The Easter Season usually
ends with a sort of “trifecta” of major feasts: Pentecost, Trinity, and Corpus
Christi, as the Church celebrates the central mysteries of the faith before
entering into Ordinary Time once more.
In any event, this weekend is
Trinity Sunday, a meditation and celebration of the central mystery of the
Christian faith, the dogma that distinguishes Christianity from all other
religions. Christians alone believe in
one God, who nonetheless exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Strangely, our Readings for
this Sunday tend not to be classic “proof texts” for the idea that there is
more than one person in the Godhead.
Instead, the readings tend to focus on the character or essence of
God. This is appropriate, because as we
will see, the character of God is very different, and the meaning of salvation
history as well, when one knows God to be a Trinity of persons.
Reading 1: Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9:
Early in the morning Moses went up Mount Sinai
as the LORD had commanded him,
taking along the two stone tablets.
Having come down in a cloud, the LORD stood with Moses
there
and proclaimed his name, "LORD."
Thus the LORD passed before him and cried out,
"The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God,
slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity."
Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship.
Then he said, "If I find favor with you, O Lord,
do come along in our company.
This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our
wickedness and sins,
and receive us as your own."
The context of this passage
is very important, and hopefully the celebrant will explain in the homily. This is not Moses’ first visit up the
mountain. It is his return visit after
the debacle with the Golden Calf. Moses
had descended the mountain, interrupting his reception of the instructions for
the Tabernacle, in order to regain control of the people, who were running wild
in a pagan ritual-orgy in worship of the Egyptian bull god Apis. He now returns to the mountain to intercede
for the people and plead for forgiveness and covenant renewal. God accepts his intercessions on behalf of
Israel and agrees to forgive and renew the covenant, but Moses has an
additional request: he wishes to see the face of God. God cannot reveal his “face” (unmediated
revelation) to Moses in this life, but he condescends to show his “back”
(mediated or indirect revelation) to Moses on the mountain. So God makes his presence pass before Moses
while Moses is hid in a cleft in the rocks.
While his presence passes by, the LORD proclaims his “name,” that is,
declares what his essence is:
"The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God,
slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity."
The term translated
“kindness” here is that very freighted word “hesed,” which specifically connotes faithfulness and love in a
covenant relationship.
So why is this text read on
Trinity Sunday? On this day, we reflect
on God’s very nature, and this is one of the most important texts of the Old Testament
that addresses the issue of what God is.
The answer given is that God’s nature consists primarily in mercy,
grace, forgiveness, truth, and especially covenant fidelity.
This does relate to the
Trinity, which has meaning for our redemption.
Several facts follow from the realization that the Son and the Spirit
are God Himself. First, it dawns on us
that God did not send some other creature
to suffer and die for us, but paid the penalty for our sins by himself. Secondly, it becomes apparent that God does not merely share his energies or
power with us, but shares with us his
very life and self.
For if God is not a Trinity,
then Jesus the Son is a creature, and God sent a creature to work our
redemption rather than doing it himself.
And if God is not a Trinity, the Holy Spirit is not God, but some active
force or emanation from the almighty.
Therefore we do not receive God into our hearts through faith and the
sacraments, but something else that radiates from him.
Furthermore, the Trinity reveals
that God is, in himself, a circle of self-giving love. Prior to the creation of the universe, God
did not exist as a self-aggrandizing sole individual, but he existed as a
communion of persons bound by the gift of self in love: a possible way to think
of it is that the Father continually gives himself to the Son, and the Son
gives himself to the Father, and the self they exchange is the Holy
Spirit. Thus, the gift of self in love,
which is the essence of hesed,
belongs to God’s nature from all time.
It is not an accidental feature of God’s character that arises when he
creates other beings to be loved.
So doctrine of the Trinity
enables us to understand that faithful love (hesed) is at the heart of God’s nature, and he shares himself with
us in a way more profound and intimate than we would ever have imagined.
Responsorial Psalm: Daniel 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56:
R/
(52b) Glory and praise for ever!
Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our fathers,
praiseworthy and exalted above all forever;
And blessed is your holy and glorious name,
praiseworthy and exalted above all for all ages.
R/
Glory and praise for ever!
Blessed are you in the temple of your holy glory,
praiseworthy and glorious above all forever.
R/
Glory and praise for ever!
Blessed are you on the throne of your kingdom,
praiseworthy and exalted above all forever.
R/
Glory and praise for ever!
Blessed are you who look into the depths
from your throne upon the cherubim,
praiseworthy and exalted above all forever.
R/
Glory and praise for ever!
The revelation of God’s
nature prompts praise from us, his people.
The Church turns to the Song of the Three Young Men, the song of praise
they sang while being sacrificed in the fiery furnace. The fiery furnace is an image of the burning
love of God, which is more than our mortal nature can bear. Yet God sustains us supernaturally, so that
we can praise him while plunged in his presence. The young men were being sacrificed because
of their covenant fidelity to God expressed by their refusal to worship idols. Their willingness to be faithful to God to
death leads to a greater knowledge and experience of God’s nature.
Reading 2: 2 Cor 13:11-13:
Brothers and sisters, rejoice.
Mend your ways, encourage one another,
agree with one another, live in peace,
and the God of love and peace will be with you.
Greet one another with a holy kiss.
All the holy ones greet you.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of
you.
Our Second Reading gives us a
more explicitly Trinitarian text.
Although the doctrine of the Trinity is not explained in detail in the
text of the New Testament, the reality of the Trinity must be presumed in order
to make sense of the assertions and statements of the apostles and other sacred
writers. For example, in the concluding
blessing of this short passage of St. Paul, it would be inappropriate to put
the “grace of the Lord Jesus Christ” and the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” in
poetic parallelism with “the love of God” unless all three realities were of
equally dignity. If Jesus Christ and the
Holy Spirit were mere creatures, they could not be the source of “grace” and
“fellowship” on par with the “love of God.”
Furthermore, the term “grace” is particularly freighted, as elsewhere
Paul develops the concept as a divine attribute.
Benedict XVI explained that
dogmas are nothing other than authoritative interpretations of Scripture. Another way to look at them would be as
“truths one must assume in order to make sense of all the Scriptural
data.” The doctrine of the Trinity helps
us make sense of this threefold blessing in 2 Corinthians 13 and many other
passages as well.
Gospel John 3:16-18:
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn
the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been
condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only
Son of God.
Love is the essence of the
Trinity. The Trinity tells us that God
is not a monopersonal individual who had only himself to love before creatures
were made. Self-love is an imperfect
form of love. Therefore, God would have
needed creatures to love in order to achieve perfection of love. God would have been imperfect in himself. Self-giving love is the highest form of love:
“Greater love has no man than this: that he lay down his life for his
friends.” From all eternity Father and
Son exchange their Life for each other.
Therefore, the gift of the Son by the Father to the world, and the Son’s
gift of Himself for the world and for his Father, is nothing other than an
invitation for the world to enter into the circle of love that defines God’s
essence.
Why is it necessary to
believe in the Son? Because only Jesus
reveals to us the full truth about God.
Moses revealed some truth about God.
Mohammad portrayed God as an omnipotent, monopersonal master who has no
children in any sense, does not give himself to or for us, and does not share
with us his very being. The Buddha was
technically an agnostic, unconcerned with discovering God’s nature or even
clearly affirming he existence of God.
Alone among the religious
teachers and philosophers of the world, Jesus claims in word and deed that God
is a loving Father who gave his only Son for the salvation of the world, and
that the Son is, finally and mysteriously, the Father’s own Self, for “I and
the Father are one,” and “He who has seen me, has seen the Father.” Therefore, whoever does not believe in the
Son is condemned forever to labor with an inadequate understanding of God,
which leads—perhaps sooner, perhaps later—to estrangement from God. We become like what we worship. How important, then, truly to understand the
nature of the God we worship. The
worship of the Trinity should lead us to a life of self-giving love.
No comments:
Post a Comment