Deacon Bruce Maltzen's Homily for June 19, 2011 - Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
First of all - I want to say Happy Father's day to all the fathers gathered here. It such a great calling to be a father , and today we acknowledge those who have taken on that calling with great joy. Today, besides being Father’s day – which I will get to just a little later, is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, a Sunday where we recall the most fundamental mystery of the Christian faith – that our one God is a Triune God. There is but One God as Our Lord declared to Moses on Mount Sinai. Yet, in the New Testament we realize the true nature of Our God - He is three persons. For God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are but the same God merely in three different persons. So how do we know that?
The Holy Trinity is first declared in Matthew’s Gospel through the words of Jesus:
"Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:18).
Later when Paul talked to the Corinthians – in our second reading from 2nd Corinthians:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you
While the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each God, each has a separate purpose in relation to the salvation of the World. However, all the Divine Persons of the Trinity act in perfect unity, that is they aren’t out doing their own thing, but they work in union with each other, since God is one and has but one will. While all of this is certainly confusing, we can only pray that through the Holy Spirit's inspiration, we can hope to understand the Trinity. In time, through study and discernment, we can understand the Trinity and the nature of Our One God better, but only in Heaven will we truly experience the joy of serving the One God and seeing the mystery of the Holy Trinity face to face
Now, while this is all a mystery we do still have the ability to search into it and understand it better. That is the wonderful part of being Christian – or being Christ-like. We partake of this three personal God and enter into that mystery every time we come to Mass and actually more often than we know. So let’s try to understand this triune nature of God slightly better this time so that we can partake in it even more abundantly.
I intend to use here the explanation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity used by C.S. Lewis in his masterpiece called “Mere Christianity”. Now the name of the book might do it dis-service as it is not indicating that Christianity is simple or as in the dictionary definition of “MERE” as “being nothing more or better than”, but meaning at the basics, at the level of what all Christians believe in, one of the basic denominators of our faith found across all Christian denominations.
Let’s start this study with a simple Geometry lesson. How many here ever studied geometry in school (raise your hands). For those of you who haven’t or have forgotten everything you learned about geometry – this shouldn’t be too hard to follow. Let’s start with the simplest form in geometry - the line, where in one dimension the only figure that can be drawn is a line. Moving up the ladder – so to speak – we come to a place where there are two dimensions and the basic figure that can be drawn is a square or a rectangle, this is where we join two or more lines together to make a figure. Going even further up we come to the 3 dimensional world which we know and experience. Now we can join figures together to form solids – such as 6 squares joined together make a cube, such as we would see in a box or a package. I see that some of you are catching on. In a one dimensional world we can have a line, but many lines in a two dimensional world can make up a figure and many figures in a three dimensional world can make a solid.
In other words, as you advance to more and more complicated dimensions you do not leave the things from the previous dimensions behind, you simply combine them in new ways to make things in the new dimension. You combine them in ways that you could not have thought of if you lived in the simpler dimension.
Now let’s take what we learned from geometry and apply it to our faith. In the Christian account of God, we find a similar principle. The human level, although complicated enough for us to understand is a simple level. One person is one being like one line or one figure, and any two persons are two perhaps similar human beings but definitely different and separate, just as we find that any square in a two dimensional world can exist alongside another square and they remain squares but separate squares.
However, on the Divine level you still find personalities as in the human level and the same as in a three dimensional world you still find squares, but in the Divine level they are combined in new ways that we, who do not live on that level, cannot fathom. In that level, God’s level, so to speak, we find a being who is three persons while remaining one Being, just as the a cube is six squares while remaining a single cube.
Of course this is simply an exercise or example so that we might begin to grasp a piece of the enormity of the mystery of the Triune God. We truly cannot fully conceive of a being like that, as we live in a dimension that has no such thing. However we can gain some sort of faint notion of it as he has given us clues to it.
We see a slight notion of that joining together of persons when we see a marriage that is steeped in faith. We see that the two were separate and God has reached into this dimension and joined them together in a way that they are now more than two, but they are now also just one, somewhat like lines joined together to form a figure. This marriage we see in our Christian faith is a sign of that three person God, such that we can begin to see the glimmer of just what that joining together, that unity of persons is really about.
Remember back at the beginning of this I said that:
While the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each God, each has a separate purpose in relation to the salvation of the World. However, all the Divine Persons of the Trinity act in perfect unity since God is one and has but one will.
Well, one way to experience this is to watch people who kneel down in prayer. Observe them closely and you will see all three persons of God at work here. Those who have knelt down in prayer, do so to get in touch with God. They knelt down in prayer at the bidding of the Spirit who works within us to call us to be in communication with the Father, and then it is the Father to whom this person is praying, either asking for something or giving thanks or being silent before Him as He reveals himself to the one in prayer. But notice whom it is that is standing beside him, helping him talk with the Father. It is Jesus, as He is the bridge to the Father, it is through his sacrifice, it is through his humanity, it is through his relationship with the Father, that we have any access to God the Father at all.
Remember in the scriptures where Jesus, through whom we know these three persons, talks about the Father:
Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.
and
“If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
and
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own.
The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me,
or else, believe because of the works themselves.
In our geometry lesson we would say about the previous statement that if you have seen a cube you‘ve also seen the lines that make up the cube.
And of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate he says:
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
And of himself:
I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.
So it is we have a three personal God, one in being, three in persons who loves us and wishes us to know him. Don’t let the mystery of that statement put you off, and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t know anything about him, He gives us hints and clues for us to know Him everywhere in life.
Its Father’s day and I would be remiss if I didn’t say anything about fathers here – so let me go on just a little about fatherhood.
Jesus talked a lot about his Father in heaven and he always used the term Father for his “father”. He didn’t use any other term to describe the relationship with the Father. He didn’t call him “brother” or “mother” or “friend”. He called him Father. In this he brought that relationship to a new height. He relayed to us what relationship we needed to have with our Fathers and what relationship we as fathers need to have with our children. It was a very loving relationship.
Jesus said:
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love. "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
And
I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.
It would help if we could remember this on Father’s day, to remember that as the Father loves his Son, so his Son loves us. And all that He and his Father want is for us to love one another.
Your brother in Christ,
Deacon Bruce
