The Holy
Trinity (C)
(Proverbs
8:22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15)
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Our
first reading makes clear one most beautiful aspect of our relationship with
God: the fact that the wisdom of God is not alien to us; in fact, it is
delightful for us to learn of and learn from it, and thereby to appreciate and
understand ever more of God’s great beauty and goodness manifested in all His
works and to be experienced in all His dealings with us:
Thus says the wisdom of God: ‘The Lord
possessed me … the forerunner of His prodigies of long ago, at the first,
before the earth. When the Lord
established the heavens I was there … beside Him as His craftsman. I was His delight day by day, playing on the
surface of His earth, and I found delight in the human race.’
There,
Wisdom brings about the closest union between God and man, in that God delights
in His Wisdom, and His Wisdom delights in us;
and now if we turn to St. John’s Gospel in the New Testament we learn
that:
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was
with God and the Word was God. And the
Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.
Oh,
the wonder of God! The Book of Proverbs,
written at least 600 years before Jesus is found to be in such profound harmony
with the Gospel of St. John whose words open up for us the marvellous beauty of
the wisdom hidden in those Proverbs written to prepare God’s People for the
coming of Jesus, so far in advance, so long ago!
But
that is not all, far from it! Jesus in today’s
Gospel reading assures us:
The Spirit of Truth will guide you into all
truth. He will take from what is mine
and declare it to you. Everything the
Father has is Mine.
It
is indeed, as I have just said, delightful for us to learn of and learn from,
to appreciate and understand, the wisdom
of God manifested in all His works for us and in all His dealings with us; but
it is yet more delightful, indeed sublime, for us to be able to even share in –
according to our natural capacity and personal measure – the very life and love
that flows between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for:
The Spirit of Truth will guide you to all
truth.
He
will guide us into all the truth that is Jesus’ about His Father and all the
truth that is the Father’s about His Son; the Spirit will guide us into all
truth, truth that enlightens and truth that inflames, truth that guides and truth
that comforts; and in all the stages of our growth and spiritual development
the Father will be our Goal, Jesus our Inspiration and Companion, the Spirit
our Strength, our Hope, and our Guide .
All
this is, I say, delightful for us, because, by our very nature we desire and
long for happiness, being invited and encouraged to do so by the beauty of the
world around us, created for us as our present home and sustenance, and
originally, as a veritable garden of delights for our earliest forebears. Now, however, without God’s calling us to
Himself we – become fallen, sinful, and weak creatures – too easily imitate our
forebears and seek for happiness where it cannot be found and should not be
sought: in selfishness and pride, greed and lust, of all sorts.
As
our first reading showed us, creation was indeed a joyful work of wisdom and
love, and there are bonds of deep compatibility and joyous sympathy between
ourselves and the rest of creation because God created the whole universe with
mankind as its crown through His Wisdom -- God’s craftsman and delight -- and
His nurturing and hovering Spirit of love: Son and Spirit, the Father’s two creating
hands! Such bonds with creation, dear
People of God, are not just the indirect result of God’s creative activity,
they are directly willed by Him for our well-being and creation’s greater good,
for mankind is the channel of God’s presence to creation and also creation’s
voice for the praise and glory of its creator:
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 various wild animals and various birds of the air, and He brought
them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of
them would be its name. (Genesis 2:15, 19)
Praise the Lord from the heavens, sun and
moon, all you stars of light! Praise Him from the earth, mountains, fruitful
trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl.
Let them praise the Lord for He commanded and they were created. (Psalm 148)
Mankind
is part of, and open to, the whole of creation as its custodian before God. He
is, however, unique in the whole of creation, in that he is made for, and
called to, God; to share in God’s own life and blessedness as His true children
through faith in Jesus by the power and working of His Spirit:
God created man in His own image; in the
divine image He created him, male and female He created them.
Selfishness
and pride, greed and lust -- in all and whatever forms -- are directly contrary
to man’s well-being. That is what Our
Lord made clear to us when, asked what was the first commandment of all, He
answered saying (Matthew 12:29-31):
‘The Lord our God is one. And you shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind,
and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second,
like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no
other commandment greater than these.’
There
we can appreciate that love of neighbour is associated with and conducive to
love of God, whereas selfishness – be it self-love or self-solicitude – is
alien to both. Ultimately love of neighbour becomes one with love of God when
Jesus Himself is seen as our neighbour ‘par excellence’.
Dear
brothers and sisters, we should indeed rejoice and delight in today’s solemn
worship of the most Holy Trinity, because of the glory and beatitude of Divine Life and Love being gradually revealed and
most marvellously offered to us: with the Father as our ultimate Goal, the
Word-made-Flesh our Saviour and Inspiration, the Holy Spirit our Comfort and our
Guide ... relationships to which we are invited and being gradually initiated into
and prepared for here on earth, through our life as disciples and members of
Jesus in Mother Church.
We
thank the Father for calling us to Jesus first of all; we love and admire Him
for the wondrous beauty of His truth: for Jesus spoke what He heard with and
received from His Father; while the Spirit speaks not of Himself but calls to
our minds all that Jesus taught us; and for His wondrous mercy and grace in
Mother Church and in the secret gifts and sometimes quite personal blessings
that keep, inspire, and rejoice each us on our way with Jesus.
We
look to Jesus with boundless gratitude for revealing the Father to us, for
bestowing the Father’s Promise, His own most Holy Spirit, upon Mother Church
and endowing her with His own most precious Body and Blood in the Eucharist;
for His total love for us in His sacrifice of absolute commitment to His
Father’s will; and for the Church He founded -- His Body and our Mother --
which treasures and infallibly hands down to all succeeding generations the inspiration
of His words of wisdom and love in her Scriptures, and lovingly pours out His
healing and sustaining grace through her Sacraments of His abiding Presence
with us.
We
look and listen for the Holy Spirit Whom others can neither see nor hear, but
Who is constantly opening our eyes and ears to appreciate and embrace the
living memory of Jesus Our Lord, His uniquely life- and light-giving teachings,
His Eucharistic and sacramental presence with us at all times and in all
situations. We humbly await and even tremulously expect Him Whose presence we
can never experience with present awareness but Whose condescension and favour
we can most gratefully and joyously recall in the secret depths of our hearts,
new-born with the life of Jesus for love His and our heavenly Father.
