May 31 - Sunday Homily

Now that the entire Easter Season has concluded (last Sunday with the Feast of Pentecost), the Church today looks back on the past seven months. From the first Sunday of Advent until last Sunday in our liturgies we have seen dramatized and played out for us once again for our consideration the work of the Most Blessed Trinity: the love of God the Father, who sent the Son into the world to be born among us, and to live and die and rise for our salvation: for the forgiveness of our sins!

And then, in order to preserve the life of the Son on earth for all ages: the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit: to “blow where he wills,” to inform and guide and direct the community of believers in the Divine Son and his eternal Father, in their personal lives of conversion from the world, and indeed the transformation of the whole world into the glorious kingdom of God, as it is meant to be transfigured and transformed.

And so this is what we celebrate today the activity of the Trinity on our behalf!

But we also need to back up even further and look at this Triune God as He is in Himself: for if this Trinity of Persons comes to dwell within us by our initiation into the Church by Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist: who is this Trinity? who is God in Himself?

Though it can easily be stated: it cannot ever in this life or even in the next be fully understood: the mystery of God in his Threefold Oneness (that will always remain a mystery) may inadequately be described as this: “the uncreated God, who simply is, loves himself, sees himself, and gives himself infinitely to an image of himself who is the Word, a second Person; in effect God utters one Word and that word is WORD, it is Son, it is everything that the Father is; and then in an ongoing process the Son and his Father look at one another and they sigh: they breath out a breath of love for one another: and that breath of love is the Holy Spirit: the created manifestation of the love of the Father and the Son!

This is God’s own life that He lives all in Himself!” And it is this God, Three Persons bound together with a chain of love into One Being, who entirely at their own discretion chose to invite other persons to enter into their life. God did not have to create anything because he needs nothing! But since he is not only an infinite dynamic of loving, he is also goodness itself, and beauty and truth; and so he would just naturally want to go outside himself and share himself with others who are in some sense like him: that is why he created the entire universe as a backdrop and then mankind to be the highest form of his earthly creatures – creating them persons (in his image); giving them intellect and free will so that they could freely choose to fall in love with him!

The rest is up to us: for those who have already or who want to fall in love with God – he has provided the fullness of truth, beauty, goodness and love in the Catholic Church – though lesser degrees exist outside of it – with its Word, with its Sacraments, with its Works of Charity done out of love for him; the Church invites everyone, everywhere to accept God’s call to a very intimate life of love with him and everyone else who likewise believes.

In summary: together we are all – all on the face of the earth – meant to cry out: Abba, Father; Jesus, Lord; Spirit, Comforter!

May it be so today and every day for more and more people until the Kingdom of God emerges fully in all its majesty, beauty and peacefulness here and hereafter!

Amen!