Trinity Sunday (C)
(Proverbs 8:22-31; Romans 5:1-5; St.
John 16:12-15)
What is
happiness for a human being? How is it
to be found? Can it be ultimately,
definitively, acquired?
In answer
to that last question ‘can happiness be ultimately acquired, gained for
oneself?’ the Christian answer is ‘No!’; but according to the Christian
promise, it is offered and will be given by God, to all who recognize, love,
and obey His Son, Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
Let us now
turn our attention to the other questions: what is happiness for a human being
and how is it to be sought? My answer
is short, and, undoubtedly, all the more sure because it is short: happiness is
to live in harmony with and accordance to our original, fundamental, make-up as
we aspire to our ultimate human potential and personal fulfilment in Jesus
Christ Our Lord.
In our
first reading from the book of Proverbs we heard of the remarkably close
relationship that exists between mankind and the rest of creation:
Thus says
the wisdom of God: The Lord possessed me, the beginning of His ways, the
forerunner of His prodigies of long ago; From of old I was poured
forth, at the first, before the earth. … When the Lord established the heavens
there was I; when He marked out the vault over the face of the deep, when He
made firm the skies above; when He fixed fast the foundations of the earth,
when He set for the sea its limit; then was I beside Him as His craftsman, I
was His delight day by day, playing before Him all the while.
Creation
was indeed a joyful work of wisdom and love!!
And the wisdom of God rejoiced supremely when:
Playing
on the surface of His earth I found delight in the sons of men.
There we
can sense how close are the bonds uniting us with the whole of creation: bonds
of deep compatibility and joyous sympathy bestowed by God Who created the whole
universe -- with mankind as its crown -- through His beloved Son, the wisdom of
God, by His nurturing and hovering Spirit of love. Son and Spirit, the Father’s two creating
hands!
Such ties
with creation are not just the indirect result of God’s creative activity, they
are directly willed by Him for our well-being and creation’s integrity; for
man, as lord of earth and of the universe, was made indeed the channel of God’s
presence to creation:
The Lord
God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and
care for it. The Lord God formed out of
the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the air, and He brought
them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each
living creature was then its name.
(Genesis 2:15, 19)
God
blessed them, saying: “Be fertile and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it;
have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the
living things that crawl on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)
Behold
the richness of our human make-up, conditioned by so many and such varied,
original and joyous, bonds: bonds of root compatibility with the whole of
inanimate creation; bonds of appreciation and gratitude for all living sources
providing food and serving the furtherance of society; bonds of most intimate
knowledge and deepest sympathy with all animals claiming our stewardship before
God!!
We are
wide-open, so to speak, by our very position in creation; we are not beings
closed-in on self! Selfishness is not in harmony with and accordance to our
original, fundamental, make-up; and, going in that way against our very
grain, it can never bring us happiness, not even on the natural level. And how that picture is confirmed by the
relationships we go on to build up among ourselves in human society,
relationships relentlessly multiplied by scientific and technological advances!
Nevertheless,
our faith proclaims that we are not, like the rest of creation, to be satisfied
with a merely natural destiny; for, being specially created in the image and
likeness of God, we are endowed with a supernatural calling and potential for
an eternal destiny:
God
created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and
female He created them. (Genesis 1:27)
Given,
therefore, along with our serious and pressing concerns for the environment and
future generations of men here on earth, the wide-spread alarm at the
developing break-up of human society and mutuality all over the world, let us
look more closely at the relevance of the teaching we have just reviewed with
regard to that aboriginal concern of human-beings, "How is true happiness
to be found today?”
Why are
we human beings wide-open on so many fronts, yet, as individual persons, so
deeply sensitive to intimate concerns?
Why are we personally enmeshed in such a complexity of relationships and
ties?
Because,
as our faith teaches us, we are called to share, eternally, in the happiness of
the eternal and infinite God Who made us, the God Who is One and Three: Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, three divine Persons in the One Godhead.
There is
constant development, from our very origins in creation, through our natural
experience of personal life and social commitments, to our God-given calling to
share in the social life and beatitude of God Who is Personally three and
essentially One.
We cannot
accept, surely, that our life here on earth – be it apparently good or bad,
happy or sorrowful -- is of no consequence for our eternal destiny: our life on
earth must be some sort of a preparation for the calling with which we have
been endowed. And, indeed, Jesus has
taught us that, in accordance with the faith and commitment we show in answer
to our divine calling, we can begin, even here on earth, to experience a
foretaste of the blessedness of heaven:
I have told you this, that My joy may be in
you, and your joy may be complete.
My
Father, Who has given (you) to Me, is greater than all; and no one is can take
(you) out of the Father's hand.
