The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity C May 30, 2010

 Proverbs 8:22-31 Psalm: 8 Romans 5:1-5 John 16:12-15

If we try to take the first reading literally, we will in all sorts of problems. It is a poem, it points to many thing we can relate to – and that will be coloured by our own personal experience.

Wisdom is not God, because she was created and yet she was with God from even before creation. Wisdom is a gift God shares with us.  Is Wisdom – the Word made flesh that dwelt among us? Or is Wisdom the gift of the Holy Spirit that enlightens and leads us from darkness of ignorance into light, that leads us from fear into courage. Wisdom is all this and then some.

Speaking about the Trinity makes us utter clichés like:

It is not a mathematical problem

It is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

So the issue is how to are we to live the mystery which we believe and which we pray before and after  everything we do.  Fr. Bernard Longeran, a Canadian philosopher has written a book of 1000 pages on the Trinity. As you go from page to page, it is lucid and understandable; but if you stop and try to explain what he says in your own words, it is impossible.

It is difficult to pray to the “Trinity”. I can relate to the Father who with Wisdom at the side, formed the skies, the land and the sea and all that these contain. It is a God I can call  “Abba-Father” – even though, as Paul says, I need the inspiration and power of the Holy Spirit.  We have all the signs of the Trinity for our readings from Wisdom and Paul’s letter to the Romans. We have

The Father who creates

The Son who saves through his suffering and patient endurance

The Spirit who enflames our hearts and enlivens our being.

All this leads us to the Eucharist, which we are celebrating. It is our response to God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. At this Eucharist, the priest stands while the people kneel. These are two postures, which are out of sync. Yet, together we offer our joys and sorrows but it is the cross first before the resurrection. As a community, which reflects the unity of the three persons in one God, we minister to the pain, loss poverty and suffering of a downtown parish. Here we have many single people, the traditional stable family and single parent families. Many of these work two jobs just to keep above the poverty level or sometimes just to give our children the good things we see other children having.  This is reflected in our second reading, God is the One who saves. But the salvation comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Finally, it is through the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts that we come to know and experience this salvation, this redemption.

As the Eucharist is celebrated, the priest and community offer the bread and wine, and thus encounter God face to face,  just as Moses did 1000 of years ago. The people in the Exodus experience, complained, begged and asked for forgiveness just as we do today. They chose a leader, a spokesperson, a presider. Moses brought their prayers and pleaded before God. We ask the priest to do that for us, but we must be in union with the priest in this act of worship, prayer and praise.

As the priest  offers the bread and wine, he feels the frustration of the Apostles when faced with 5000 people to feed. Jesus says to them, “You give them something to eat.” That is the mystery of a God who quite content and self sufficient, loves the world so much that God decides to be with us in flesh. Knowing the need for men and women to be fed, Jesus in his love will care for them. But we can see the frustration of those who decide to glory in the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

What do you say to  parents who feel ashamed that their son says he is gay?

What do you say to a mother of a still born baby?

What do you say to a man, whose wife has left him with his own best friend?

What do you say to a teenager who yells at his parents: “You do not understand!”?

Then the Wisdom who was there with God at the beginning of creation is here and now in our midst, delighting in our human fraility. The Word made flesh invites us to be one with him as he and the Father are one. We have hope because Jesus promises not to leave us alone, but he will send us that Advocate who will declare to us all the things that are to come.

We live out in this way, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Then the “Glory to God in the highest” is not merely a prayer after the Kyrie Eleison and the Opening Prayer, but a song that leaps from the core of the human heart.