Trinity Sunday 2002

Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

To God who is, who was, and who is to come.

One of the more fascinating chance occurrences in life is when someone who comes from a rather ordinary background, comes to meet and become a friend of someone they greatly admire but never dreamed they would ever meet let alone become that admired person's friend. It might be a very powerful person we admire, like a President, or if you were in England maybe the Monarch, or it might be a very learned person, a great author of books, a famous scientist; or it might be a great entertainer, a sports hero or great movie idol, whatever. We read about these things happening, someone meets a child of such a person, one of the President's children, and then over time becomes a friend and is introduced to the famous person, and perhaps becomes a friend of the family, and the friendship goes beyond the initial contact and includes the famous person himself or herself. It's an extraordinary and even chance thing that happens to very few people, and so it remains for most of us at best a kind of fantasy that is never going to happen to us.

But in fact it already has, and we simply do not recognize it for what it is. It's like the situation I just mentioned, but with a couple of differences - it happens so early in life, early childhood, that the person would not recognize anything extraordinary about it, the famous person just being another parent, and not held in awe because the child does not understand the greatness of the person as such, and thus does not understand the privilege of being part of the inner family circle of that person.

That's what happened to most of us when we were baptized. In fact we were introduced into the family of all families, the most powerful, most intelligent, most loving, most famous family of all, the family of God. It happened through a friendship, a personal friendship with the Son in that family, who introduced us to the Almighty Father and the third family member who is the center of Love in the family, just as the Mother is the center of love in any normal human family. In fact, we not only were accepted into friendship with the divine family of the Trinity, but we were actually adopted by the Trinity and became a true member of that family, sharing its life and destiny. What is only a fantasy or fairy tale in the life of this world has become reality in the world that will never end. "Beloved, we are God's children now," says St. John, "what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." [1. John 3:2] How strange that we do not seem to be aware of the infinitely greater thing that has happened to us, the infinitely greater privilege we have been given compared to those who have the wonderful but infinitely lesser privilege of becoming a friend of a powerful person or family in this world. And most wonderfully, none of this was a product of chance, but God himself sought us out and made us his members of his family and personal friends of the Triune God.

How then can we explain the way we seem to be unaware of our infinitely greater privilege and infinitely greater status that results from this gift of God, or even indifferent to it? Is it simply because it began so early in our life that we take it for granted, like the case I mentioned earlier? Perhaps, but if that is so it presents a serious problem for our future. While the gift of life in and friendship with the Trinity of Persons may be a pure gift bestowed on us before we are old enough to appreciate or understand it's greatness, it cannot be retained without our appreciating and valuing this gift as it deserves, above every other thing we receive or attain in this world. Salvation comes through faith, and it is faith that enables us to truly perceive the nature of the gift, its infinite value and privilege, it's token of a love that we cannot begin to return without the gift itself.

That is what our Gospel today is teaching us when it says, "so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life." To believe in Jesus is to believe in the Trinity and the love of the Trinity for us, and the gift of eternal Life the Trinity has made to us through Jesus. Jesus came to befriend us, to die for us as His friends so we could be delivered from sin and death, and to introduce us into His Eternal Life, the life he shares forever in the Trinity with the Father and the Spirit. Through the gift of His Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, Jesus, the Second Person has made us children of the Father, the First Person of the Trinity, who is our Creator and whose love has sent the Son to redeem us.

We do not yet know a great deal about the inner life of God, the interior life of the family we call the Trinity of Divine Persons. We are like the friend who has just been introduced to the President and his family by one of his children, who happens to be our friend. In this life, we are give the Spirit to teach us the ways of the family of God, to help us understand and live the gifts of truth and grace that come through Jesus and His Church. But we are neophytes, and until we see God face to face, we will only be able to wonder in awe at the gift we have received of just being a part of His family, and be patient until at last, in Eternity we are able to see the family's life and share it from within.

Meanwhile we are to do our best to imitate the unity and diversity of the Trinity in this world. We are, as Paul says, to imitate the creative power of the Trinity in our families by pro-creation and in the Church by the pro-creative power of grace. And we are to imitate the unity of the trinity in love, by the way, as Paul says [2Cor.13:11-12], "encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace [with one another]." These are all gifts of the Spirit that help us to imitate and experience the unified life of God in this world, in our families, in the Church, in the world. We will not be able to treat each other this way without our sharing in God's life, having the power of His grace operating in us. We must give glory and praise to the Trinity in our worship today, and in our lives every day.

It all demands Baptism and faith, and grows through the Eucharist and Penance, and the lives we lead that imitate and anticipate the life we will one day share to the full in Heaven when every tear will be wiped away, and we shall sing his praises who has made us his own, forever, and ever Amen.