Sometimes it is easy to recognize something in our midst – but sometimes it is
more difficult. Since
Pope Francis became Pope a little more than a year ago, people have recognized
and appreciated the distinctive style that he has brought to the papacy, the
way he leads us as the Shepherd of the universal Catholic Church with
compassion and openness. And
here in the Diocese of Jackson, we have had a new Bishop – Bishop Joseph
Kopacz, as the leader of our own local flock. Bishop Kopacz definitely wants to be the Bishop of the people. In the past 4 months that he has been here in
our Diocese, I think I have counted 6 different times that he has been up here
to Tupelo to visit us. And I
have heard how a lot of people have appreciated and recognized his presence
with us and his loving, pastoral care. The
Bishop told me a story about his last trip to Tupelo. He
was coming up for the deanery meeting and stopped by parish center trying to
find where we were. Vacation Bible School was going full force
that morning, and the Bishop was amazed to see all the children attending. In the midst of all the children, a girl came
up to him with a big smile and said: “Hey, I know you! You were at my first communion!”
We
recognize the presence of God in our lives in different ways. Which
is why we celebrate today as the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. If
you do a word search in the Bible, the word “Trinity” will not be found. However, the reality of the Trinity that we celebrate today is certainly
described in the Bible in different ways. In
the second reading today, we hear Paul close his second letter to the
Corinthians in the name of the Trinity – “The grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the holy Spirit be
with all of you.” We
hear a greeting in almost that exact same language each time we open up our
Eucharistic celebrations. So,
we as Christians greet each other in the reality of the Trinity, in God as
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The
mothers and fathers of the Early Church spilt a lot of ink and a lot of blood
trying to understand the Trinity, trying to understand God in the way that he
truly is. All
of us as disciples of Christ, who try to use our faith to gain understanding,
we realize that there is a paradox – that as we learn more about God, we
realize that there is always more and more to know and learn. St
Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo in Africa in the early 5th century
and one of our Church’s greatest intellectual minds, stated this: “God is not
what we can ever imagine or what we think we understand. When we think we fully
understand God, then we know that we have failed.”
What
we can say about God in the Trinity is that it helps us understand God as
community. The
triune nature of God tells us that the three Persons of God – the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit – are in fellowship in God’s very self. From
the very beginning – God as the Creator, the Word and Spirit all co-mingled
together to bring forth creation. God
is three persons, but God exists communally, God creates communally. In
the Trinitarian nature of God, both individuality and communality, we human
beings are related in a beautiful life giving dance of creation.
In a
reading we had from the Acts of the Apostles recently in a daily mass during
the Easter season, Paul came across a Temple dedicated to an “unknown God”
while he was in Athens. For
us, God is not unknown. The
God of the Trinity that we know is a God who reveals himself to us in many
different ways. The
God whom we renew ourselves in each year during the celebration of the Easter
season and Pentecost is not some abstract, vague concept. According to the Gospel we hear today, God is a God of love, a God that loved
us so much that he sent his only Begotten Son to live among us and to bring us
salvation. It is
the love of the Father who is the source of our life, the love of the Son who
died for us on the cross and who rose, and the love of the Holy Spirit who
renews the face of the earth. The
Trinity did not come out of human reasoning or our human imagination. The
Trinity is not some human construct. Rather,
it is the face of God who reveals himself to us. The
Triune God reveals himself to us in the waters of our baptism, in the Body and
Blood of the Son that we receive in the Eucharist, in the love and compassion
we show to our brothers and sisters in the faith that we live out. In
all of those ways, the Triune God is a reality to us. We
celebrate the presence of the Trinity with us in this wonderful solemnity we
celebrate today. May we all live out the
reality of the Trinity in our lives.
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