May 31, 2015 Most Holy Trinity Fr Jim Miller

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
May 31, 2015

Reading 1 Dt 4:32-34, 39-40

Responsorial Psalm Ps 33:4-5, 6, 9, 18-19, 20, 22

R. (12b) Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.

Reading 2 Rom 8:14-17

Gospel Mt 28:16-20

 


Homily— May 30 & 31, 2015 

   Do you believe in God? Do you believe in three persons in one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?  Do our thoughts, lifestyle and behavior reveal this belief? 

   The Catechism of the Catholic Church states “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.It is the mystery of God in himself.  It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith’. The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men ‘and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin.’” #234

   God is a mystery but God wants to be discovered by us. Throughout the scriptures God has revealed self to us. Our job is to open our eyes and to discover how God is present in our lives. We must read the Bible, we can study theology but we must pray.

  There was a Bishop doing confirmation who asked the young people how much time they spend talking on their cell phones. One young lady said she talked for 5,000 minutes a month!!  I use about 500 to 600 minutes a month.  He then asked “Whom do we talk to on our cell phones?  The answer came back “our friends”.  The bishop said “And why do we talk to our friends?  The answers came back “To get to know them better,” or “to find out what they are doing,” or “to tell them about the stuff in our own lives,” were some of the answers.

  The Bishop then asked if Jesus was a friend & they replied “yes”.  He then asked how much time they spent talking to Jesus and there was a lot of blank looks. I know that prayer is important in my life & when I find myself kind of “out of sorts” I realize it is time to slow down & to spend more time with my best friend. Now I can look out my office window and be inspired by the prayer garden or go sit on one of the benches & meditate or walk the rosary.

   So how do we think of God as Trinity?  The Divine has been experienced through the ages as a unity of Source, Savior, and Spirit: always & eternally in relationship. In a way we could call this relationship Sunday. We are celebrating: relationships within God, between God and us, between ourselves and others, and within our individual selves.

   It took St. Augustine 15 volumes to describe the Trinity. Early Jewish Christians experienced the divinity of the man they met as Jesus of Nazareth, whom they then came to understand as God-present. If that wasn’t confusing enough, after Jesus’ resurrection, they experienced a presence and power so recognizably divine they could only describe it as a Holy Spirit. The Trinity is our best description of those first and ongoing experiences in the community we call church.

   Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr writes: ”The fourth-century Cappadocian Fathers tried to communicate this notion of life as mutual participation by calling the Trinitarian flow a ‘circle dance’ between the three. They were saying that whatever is going on in God is a flow that’s like a dance; and God is not just the dancer, God is the dance itself! The Incarnation is a movement—Jesus comes forth from the Father & the Holy Spirit to take us back with him into this eternal embrace, from which we first came. We are invited to join in the dance and have participatory knowledge of God through the Trinity.”

   We can also think of the Trinity as a basic family unit. It is the love of a man & a woman giving birth to a child. It is the on-going relationship between the father, the mother & the child that develops day by day. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit continue in relationship as they work through & in relationship to each of us. 

   In the Gospel we hear that the disciples “worshiped, but they doubted”.  Distazo, the Greek word translated as “doubt,” carries a sense of standing in two places at the same time or being of two minds. Jesus commissions imperfect disciples who, like us, both worship & doubt.

  He does not rebuke them. He understands their doubt, and speaks to their faith. The disciples will grow into the role he has given them. Neither are we condemned for our struggling & doubting. He calls us and sends us anyway. And as he sends us, he says, “Remember I am with you to the end of the age.”

 Take time to pray & to ponder the Trinity & how it calls us to live in relationship to each other—with love and respect.

           

 

 

Click here to listen to this week's homily. http://nativity.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-01T12_53_29-07_00