The Most Holy Trinity / Msgr. Owen F. Campion
The Sunday Readings
This weekend, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. The Trinity is the term used in the Church’s tradition and doctrine to describe the most intimate detail of the reality of God.
The first reading, taken from Exodus, is seated in faith in the reality of God. In including it as a reading on this feast, the Church today reminds us about God and ourselves as creatures of God.
For Jews, the Exodus, or the flight from slavery in Egypt, was the most defining moment in their long history as a people. After wandering across the forbidding Sinai Peninsula, they not only survived but found a land of prosperity, peace and security. It was a difficult trip, to say the least. Without God’s mercy, the Hebrews would not have completed this journey. He guided them because he loved them.
The first reading reports on another important aspect of life on this journey. Communication existed between God and the people through Moses. Divine love continues, allowing us to communicate with God, who reaches out and listens to us.
For the second reading, the Church presents St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians.
The Christians of Corinth quarreled and plotted among themselves. They sinned. Considering their surroundings, it is not difficult to realize why they so often were wayward.
Corinth was known throughout the Mediterranean world of the first century as a virtual cesspool of vice and licentiousness, brimming with greed and selfishness.
The Apostle urged the Christians of Corinth to rely on Jesus and to resist the pressures of their society—superb advice for us today.
Finally, the Church presents, from St. John’s Gospel, the story of the Lord instructing Nicodemus, an important figure in Jewish life in Jerusalem.
Jesus explains that the Messiah’s words are not just the opinions of a mere mortal. The Messiah is from God. The Son is one with the Father. Therefore, to hear the Son is to hear the Father.
Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Father sent the Son into the world of space and time to be with and redeem humanity.
Eternal life awaits the faithful. God is merciful and forgiving. He loves humanity. Despite all their sins and weaknesses, God loves all people and wills that they live forever.
Jesus is the perfect intermediary between God and humanity. One with us in the Incarnation, Jesus came as the very personification of God’s love.
Reflection
Catholics believe in what the phrase holy Trinity defines, but it rarely evokes a sense of what so powerfully it expresses. It is not simply a dry academic phrase. It reveals God.
The term tells us of God’s immense love for us. The holy Trinity, while not unreasonable in the philosophical sense, never would have been known by mere humans as the result of their deduction alone. It had to be revealed. The Lord revealed the Trinity to us, so that we might understand in human terms the most intimate aspect of the life of God.
Secondly, Catholic teaching rests solidly on the belief that God created every human in his divine image and likeness, a breathtaking thought, hardly only the voicing of nice words.
We are out of kilter if we fail to love God. We are not in accord with our nature, our ultimate spiritual DNA, if we set ourselves apart from the human community and certainly if we do not love others.
All three readings for this feast bear in common the message that God loves us. Long ago, great theologians saw love as the essence of divine life. It is the kernel of the life of the Trinity. This feast calls us to see that love is of God, and to mirror God’s love in all that we say, think and do. †