Trinity Sunday - June 4th 2023

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) the best writer of the 20th century, once said that one of the reasons he believed in Christianity was because of its belief in the Trinity. 

If Christianity had been made up by human persons, it would not have at its very center a concept that is impossible to grasp or explain: the idea that God exists as one but within in three persons. How do we understand the Trinity? We don't!

Yet one of the foundational truths of our faith is the “one God in three Persons: Father all-powerful, Christ Lord and Savior, Spirit of love.” We can reason our way into knowledge of the existence of God, but we would never know of God as Trinity if it were not revealed to us. There is much else about God that has been revealed: about God as giver of life, creator of the universe; about God as liberator and protector, about the God of peace and the God of covenantal love, about the suffering God, the God of the poor, about the God made flesh, the God with us and within us. None of this comes from reason, although it does not contradict reason. Most of what we know about God, we know because God has revealed it to us.

While some may think that the doctrine of the Trinity is negotiable, it is actually central to our faith. If we lose it, we lose all we are. Today’s first reading, taken from the book of Exodus, describes how God revealed His name to Moses as “Yahweh,” which means, “I am Who am.”  But Orthodox Jews in absolute reverence, never used that most sacred Name.  They addressed God by calling Him, Elohim (God, the common name) or Lord (Adonai).  The passage is also as close as the Bible comes to giving a definition of God. The Lord God says of Himself, “The Lord [is] a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” Every part of that statement stresses God in relationship to humankind, and it emphasizes especially God’s great love for us.

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only son to save the world.” Our God, in love for us, offers the dearest - the Son -to be one with us. Jesus reveals something not only about God, but about fatherhood. It is an intimate, self-giving relationship. The revelation of God’s nature as Triune was made by Jesus.  In fact, the very word “Trinity,” referring to Three Persons in One God — one in Godhead yet distinct in Person — is not explicitly spelled out in the Bible, although the doctrine on Trinity is mentioned about forty times in the New Testament, but without using the term “Trinity.”  With the declaration of the Council of Constantinople in 381, which would become known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (we recite during the Sunday Mass), the Trinity as generally understood today became the official belief and teaching concerning the nature of God.

We are made in God’s image and likeness.  Just as God is God only in a Trinitarian relationship, so we can be fully human only as one member of a relationship of three partners.  The self needs to be in a horizontal relationship with all other people and in a vertical relationship with God.  In that way our life becomes Trinitarian like that of God.  Modern society follows the so-called “I-and-I” principle of unbridled individualism and the resulting consumerism.  But the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity challenges us to adopt an “I-and-God-and-neighbor” principle: “I am a Christian insofar as I live in a relationship of love with God and other people.”  Like God the Father, we are called upon to be productive and creative persons by contributing to the building up of the fabric of life and love in our family, our Church, our community, and our nation.  Like God the Son, we are called to a life of sacrificial love and service so that we may help Him to reconcile others to Him, to be peacemakers among our families, in our workplaces, our communities and our schools, to put back together that which has been broken, and to restore what has been shattered.  Like God the Holy Spirit, we are called, with His help, to uncover and teach Truth and to dispel ignorance not in anger but in love.

Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O.