To Be What We Are

Trinity Sunday, C                                                                                                       June 16, 2019
Fr. Albert                                                                                St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. That is how we start and end everything in the Church. And today’s feast is all about that reality, the revelation of God as a Trinity. The Blessed Trinity is the central mystery of the faith. Everything else tells us about what God did, but this tells us who he is. One God, Three Divine Persons. It’s impossible to figure out on our own and is beyond our reason. Still, we know it is true by faith, through the scriptures and through our sacred tradition.

God the Son is wisdom itself. When our first reading tells us that “wisdom” says “the Lord possessed me at the beginning of his ways,” it is the Son speaking. And, we can translate it to say the Father “begot” me at the beginning of his ways. You’ll recognize it in the creed, the only begotten son. The Father eternally and continually “pours forth” his love into the Son as Jesus tells us that “Everything that the Father has is mine.” The Son eternally loves the Father back, offering back to him everything he is and has. As we learned last week, the Holy Spirit is the love between these two. Jesus teaches that this Holy Spirit will “take from what is mine and declare it to you,” showing that he has everything the Son has, which is really everything he has received from the Father. Father, Son, Holy Spirit: eternally exchanging love, “pouring out” who they are into one another. They are in fact a single God: one substance, hence that strange word in the creed we say every Sunday, “Consubstantial.”

Now, all that abstraction about the Trinity may be difficult to follow. And, if you think you perfectly understand it… you didn’t. No one can fully comprehend this mystery. Fortunately, there are some analogies to help us apprehend what this means and why it matters. No analogy is perfect and we can’t take them too far, but they still give us some idea of what we’re talking about.

The Trinity is one God, Three Persons. Well we can compare it to one man with three aspects: memory, intelligence, and free will. This emphasizes the Trinity as one God. Although, the three Divine persons are more distinct than a man’s memory, intelligence, and free will are.

Another comparison is the family. At the basic level, a family starts with three people: father, mother, and child. Together, they are still one family. The Trinity is more united than that, but this still helps.

Speaking of families, the application of this doctrine is seen in the vocation of the family. That is, to help reveal God’s love to the world, and to hint at his identity as a Trinity. Think about it, what makes a family a family? A man “pours” himself out to his wife in love. The wife receives and returns that love and the love becomes another person, a child. In this broken world, however, simple reproduction isn’t enough. If one does not love and is not present, it’s hard to say they are family in the fullest sense. To be what they’re meant to be, a family needs to continue to pour out and receive love. That requires a daily commitment, and a thousand little and not so little sacrifices.

Now then, let’s talk about the church parish. As with the family, the Catholic Church is meant to reveal God’s love and identity to the world. This is not just through teaching and preaching, but also in who we are. I don’t just men being a collection of baptized people or simply being in the same building. How would you define a Church parish? A building? The Pastor? The Staff? The people. No. Ultimately, it is the relationships between us that make us a Church parish.

Technically the bishop is the father in this example, but he is represented by the pastor. Like a family, like the Trinity, the pastor, a father, pours out his love to his parishioners. They return that love. But what then? What third thing completes the comparison to the Trinity?

The liturgy. I pour out love in celebrating Mass. Throughout, you respond, returning that love. The liturgy is the whole Church at prayer, an exchange of love between fathers and their children like the Father and the Son in the Trinity. In this life, with our limitations, with the heat of the building or the repetition or the boredom, we can’t tell. Still, when we enter into Mass wholeheartedly, we are kind of representing and interacting with the most profound reality in the universe… beyond the universe – the reality of God himself.

Father, Son, Spirit – Father, Parishioners, worship. Do you realize what this means, though? A Catholic parish is – or should be – defined by its ability to reveal God to the world. If a parish, a church, does not have love, does not have relationships that produce authentic worship, is it really a Catholic Church? But it goes further. The Trinity goes out and produces love in the world. We cannot simply go to Mass and call it enough. The exchange of love in the parish should be everywhere. Acts of charity in the community and proclaiming the gospel to those outside this building. Giving and receiving love throughout…

To make it more personal, if you or I as an individual do not give and receive love in the parish, do we really belong to it? If you or I do not give and receive love in the Church, do we really belong to the Church? Baptism makes us members, but it is just the beginning. We are meant to live as members of that Church. To be what we’re meant to be – the image and likeness of God – you and I must help reveal the Trinity. You and I cannot do that alone. We must give and receive love within our families, within the parish, within the Church.

So, that’s the challenge. We are not a corporation. We are not consumer-based company. We are a revelation of God, like a family. Are we your family? Will you live that out by receiving love from the parish and the pastor, annoying and imperfect though it may be? Will you “pour out” yourself in love to others in the parish in concrete ways? Pay attention, respond and sing at Mass. Offer kind words, acts of service, and tithing for the benefit of the whole parish. Join in at communal events. As with any family, this means sacrificing comfort and more to help us be what we are. But is that not worth it? What can be better than actually becoming a window to the deepest truth in all existence… being a revelation of the Trinity, of the God who is love.