Homily on Solemnity of the Holy Trinity

Like God, Shun Individualism And Isolation!

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily on Solemnity of the Holy Trinity

St. Mary Assumption Catholic Church, Whittier, CA

June 11, 2017

Moses was invited by God to come to Mount Sinai. The people of Israel had rejected God and Moses by turning to a lifeless object. Rather than continue to trust and worship the living God that has led them this far, they made a golden calf and began to worship it. When Moses saw them, he was infuriated and out of anger, he threw on the floor, the stone tablets on which God’s covenant with his people were inscribed. When he broke the tablets, he broke and annulled the covenant God made with his people, Israel. So, the story of today’s First Reading (Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9) is about Moses coming to meet with God with a new set of tablets for the purpose of restoring the broken covenant. 

When God appeared to Moses, God declared his name: LORD, in Hebrew YHWH, frequently written in English as Yahweh (So, Yahweh is the revealed personal name of Israel’s God). Apart from revealing his name, God also revealed his identity: “The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” The two qualities—merciful and gracious are almost synonymous, although merciful has a stronger meaning because it is related to the Hebrew word for “womb,”suggesting a mother’s love for her child. Because the Israelites had sinned, God revealed to Moses that the God he serves is slow to anger, a quality that Moses didn't have. It was his quick temper that triggered him to break the covenant God made with Israel. So, God was assuring Moses that he wasn’t going to destroy his people who had provoked him. The final two qualities that God revealed to Moses: “kindness and fidelity,” were a deeper assurance from God that he will remain faithful and steadfast, even if his people remain wicked and stiff-necked. Moses eventually asked for God’s favor and invited him to join their company— that is, to be with them as he has always been. Of cause, God accepted his prayer and accompanied his people because God is mercy. God is kind. God is patient. God is gracious. God is faithful. 

In today’s Gospel taken from John 3:16-18, Jesus continues to reveal who God is: that God is a lover. He so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone will be saved by believing in the Son that God has sent. In the spirit of the First Reading, which says that “God is slow to anger…” Jesus assured that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

Sisters and brothers, has anyone realized the tremendous amount of efforts that God made to establish and reestablish relationship with us? Undeniably, God is not a loner. God cherishes and relishes relationship. God longs and yearns for relationship with us. And that should not come as a surprise to anyone. God is being true to his nature. He does not exist alone or in isolation, but in a community of love, fellowship and sharing. God’s existence in a community of persons is the Solemnity we are celebrating today. Although, the word, “Trinity” is not explicitly written in the Bible, but the doctrine itself is littered everywhere in the Bible. The idea of Three Persons was clearly stated by Jesus himself. During his earthly ministry, he spoke so much about his relationship with his Father: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30); “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father…” (John 14:9b); “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me…” (John 14:11); “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19); “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth” (John 14:15-17); “All this I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you” (John 14:25-26). Of most significant is the baptism of the Lord. As Jesus was being baptized by John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit descended upon him in a form of a dove, and the voice of the Father sounded from heaven and said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:13-17). At this baptism, the Trinity was present; the heavenly community of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit was revealed and communicated to us. This is the Trinity in action. In today’s Second Reading taken from 2 Corinthians 13:13, St. Paul prayed, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” In those words, one of our ancestors in faith recognized the reality of the Trinity and called for their presence in our lives. 

But what should we learn and emulate from the Trinity?  The importance of this doctrine lies in the fact that we are made in the image of God, therefore, the more we understand God, the more we understand ourselves. 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, lovely and lovable. Like a god, so the worshippers. God is a community of love and the solemnity of the Trinity calls us to emulate the God we serve, to become  a community of love. Our God is a community, and we are called to live in a community and as a community. Every Christian who wants to do the will of God must shun every tendency to isolationism and individualism. Those who sever relationship with their parents, brothers, sisters, and relatives just to be alone are going against the will of God for us. Since God made a great effort to establish a covenant-relationship with us, and then reestablish it when it was broken, we must do the same with God and with our fellow human beings. A deliberate avoidance of relationship with others is not godly. Some of us shy away from relationship because they have been hurt by others in the past. But isn’t that what we do to God on a regular basis? Did I hear someone say, “We are not God, we are human beings?” Sure, we are only humans, and not God, but Jesus has called us to rise above our human frailties: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Bad experiences have lessons to teach. We must learn the lesson, be wiser, act wisely, and move on. If someone has hurt you before, it does not mean that everyone else would hurt you. As a matter of fact, at some point in our lives, we have hurt someone. We are all wounded, but must become wounded healers. We are created to live in community, to reach out, to share, to love, just like the God we serve. Happy Holy Trinity!