Homily for Trinity Sunday

The love of God has been poured out into our hearts.

Adoration of the Trinity, Albrecht Dürer

The daughter of one of my close friends recently received her First Communion. So when I last saw her a couple weeks ago, I asked her some questions.

Who do we receive at Holy Communion?

Jesus, she responded.

And who is Jesus? I asked.

He’s God, she replied.

Okay. But what about the Father and the Holy Spirit?

She looked at me, silent, a little worried. No doubt she didn’t want to say the wrong answer. So I asked her:

Is the Father God, too? And is the Holy Spirit God?

Now I could tell she was really nervous.

But if Jesus is God, and God is Jesus, what about the Father and the Son?

She didn’t answer, obviously nervous, so I decided I’d help her:

What do we say when we make the sign of the cross? In the name of the Father…

And you know that prayer, right? Glory be to the Father…

So we believe that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. All three are God.

Wait, I asked her. How many Gods do we believe in? Many gods or one God?

(She knew this one right away.) One God! she said.

Yes, that’s right, one God. But the Father and the Son and the Spirit are three, right?

Yes… she nervously replied.

Three what?

Again, I waited while she paused, nervously.

Three Gods? I asked her.

She looked at me, unsure, with a dubious expression.

Not three Gods, I said. So three what?

She smiled nervously, and lifted up her hands showing she didn’t know.

Three persons! I said.

She smiled and said, Yes!

And which one is Jesus? The Father, the Son, or the Spirit?

Hesitantly, she asked: The Son?

Yes! Jesus is the Son. So Jesus is not the Father, and Jesus is not the Spirit, right?

Again, she wasn’t sure. I tried to explain.

They are not the same person, but they are the same in nature. The Father is God; the Son, Jesus, he is God too; and the Spirit also is God. Not different Gods, but the one same God.

But then she interrupted me: Wait! If they’re the same God, how can they be different?

What a great question! I responded.

Indeed it is!

Many of us might answer as my friend’s daughter did. If the Father and the Son and the Spirit are the same, one God, how can they be different?

Moreover, someone else might ask, what’s the point of all this? An exercise in grammar and logic? What does it matter? I don’t care how many persons God is, or whether he’s one or three. I just care that he’s really there, that he can really save me, and that I will really be with him in heaven forever.

That’s not entirely wrong! “What’s the point?” is always a good question to ask. So here’s the point:

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not just about grammar and logic. It’s a truth about salvation, about what God wants to give us.

Now, when God first revealed himself to Israel, he made clear this fundamental point: there are no other gods than he; God alone is the Lord, and him alone should we worship.

But over time he revealed another truth, just as important: that the one God is not alone, not solitary. He did not create the universe because he was bored or lonely. From all eternity, God exists; and from all eternity, God is a Father who has a Son, a relationship of love; and that relationship of love they share is just as eternal as God himself.

God is the Father, the Father who loves his Son so much that he gives everything he has, his entire divine being, to the Son. He’s always been giving it to him, eternally, and he always will: that’s who the Father is.

The Son is so loved by the Father, and loves the Father in turn, so much, that he has always been trusting the Father completely, eternally receiving everything he has from him, eternally loving the Father in gratitude for all the Father has given him—for he knows from all eternity that the Father loves him so much that he would never give him less than everything he has and is.

This love without beginning, without end, without partition or separation, total and complete, that love the Father and Son share, is nothing other than the Holy Spirit, the life of God, his power and goodness and beauty and glory. Not a part or characteristic, but God himself: God who is love and life and power and goodness and beauty and glory, eternally.

Now, God is so full of love—not needing anything, but in himself so full of generosity and goodness—that he didn’t want to keep this amazing life to himself. That’s why he created the universe. That’s why he sent his Son to become man. That’s why his Son died and rose for us. To share his own life with us.

God made us, that we might become his adopted sons and daughters: to share, through with and in the Son, all that the Father has to give, all that the Son receives and gives back to the Father, all the beautiful and glorious Spirit of love that they eternally share.

To put it another way: you were not made to be alone. And whenever you might be tempted to feel like you are alone, that life is pointless, that one day your life will be over and gone it won’t matter, know that this is a lie from the evil one. The truth is, even before you were in your mother’s womb, Scripture says, the Holy Trinity knew you: you were loved into being by a family, the family of the Holy Trinity.

You are wonderful and good because you have been made by the Holy Trinity to share their own life, forever. And you will only find that life, not on your own, but with others, together, as one family, one Church, the very image of the Trinity here on earth.

What an amazing truth, not just to contemplate, but to experience:

The Son who receives his life from the Father and offers it back to him, completely, on the cross of Calvary, that we might be reconciled to God and join the Son in his perfect life with the Father.

And not just one day but now, today, in the sacrifice of this Mass, in the gift of Holy Communion, receiving the very life of God living inside us, the power and goodness and beauty and glory of the Holy Spirit, making us into a new creation, making us like Jesus, sons and daughters of the one eternal Father, eternally blessed in that Spirit.

As the Catechism says: this is the fundamental, central truth of our faith. A truth that gives us hope, like nothing else can. A hope worth announcing, worth telling to all the nations, worth sharing with every person we know:

That God is a Holy Trinity, a communion of persons, a communion of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who made us in his image and likeness, who made us to share in his divine life of love, together, forever.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen!