BIBLE STUDY #92



THE SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY


June 3, 2012






READING 1


DEUTERONOMY 4:32-34, 39-40



Moses said to the people:

"Ask now of the days of old, before your time,

ever since God created man upon the earth;

ask from one end of the sky to the other:

Did anything so great ever happen before?

Was it ever heard of?

Did a people ever hear the voice of God

speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?

Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself

from the midst of another nation,

by testings, by signs and wonders, by war,

with strong hand and outstretched arm, and by great terrors,

all of which the LORD, your God,

did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

This is why you must now know,

and fix in your heart, that the LORD is God

in the heavens above and on earth below,

and that there is no other.

You must keep his statutes and commandments that I enjoin on you today,

that you and your children after you may prosper,

and that you may have long life on the land

which the LORD, your God, is giving you forever."



The Word of the Lord






READING 2


ROMANS 8:14-17




Brothers and sisters:

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,

but you received a Spirit of adoption,

through whom we cry, "Abba, Father!"

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit

that we are children of God,

and if children, then heirs,

heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,

if only we suffer with him

so that we may also be glorified with him.



The Word of the Lord






GOSPEL


MATTHEW 28:16-20




The eleven disciples went to Galilee,

to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.

When they all saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.

Then Jesus approached and said to them,

"All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father,

and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age."



The Gospel of the Lord






Reflection




This Sunday we celebrate the central mystery of our faith and of our Christian life: The mystery of the Trinity. The dogma of the Trinity is not in scripture, but was formulated at the councils of Nicaea in 325 A.D. and Constantinople in 381 A.D. While it is impossible to understand this mystery, the very essence of God, we do know what God has revealed to us about this mystery.



Every Sunday after the homily we recite the Nicene Creed, a basic statement about our faith which tells us about the Trinity.



Nicene Creed from Revised Roman Missal



I believe in one God,

the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all things visible and invisible.



I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the Only Begotten Son of God,

born of the Father before all ages.

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;

through him all things were made.

For us men and for our salvation

he came down from heaven,

and became man,

and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,

and became man.



For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,

he suffered death and was buried,

and rose again on the third day

in accordance with the Scriptures.

He ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory

to judge the living and the dead

and his kingdom will have no end.



I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son,

who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,

who has spoken through the prophets.



I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins

and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead

and the life of the world to come. Amen.



I’ve reproduced the Nicene Creed for your reflection. We recite it often enough, but do we really listen to what we’re saying? Below is a short reflection on the Trinity so we know some of the basics. I refer you to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 232 to 267 for a more in depth treatment of this sacred mystery. Paragraph numbers below refer to paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.



We believe that there is only one God, not three, but that there are three persons in the Blessed Trinity; namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They do not ‘share’ divinity, but are whole and complete God’s in themselves. This is called being consubstantial, so the trinity can also be referred to as the consubstantial trinity (paragraph 253).



The divine persons are really distinct from each other. The Father, Son, and Spirit are not just different modes of being divine; each is separate from each other. (paragraph 254). But in the unity of the Trinity, the Father is wholly in the Son and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Son is wholly in the Father and in the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Son (paragraph 255).



We believe that Jesus was ‘begotten’ by God; God did not create Jesus, he always was, he is true God, and is also a creator since he was present at, and participated in, the creation of the universe.



The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and is also a giver of life (see Creed above) and is also worshipped as God. It was also this same Spirit that inspired the prophets.



I would like you to notice that God lives in community, that the very essence of God incorporates community. That tells us that, since we are made in the image and likeness of God, we too must be a part of a community. There is no such thing as a solitary Christian. Even Christian hermits are still part of a larger community. A solitary Christian is an oxymoron. Christianity by its very nature is communal. Those who say that they don’t need to go church because they can go in the woods and pray don’t understand what Christianity is about: and I find it is an excuse not to pray at all (who goes regularly into the woods to pray? I’ve never met anyone).



Whenever you are confronted with a group that claims to be Christian and you’ve never heard of them, the first test is whether they believe in the Trinity. Every Christian believes in this dogma. If they don’t, they’re not Christian.



There was a time in the not to distant past where some people wanted to change the sign of the cross to be “In the name of the Creator, and of the Redeemer, and of the Sanctifier” instead of “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” What we have to remember is that creator, redeemer, and sanctifier are not meant to limit each person of the Trinity’s power or role, but a way to understand something about each person of the Trinity. For example, the Son is much more than a redeemer; he is also a creator, since he was present at the creation of the world. In our feeble attempts to understand what God is trying to reveal to us, we should never put a limit on God. The Trinity is much greater than the sum of it’s’ parts.



God reveals a little about himself so that we may become more like him. The very essence of God is love, as we hear in 1John 4:8, “Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.” When we are baptized “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” we are brought into God’s love, we share in the divine life of love.



This is the most important part of understanding the Trinity: that God is love and we need to be loving people, also. The Father, Son and Spirit have an eternal exchange of love of boundless measure, and we participate in, as well as share, that love with each other as Christians. It’s nice to be able to understand and speak about all the various theologies about the Trinity, but if we don’t love, we’ve missed the point. The great commandment is to love God and each other, not to be able to plumb the depths of Trinitarian theology.



Loving is harder than reading theology, though, isn’t it. Love makes demands, sometimes great ones, on our time, talent, and even our resources. Theology describes; love acts, because love in its most basic and truest sense is an action, something that we do. If someone said they loved you, but never did loving things for you, would you believe they loved you? I doubt it.



Each of the readings today tells us of some aspects of God. In the first reading from Deuteronomy, Moses praises God for his greatness in creation, he expresses his gratitude to God for choosing his people to be God’s own people, and he tells his people that in gratitude for what God has done, that the people should follow God’s laws. Here is a loving God who creates, chooses, and sustains. God created us, we are chosen as his own through baptism, and we are sustained through his grace. In response to what God has done for us, we follow his commands.



In the second reading from Romans, St Paul tells us that we are more than slaves who fear God, but are sons and daughters adopted by God, so we call God “Abba, Father” which is a term of endearment. God wants to have an intimate relationship with us as our loving parent; not to be afraid of his wrath, but be enveloped by his love and kindness. The Spirit’s presence in our lives joins us to God so we are heirs with Christ to salvation.



God is the one who creates, chooses, sustains, loves, and inspires. In the Gospel, God is the one who sends us on a mission. What God gives to us, we must share with others. We are the instruments by which others are brought to know and to love the Lord. We must evangelize by our words and example so that people will want to be baptized in the name of the trinity, and then teach them what it means to be a disciple we can’t do this by our own power, but Jesus promises to be with us to guide, nurture, and direct us to spread the Good News.





Fr. Phil