Homily, Holy Trinity Sunday, 2023
From The Pastor
God is simple. God is the essence of love. God is what God does. God is love and God loves. The love of God is pure. If something were taken away from or added to what we believe of God, it would cease to be God. God is the fulness of what love is.
In the disorder of sin and its consequences on persons, cultures, and societies, God has become overly complex. Sin is the root of all division, separation, war, confusion, and injustice. Sin incites people to resist God, become separated from love, and seek comfort through various forms of personal isolation and control. Human emotions of fear, guilt, and shame caused by sin, incline a person to project such feelings onto God as the source of their discomfort. Such emotions projected onto God distort the essence of who God is. Faith is thrown out of balance and loses its trust in the power and nature of Divine Love.
The Feast of the Holy Trinity grew out of a need to defend the essence of God as One, expressed in three persons, or three ways of being. This feast has been celebrated in the Church for more than 1300 years. The challenge of the Trinity is that it is most often described as a mystery beyond our understanding or ability to grasp. Ultimately that is true. God is mystery beyond our capacity to fully understand or contain. If we could contain God, then it cannot be God.
However, the Trinity is a gift that offers us an expressive understanding of who God is and how God reveals the Divine nature. We know God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God expressed in three ways of being who fully reveals the Divine nature in the role of each person. These roles are not exclusive, but fully unitive. God creates through the Son in the workings of the Holy Spirit. The Son redeems in the will of the Father in the power of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit unites and sanctifies through the redemption of the Son in the will and essence of the Father.
Do not make this hard. You are one person, yet you express yourself in many ways as believer, spouse, parent, friend, beloved, etc. You remain one person but are known and valued in the many expressions of yourself across the breadth of who you are.
The readings confirm the nature and character of God. The first reading reveals the personal, face to face relationship between God and Moses. Moses cannot see God’s face and live, so God passes before the hidden face of Moses exclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” God speaks his own nature and identity.
The second reading gives us the quite common greeting of St. Paul to the Christian communities now frequently used in our liturgies. ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.’ The greeting itself tell us the nature and activity of God.
Jesus himself is the grace of God. Grace is God’s personal self-communication of love, favor, and blessing for our well-being in relationship with God. The grace of our relationship with God is most fully expressed through the person of Jesus.
The love of God. What is the love of God? The love of God is unlimited, unmerited, freely given self-surrender for our sake. Divine love is fully surrendered for our redemption that we may share perfect union with God. God is saying, you are as important to me as I am to myself. I choose to be incomplete without you with me.
The fellowship of the Holy Spirit. This fellowship is our relationship with God through our relationships with one another. We share in the community of the Trinity through our faith in Jesus expressed in our love for others. This is the work of the Holy Spirit who is love.
The Gospel is the final confirmation of the nature and character of God given to us in Christ, ever-present in the Holy Spirit. With perfect love for the world, in all its sin and disorder, the Son is given that all who believe in him will have eternal life. The Son is the perfect image of the Father, Incarnate for our salvation. The Son did not come to condemn, but to save the world that God and all creation may be one in perfect unity.
In the Trinity I find clarity and security. The Christian faith reveals the truth of who God is and all God intends for us. The deception of evil and the disorder of sin is the enemy of the Trinity. Ponder the gift of these words. Through your faith in Christ, your sins are no match for the radical and infinite love God has for us. Never let your failures or sin leave you feeling distant from God. Confess. Talk to God like Moses. Accept the truth of God’s mercy and persist in your faith.
Father John Esper
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