Homily on the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity

Lessons from the Holy and Undivided Trinity

Rev. Marcel Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily on the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity

St. Mary of Assumption, Whittier, California

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Before I settled down to write this homily, I had the excitement to centre it on the theology of the Trinity. I wanted to give a simple analysis of the mystery of the Trinity. That led me into studying the summary of St. Augustine’s and St. Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian theology I wrote when I was in the Major Seminary. After that, I picked up the Catechism of the Catholic Church and read the entire Part One, Paragraph 2, subtitled “The Father” (CCC 232-267). It is under this section that the mystery of the Trinity is explained. After all the reading, I was ready to write my homily. Suddenly, it occurred to me that doing a theological analysis of the mystery of the Trinity will appear too scholarly and abstract, that I may succeed in putting my parishioners to sleep. In the end, I decided to preach on what we can learn from the Trinity.  

Today, we celebrate one of the deepest mysteries of our faith: that God is a Trinity of persons. The solemnity of the Trinity is not meant to tie us in theological knots, but to teach us that we can find our roots in the divine love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that we can also find our freedom there. The mystery of the Trinity invites us to imitate the unity, love and harmony that exists within the Trinity. The Trinity is a seamless unity of persons and a community of love. The Father is the Lover, the Son is the Beloved, the Holy Spirit is the Love. This reality, this mystery, teaches us three things: how to love, how to be loved and how to become love. Put differently, it teaches us how to give love, receive love and become love or lovely. It teaches us how we can love others, how to receive love from others, and how each of us can be an agent or instrument of love, that is, how we can be love and love-giving. It teaches us how to be a family and a community, just as God is a family and a community.

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is about the inner relationship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It teaches us that our God does not exist alone or in isolation. Our God is a community! Now, if we expected today’s readings to give us a clear and elaborate presentation of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, we have found out that they simply do not. But today’s Gospel (John 16:12-15) has Jesus talking to his disciples about the Holy Spirit. He called him, “the Spirit of Truth” who will come and guide them to all truth. Last Sunday, we celebrated his dramatic coming on the disciples (Pentecost). In same Gospel, Jesus talks about the Father, “Everything that the Father has is mine…” he says. So, the reality of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is already found in the Gospel reading. Now, we don’t have to dig deep to see, from the way Jesus talks about the Father and the Second Advocate, the Holy Spirit, that there is deep love, profound unity and perfect harmony among them. Those are the qualities that Christians everywhere should imbibe and promote. Therefore, any message that causes division in our family and society negates the very character of the Trinity. Any politics or policy that promotes hatred and disharmony in our society is anti-Christ. Any politician whose policies and politics would lead to a further division among us should be rejected. We can disagree without being disagreeable. Even though we belong to different political affiliations, certain virtues like love, unity, harmony etc should transcend politics. Whether you are a conservative or liberal Christian, traditional or progressive Christian, we all should be agents and promoters of  love, unity and harmony in the world. And we can learn these from the doctrine of the Trinity. 

We are made in the image of God. Experts in religion tell us that people always try to be like the god they worship. People who worship a warrior god tend to be war-mongering, people who worship a god of pleasure tend to be pleasure-seeking, people who worship a god of wrath tend to be vengeful, and people who worship a god of love tend to be loving. Like a god, so the worshippers. The doctrine of the Blessed Trinity teaches us, among other things the kind of God we worship and the kind of people we should be. God does not exist in solitary individualism but in a community of love, fellowship and sharing. God is not a loner. This means that a Christian in search of godliness must shun every tendency to isolationism and individualism. We become who God created us to be when we are in a relationship of love with God and with the people of God.

We begin and end the Mass by making the sign of the cross. The sign of the cross is a simple action that many of us have been doing since we were children. As we celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, I want us to always remember that each time we make the sign of the cross, we sign ourselves with everything the Trinity is. Therefore, let’s live as such. We may not be able to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity, as such, may not be able to help others understand the theological intricacies of this amazing mystery, but we can certainly help them experience love. Since we all want love, let’s give love. Love makes us a family. It turns a house into a home, and turns a home into a family. It turns friendship into marriage. It turns a people into a nation, and a nation into a community. It turns a gathering of people into a church and a people of God. Loves transforms us from selfishness to selflessness. It makes us to think, not only about ourselves but also about others. Love makes us to live for a cause. It is the driver for making disciples for Christ Jesus.