Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year A

If mankind had never sinned, so if even down to today we were completely living in

accord with the will of God, would Christ have come among us? In the past, some

theologians said no. At the Easter Vigil, in the Exsultet, we hear the words: “O truly

necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault

that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” So yes, if sin had never entered our

word, there would have been no need for Christ to come and redeem us. But other

theologians have said that He would still have come, to complete God’s revelation.

Some have also argued, wrongly, that the God of the Old Testament is different from

the God of the New. In the Old Testament, they say, we see a God of anger and

thunderbolts, whilst in the New He is one of love. Well this is a rather selective

reading of the Bible. We can find in the Old Testament some very warm and loving

descriptions of God. For example, Isaiah 49:15: “Can a woman forget her nursing

child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may

forget, yet I will not forget you.” Meanwhile, in the New Testament, we can find

even Our Lord Himself giving some very stern words of warning: “Woe to you,

scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a

single proselyte [i.e. a convert], and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him

twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” So it’s important to have a wider

reading and knowledge of what is in the Bible, and how it all fits together as a single

whole.

It’s possible also have a similar misunderstanding of God and the doctrine of the

Most Holy Trinity. The true teaching is that there is one God, who is three persons.

Not three gods. And not just one god who puts on a different hat from time to time.

One God, three persons. The Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is

God. But the Father is not the Son, and the Holy Spirit isn’t the Father or the Son

either. They are all distinct. Well, isn’t that obvious, you might ask. Well, in the

history of the Church, there were those who argued that Father, Son and Holy Spirit

were just different ways in which the one God acted, which earnt them the name of

patripassianists, with “patri” coming from the Latin word for Father, and “passi”

referring to the suffering, or Passion, of Christ on the Cross. If Father, Son and Holy

Spirit are exactly the same, then it would mean that you could say that the Father

died on the Cross. At Pentecost, did the Holy Spirit send the Son? No, the Father,

the Son and the Holy Spirit are all distinct. “For God so loved the world, that he

gave his only begotten Son”, not his only begotten Father or his only begotten Holy

Spirit. The Father sent the Son, the Son died on the Cross, and at Pentecost the

disciples received the Holy Spirit.

And linking in with what I was saying earlier about Christ being sent to complete

divine revelation, in the Old Testament we have hints of the doctrine of the Holy

Trinity, whilst in the New Testament it is made more explicit. Even as far back as

Genesis, the first book of the Bible, it says that God created the heavens and the

earth. His Spirit hovered over the face of the waters, and He spoke (that’s a

reference to His Word, the Son), and by speaking He created the heavens and the

earth. But then, when we come to St John’s Gospel, chapter one is like another

creation account, but this time more explicitly referring to the role of Father and Son

in the creation of the world. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with

God, and the Word was God. ... All things were made through him, and without him

was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1)

All this leads nicely to a bit about human dignity. In Genesis we hear that we were

made in the image and likeness of God. In the Gospel today we hear that God had

such love for us that He would stop at nothing, so that we could be in a right

relationship with Him. He would even allow His only-begotten Son to be crucified

so we could be reconciled to Him. How great is our dignity and God’s love for us!

And there’s more. God the Son became a human being, without ceasing to be fully

God. Now, following the Ascension, there is a human heart beating at the heart of

the Blessed Trinity – Christ became one of us, and now that He has ascended to

heaven, that risen and glorified humanity has not been wiped out, or deleted, or

dissolved into nothing. Christ retains His humanity, just as He retained His divinity,

His “god-ness”, when He became one of us. And He wants to transform us, to

“divinise” us, as it’s sometimes called. We won’t become gods in our own right, of

course not. But He wants His grace to transform us and raise us up to be the saints

He is calling us to be. People in the eugenics movement wanted through genetic

screening and selection to raise up a race of “supermen”, using purely natural means,

taking on the role of God, of deciding who lives and who dies, who is fit to live and

who is unworthy of life, with faulty theories of racial superiority and so on. Contrast

that with these words of Pope Benedict, said at the Mass for the beginning of his

ministry as Pope:

“Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not

some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a

thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.

There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter

with Christ.”

Yes, it’s sometimes said that God is one, true, good and beautiful. It’s when we

recognise all those together that we have an encounter with God. And in the Holy

Trinity, we encounter a God who is one, true, good and beautiful, and reveals not

only His richness of three persons, but by encountering Him, we learn who we are as

well, like a good friendship, and like a good marriage, only so much more.

Our God is a great God. And we are the product of His creation.

Curious about exploring things further?  If you would like to ask further questions about the topics raised in these homilies (or maybe think it wasn’t explained too well!), please feel free to e-mail Fr Michael at stjoseph.thame@rcaob.org.uk