God created was good, very good. (That’s us.!) This creating and loving God we call God the Father…

But humanity gets into trouble, sin enters our world.  You know what “sin” is… You encounter it every day of your lives, and perhaps even in your own life.  How does God react? Loving God sees struggling and sinful humanity unable to rise above its sinfulness, and loving God does not deem equality with God something to be clung to, but once again pours God’s self out and this time takes on a human nature, and becomes one of us… and goes further, even enduring death on a cross, in order to confront sinfulness and save beloved humanity from itself.  This is God the Son, whom we call Jesus. Loving Jesus pours himself out, even unto death… for us.

Then this loving God sees that we still need help, and once again pours God’s self out, into our hearts, to continue our redemption, to continue the work of Jesus in our lives and others… Today’s second reading says this: The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.  This God we call Spirit.

For we are now God’s children, brothers and sisters of Jesus, heirs of a heavenly home where Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us.

III  We Are Made in God’s Image

One last thing… our So What? OK, this is the Trinity… so what? Genesis reminds us that we are made in God’s image.  What might that mean? Our society tells us that we are made to be entertained consumers.  Our salvation and redemption and happiness and worthwhileness are assured by buying things, bigger things, better things, more expensive things, nicer things.  The consumer is the image we are made into. But we Christians say… we were created in God’s image,
and therefore we were created to be people who love and who learn to pour ourselves out in unselfish, disinterested, compassionate love – as does God, as does Jesus, and as does the Spirit.
This is what will bring us happiness.  This is what will bring us fulfillment.  This is what makes us human.  Because this is the way God created us.  This is what we believe.  And certainly we can remember Jesus’ teaching reminding us of this… the one who selfishly holds onto his or her life, who is not loving and compassionate - such a person will never enter God’s kingdom.  Look at Mathew 25 where Jesus says that we are to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick… and Jesus even goes so far as to say that when we do this to those in need, we do this to Him.  Be loving… that’s Jesus’ command.Such a way of living is not easy, since it goes against the way our society teaches us to live – enlightened self interest, having it our way, being sure we get our piece of the pie, do unto others before they do it unto us.  And such a way of living with concern and compassion for others, especially the needy, is not easy because our society today seems to be very mean spirited about the needy, blaming the poor for being poor, looking right past those with handicaps or mental illnesses,
warehousing the elderly in nursing homes, then never giving them a second thought. Christians act differently.

Conclusion

Let’s see where we’ve been this morning… The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that our God is a mystery – far beyond our understanding.  But we do know as Christians that probably the best way of thinking about God is to recognize that God is love – self emptying, self giving love.In this love God creates us – the Father God redeems us – the Son And God lovingly pours God’s self into our hearts – the Spirit. And finally, God reveals to us that we are made in God’s image – and that means that we were made to be people who love.

May we be people of love who know that life is about sharing, caring, and unselfish love and compassion. For this is what our God is all about.

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