(John 15:11, 10:29.)
Therefore,
since our eternal blessedness is bound up with the Three Persons in One God,
selfishness is once again found to be, fundamentally and totally, opposed to
any aspirations for true happiness; for, the intimate life of the Holy Trinity
in which we -- in Jesus by the Spirit -- are called to participate, is a most
sublime mystery of love, life, and total commitment.
Life, the
glory of the Most Holy Trinity, is the expression of what is a divinely mutual
and totally comprehensive knowledge:
No one
knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son and
those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him (Matthew
11:27),
together
with what is the only possible response to such comprehensive knowledge of
divine Being and Beauty, namely, a transcendent love and commitment, as
manifested in human flesh by Jesus in His Passion:
The hour
is coming, and has arrived, when each of you will be scattered to his own home,
and you will leave Me alone. But I am
not alone, because the Father is with Me. (John
16:32)
Father,
the hour has come. Give glory to Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You.
Jesus
cried out in a loud voice, "Father, into Your hands I commend My
spirit"; and when He had said this, He breathed His last. (John
17:1, Luke 23:46,)
Love,
based on knowledge of the truth, and issuing in commitment, is ultimately the
best guidance that can be given to humanity in its supreme quest for
happiness. Because mankind is made in
the image and likeness of God, and because our eternal destiny and divine
calling is to share in God’s intimate life and beatitude, therefore our
happiness as human beings here on earth is only to be found in love,
commitment, and life; sharing in that love, commitment, and life revealed in
the Father Who, knowingly and lovingly begets His only Son, and in the Holy
Spirit of love proceeding from the Father and the Son in their mutual
comprehension and total commitment.
Selfishness
is totally destructive of human nature and human aspirations.
The
Father's love is total: He loves His Son to such an extent that the Son is the
equal of His Father in all things:
Everything that the Father has is Mine.
Similarly,
the Son loves His Father with His whole Being, with the result that, when, as
the Son of Man on earth, He was faced with the greatest torments known to the
ancient world, the torments of a Roman flogging followed by death on a Cross,
He wholeheartedly embraced them for His Father's glory (John 12:27-28):
I am
troubled now. Yet what should I say?
'Father, save Me from this hour'? But it was for this purpose that I came to
this hour. Father, glorify Your name!"
The
Spirit likewise in His earthly mission manifests His Divine Character by His
total commitment to Jesus, as Jesus himself said:
He will
glorify Me, because He will take from what is Mine and declare it to you.
People of
God, even in everyday, ordinary, experience, those who are committed are also
to some extent admired or even envied, because, having a purpose in which they
can lose themselves they are seen to have become more or less free from
the stifling bonds of self-solicitude and concern; and, most wonderfully, the
unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in what we call the Holy Trinity, though
recognized as the supreme Christian mystery of the nature of Divine Being is,
nevertheless, so close to our experience and appreciation of life, in so far as
it is the total and eternal expression of the selflessness of Divine
Love! Made in the image and likeness of
God, Who is never far from, never alien to, us!!
We are
called to share in that Divine Blessedness as members of the Son: members of
that Body of which He is the Head. In
Him, by His Spirit, we are destined to see the beauty and experience the
majesty of the Father in all truth; and, in a beatific response of love, to be
entirely committed -- in total self-forgetfulness -- to praising the glory of
the Father, and come thereby to the fullness of our life and being in Christ
Jesus Our Lord.
Amen,
amen, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. A slave does not remain in a household
forever, but a son always remains. So if the Son makes you free, then you will
be free indeed. (John 8:34-36)
Stand
fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be
entangled again with a yoke of bondage. (Galatians 5:1)
People of
God, our human nature, created by God for Himself has, indeed, been vitiated by
sin but it has not been destroyed; and so we are always liable to have what
Wordsworth has described as ‘intimations of immortality’: insights, in this
case, into ourselves and the realities of our life and calling which far
surpass in their penetration our normal observations and awareness. Our human longings for that freedom and
fulfilment which alone can give us true happiness can be penetratingly clear,
but too frequently that clarity of vision becomes clouded over when we turn to
our own devices, and experience the deceits of men, or discover the vanity of
the world’s easy promises. We should
learn today, and never again forget, to appreciate the treasures of our faith,
and above all to look with ever deeper admiration, reverence, and awe, to the
Holy Trinity -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit -- for that inspiration,
enlightenment, and power, that will enable us to seek aright in this life and
ultimately to receive in the next God’s Gift transcending all earthly
imaginations and desires: the Gift that will transfigure and glorify in the
likeness of the Risen Lord Jesus the whole family of God’s adopted children and
establish the heavenly and eternal Kingdom where God is All in All.
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