Father Rick Bolte's Homily

B: TRINITY SUNDAY

Today we celebrate the Trinity Sunday.  The Father speaks the truth, the Son is the word, and the Spirit is the truth.  The Father is the Creator, the Son the Redeemer, and the Spirit the Sanctifier.  A homily in this manner might be interesting to some but for most such intellectual discussion would be boring.  The Trinity is a mystery and so an intellectual approach is limited and speculative.  So beyond intellectual curiosity what is the reason for celebrating Trinity Sunday?

A mystery is something that cannot be intellectually defined.  God is a mystery.  That is why God does not give his name to Moses at the burning bush.  It was thought to know someone's name was to know them.  But to be a mystery is not to say it is irrelevant.  Each of us is a mystery.  We live our lives continually learning about ourselves.  We are greatly affected by others even though they remain a mystery to us.  God is a mystery with the greatest of impacts on our lives!

In the first reading from Deuteronomy Moses reminds the people how special is their relationship with God.  The other gods for other nations were indifferent to the people who sought their help.  Through their sacrifices and rituals they hoped to gain the attention and favor of the god.  Their hope was that the god would be powerful enough and their actions sufficient to warrant a fruitful harvest, enough rain, protection from enemies, or whatever they needed.  But Moses reminds the Israelites that while they were nothing but slaves in Egypt, God chose them!  This had nothing to do with their merit or value but everything to do with the mercy and generosity of God.  God was closer to them than any other nation ever imagined their gods being with them.  God was inviting them into a loving relationship.  God who is a mystery had chosen them.

Our faith, especially based on the Gospel of John, speaks of the great unity of persons that makes up the Trinity.  The Father, the Son and the Spirit are each persons yet are so close they are nonetheless one.  This is the unity into which we are invited.  Jesus' last words to his disciples in today’s Gospel instruct them to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  They are not to be baptized into a relationship with any one person of the Trinity but rather into the relationship that is the Trinity.  This is to be the way we are welcomed into “church.”  Jesus goes so far in John's Gospel as to pray that we may be one with God just as he is one with the Father.

This is why we celebrate Trinity.  Our God is a relationship.  God has chosen us and invited us to share in that relationship.  To say “yes” is to become “church.”  As we celebrated with Pentecost last week the birth of the church, this week we acknowledge that to be church is to be in a communal relationship with God who is triune.  To be in union with God we also are in union with one another.