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 can and will be given by God to chosen
ones, and we can be among those who will receive it from Him.
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 all the more sure
because it is short: happiness is to live in harmony with and accordance to our
fundamental make-up, and to aspire to our ultimate fulfilment.
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, forerunner of His prodigies
of long ago; from of old I was poured forth, the first, before the earth. When He established the heavens, I was there;
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, and I was His delight day by day, playing before Him all the
while, playing on the surface of His earth, and I found delight in the
human race.
Obviously, for Scripture, creation was indeed a joyful work
of wisdom and love!! The wisdom of God rejoiced
supremely we are told:
Playing on the surface of His
earth (where) 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 sympathy and joyous compatibility,
bestowed on us 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!
Moreover, such bonds 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 greater glory; for man, as lord of earth and of the
universe, was made indeed to be the channel of God’s presence and grace for 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 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)
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 move 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 for all living
sources providing for the food and furtherance of our society; bonds of gratitude
for all animals serving us and claiming our stewardship before God!!
Dear People of God, we are not wrapped up in our own selves; we are opened-up, so to speak, by our very position in creation! Selfishness is not in harmony with, nor is it according to, our original, fundamental,
make-up; and going in that way against the very grain of our being, can
never bring us happiness; no, not even on the natural level.
Our faith proclaims that we, unlike the rest of creation, are
not made for a merely natural destiny; being specially created in the image and
likeness of God, we are endowed with a supernatural potential and calling to
share in the divine life of mutual love and commitment:
God created man in His own image;
in the divine image He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis
1:27)
Given, therefore, along with today’s serious, and indeed pressing,
concerns for our present environment, and the life of future generations of men
and women here on earth; the wide-spread alarm at the ever greater incohesiveness
of human society world-wide, let us look
more closely at the relevance of the teaching we have just reviewed with regard
to that ab-original concern of human-beings, "How is true happiness to be found
today?
Disciples of Jesus, children of Mother Church, dear People
of God, our Faith teaches us that we are called to find our fulfilment by sharing,
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: a plurality of Personal relationships both simple and spontaneous,
sublimely beautiful and pure, yet rich beyond any measure or compare.
For such a fulfilment there is need of constant development
for us, from the very origin of our spiritual life: development through our
natural experience of personal life and social commitments, such as obedience, gratitude
and love, co-operation and friendship; development through our willingness to
share in working for the bettering of social life; above all, development
through our gradual awareness of and response to the mercy and goodness of God calling
us, drawing us, to His beloved Son, our Lord and Saviour, that we might find in
Him an introduction to what will be eternal blessedness for us. Life eternal, a life-experience totally unimaginable
without Jesus, a life for which we are called to become our truest selves in Him Who was sent
to be One among us for a time, One with us and for us eternally.
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:
These things I have spoken to
you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full; (John
15:11)
My Father, Who has given
(you) to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch (you) out of My
Father's hand. (John 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 our true happiness
here on earth; for, the intimate life of the Holy Trinity in which we -- in
Jesus by the Spirit -- are called to ultimately participate, is a mystery of
love, life, and 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, yes, has
now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone.
And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. (John 16:32)
Father, the hour has come.
Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You,
When Jesus had cried out with
a loud voice, He said, "Father, into Your hands I commit My
spirit." Having said this, He
breathed His last. (Jn. 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.
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 become more
or less free from the stifling bonds of self-concern. The unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in
what we call the Holy Trinity, is the supreme Christian mystery: total love,
based on comprehensive knowledge, evoking total commitment, and issuing into eternal
Life and fullness of Being. We are called
to share in that Divine Blessedness as members of the Son and 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 that Vision to be,
by the Spirit, entirely committed in total self-forgetfulness to praising the
glory of the Father, and thereby come to the fullness of our life and being in
Christ Jesus Our Lord.
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 and perceptiveness
all our normal surface observations and awareness. Our deepest 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 the whole family of God and
establish for all eternity the Kingdom
where God is All in All.
