Trinity Sunday, Year A

(Exodus 34:4-6, 8-9; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18)

 

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  But whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 

 

Dear Catholic and Christian People, Jesus came among us -- was ‘sent by His Father’ as He loved to say -- as perfect God and perfect man, and believers in Him were and are able to receive everlasting life because, as Word-of-God-made-flesh, Jesus was and is life itself.

 

Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus of Nazareth, does not merely represent God’s love for us but presents, offers, it to us in a way most supremely ‘accessible’ for our human minds and hearts, by the Gift of His most Holy Spirit and His own Eucharistic Presence.   That is why whoever does not believe has already been condemned -- not by God however, but by him or her-self – because whoever will not accept God’s love, obviously cannot be embraced by the eternal God and must therefore perish, for God is life.

 

That, dear People of God, is a fact of the spiritual life.

 

Just as whoever will not eat food, drink water, or breath air, will thereby die; so whoever wills not, chooses not, to believe in God’s only-begotten Son among us, will, thereby and therefore, die spiritually and eternally.   And that is in no way cruel, dear People of God, for there is nothing cruel in a fact of life as St. Paul insists (Romans 9:20):

Will what is made, say to its maker, ‘Why have you created me so?’    

 

Originally, God did not create us in His own likeness so that we might be free to run wild like the animals, free to just grow in beauty and stature like the plants.  After the devil had deceived Adam and Eve, He sent His only-begotten Son to become one of us, One with us, that He might re-create us according to His Father’s plan because of His unfailing obedience-human-flesh to His Father’s commands, about which Jesus said:

 

The Father Himself Who sent Me has given Me a commandment (and) I know that His commandment is eternal life. (John 12: 49-50)

 

By such loving obedience in our flesh to the very end of His life on earth, Jesus, rose again, taking our flesh to eternal life, so that each one of us -- by the help of His most Holy Spirit -- might ourselves become redeemed flesh as members of His mystical Body -- able to thrive before God, and thus fulfil God’s original plan that His human creation might find fulfilment of being – mind, heart, body and soul – by giving thanks, praise and glory to God the Father of all in the beatitude of heaven.

 

Jesus of Nazareth is, for us, the Way (in His Body), the Truth (in His teaching and example), and the Life (by the power and inspiration of His saving Death and Resurrection, now offered to us by the Gift of His Most Holy Spirit).

 

After His bar-mitzva youthful experience of God His Father mediated to Him by the Liturgy of the Temple in Jerusalem (‘My Father’s house’), Jesus spent eighteen years in Nazareth working with Joseph and waiting for His heavenly Father’s call.  He eventually learned  of John the Baptist’s ministry and, it would seem, in order to admire His Father’s work through John, and to draw as physically close as possible to that manifest Presence, He left His mother and home at Nazareth and went to witness John’s baptizing in the Jordan where -- to His Father’s great joy – He, the Son of God – humbly joined Himself to those confessing pilgrims and humble penitents; showing Himself thereby to be indeed, even instinctively, truly also a Son of Man.

 

That inspiration to leave Nazareth and search for His Father was a direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, not just a deeply spiritual aspiration born of the Temple liturgy as before years before.  And so, this decisive act of Jesus was authenticated most manifestly by the Father embracing His Son and bestowing the Holy Spirit upon Him before John the Baptist’s very eyes, so that He -- the unknown from Nazareth -- was now publicly endowed to inaugurate His public mission of salvation and redemption for mankind, and seal the ultimate destruction of Satan and his strangle-hold over men.

 

Likewise, when Jesus later took Peter, James, and John with Him to the mountain top where He was transfigured before them, surely it was, at that most decisive moment, the Spirit’s direct inspiration and the Father’s will that brought Jesus where the Father wanted to glorify Him before His specially chosen disciples, and where, with the witness and testimony of Moses and Elijah representing all those prophets and martyrs who, at God’s behest, had throughout OT times spoken of and worked for the Messiah’s advent to Israel, He willed to strengthen, enlighten, and embolden His beloved Son before the trials so ominously awaiting  and threatening Him.  

 

Let us therefore, dear People of God, try live out our spiritual life in a ‘Trinitarian’ way, so to speak, ever seeking with Jesus, following His teaching and His example, for the Father in all things, under the power and spiritual guidance guidance of His most Holy Spirit, bestowed on us through His sacraments, above all the most holy Eucharist, and in our own patient obedience and personal loving prayer.

 

Before my Catholic days, as an aspiring lieder and concert hall singer, I was for several years at the Royal Academy of Music in London and I sought to take advantage of what that great city offered by hearing as much music of the highest quality as I could.  My aim was not so much to continually and critically assess with my mind what I heard but to imbibe into my very being what was beautiful and true musically … and even today nearly 70 years I still delight to hear ‘my’ local blackbirds giving me wonderful lessons on tonal quality and voice production!

 

Now that is not unlike my present aspiration to living the spiritual life in a ‘Trinitarian’ way.   Try to live with Jesus as much as possible, dear People of God!

 

Just as a blackbird can still always speak to, teach, me about singing; let Catechism doctrine, may holy reading, Catholic devotions, and the lessons of life itself -- such as gratitude for blessings of both happiness and suffering that have deepened your understanding and beautified your appreciation of life – give access and opportunity for the Holy Spirit to speak to you about Jesus, and about the Father’s amazing love for you.

 

It is a matter of patiently wanting and longing; not trying to think, imagine, work out, for there is so much of self in such endeavours.  Infinitely better, consider what the Psalmist (51:8) says of God:

 

            Behold You desire true sincerity, and secretly You teach me wisdom.

           

It is by constantly wanting, hoping, watching, waiting, and longing for Him and ever-asking Him to teach you about God, the Father, Who is, as Jesus Himself said,

 

            My God and your God, My Father and your Father.

 

Here we should most profitably recall Our Blessed Lady, Mother Church’s supreme model and example, in her love for Jesus, who, Scripture tells us, ‘treasured all these things in her heart’.    Dear People of God, let Mary help you, may the Holy Spirit lead and ‘inspire’ you, to know and ever more appreciate the wondrous beauty and purity of Mother Church’s doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and to celebrate it both humbly and whole-heartedly in your own personal liturgy of love and admiration, prayer and thanksgiving, and life-long endeavour.

(2023)