BIBLE STUDY # 135


SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY

May 26, 2013





READING 1

PROVERBS 8:22-31



Thus says the wisdom of God:

"The LORD possessed me, the beginning of his ways,

the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago;

from of old I was poured forth,

at the first, before the earth.

When there were no depths I was brought forth,

when there were no fountains or springs of water;

before the mountains were settled into place,

before the hills, I was brought forth;

while as yet the earth and fields were not made,

nor the first clods of the world.



"When the Lord established the heavens I was there,

when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep;

when he made firm the skies above,

when he fixed fast the foundations of the earth;

when he set for the sea its limit,

so that the waters should not transgress his command;

then was I beside him as his craftsman,

and I was his delight day by day,

playing before him all the while,

playing on the surface of his earth;

and I found delight in the human race."



The Word of the Lord



READING 2

ROMANS 5:1-5



Brothers and sisters:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith,

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

through whom we have gained access by faith

to this grace in which we stand,

and we boast in hope of the glory of God.

Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions,

knowing that affliction produces endurance,

and endurance, proven character,

and proven character, hope,

and hope does not disappoint,

because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts

through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.



The Word of the Lord



GOSPEL

JOHN 16:12-15



Jesus said to his disciples:

"I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.

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.

Everything that the Father has is mine;

for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine

and declare it to you."



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.



In the Gospel, Jesus makes an amazing statement: “"I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. 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.” Jesus is telling us that revelation isn’t a one time event. It is a continual process that never ends. For example, the concept of the Trinity is non biblical, but the Council of Nicea in 325 AD determined that this is a truth revealed by the Spirit. This concept would be foreign to the Apostles, but not to us. We, too, grow and learn from listening to the Spirit. That’s why it’s never good to think that we have ‘made it’ in our spiritual lives, that we have no more to learn. In truth, we have plenty more to learn and we need to keep on growing in our knowledge and love of God...



The first reading from Proverbs is from a section called “The Discourse on Wisdom.” The footnote in the Revised New American Bible for this section states: “Wisdom is of divine origin. She is represented as existing before all things (vv. 22-26), when God planned and created the universe, adorning it with beauty and variety, and establishing it wonderful order (vv. 27-30). The purpose of the 2 cosmogonies (vv. 26-26 and 27-31) is to ground wisdom’s claims. The first cosmogony emphasizes that she was born before all else (and so deserving of honor) and the second underscores that she was with the Lord during the creation of the universe. The pre-existence of Woman Wisdom with God is developed in Sirach 24 and in the New Testament hymns to Christ, especially in John 1 and Col 1:15-20.”



In the second reading, Paul tells us that we are justified by faith. Justice in this context is more than fairness. It is Jesus death and resurrection that gives us access to the Father and that saves us; and in Paul’s terminology, justifies us. This justification gives us peace when we join our lives with Jesus and give our lives for others.



Fr. Phil