The word “father” or “dad” evokes various images and traits. I think of qualities my father possessed in abundance (qualities all good fathers possess):
Love (he truly cared for us),
commitment (he stuck by us),
communication (he was ready to listen and give his advice),
spirituality (we went to church together whenever we could),
and above all, we spent time together.
And so let's salute fathers this weekend, and I invite all fathers to please stand for our GRATEFUL applause.
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, the feast of the triune God, the fundamental and distinctive truth of Christianity. We begin every liturgy “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” and are sent forth at the end with the blessing of the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
Now when we hear the word “God,” what do we immediately think of?
The Bible, our privileged book of faith, gives us many splendid images of God. The Hebrew scriptures speak of God as a walking companion, a God as tender as a mother. “Can a mother forget her child? And even if she should … I will never forget you.” These scriptures also speak of a God who wants to share his wisdom with us, in many ways. In the New Testament, the images of God in the parables of the good shepherd and the prodigal son are balanced with the parable of the last judgment.
The point is this: there are many splendid images, but all these cannot capture fully the inexhaustible reality of God.
The nineteenth-century American author Henry David Thoreau wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Now this may ring true for some people. Are folks so often caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily life that they easily forget the ultimate purpose of life?
No human relationship can completely satisfy us. St. Augustine wrote in his autobiographical Confessions, “Thou hast made us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You.” Yes, we were born to live in relationship with God -- the triune God—and that’s what today’s feast highlights: that relationship.
So, what does the word of God say to us today? That word takes us back to the wisdom literature of ancient Israel, the book of Proverbs. The author here personifies wisdom as a woman, as creative energy, as a playful companion of God who witnesses the mighty acts of God in this multi universe of ours.
The early Christians saw Jesus in this wisdom image, God’s Word made flesh among us. We might pray for the wisdom to know what truly matters in life, to distinguish the important from the unimportant.
Paul, in his letter to the Christian community at Rome, waxes eloquently about the saving work of Jesus Christ. Through him we have a right relationship with God, and the essence of that relationship is in the practice of the virtues of faith, hope and love: faith or trust in God, hope or anticipation of something yet to come, and love or giving until there is nothing left to give. We might ask that God will strengthen our relationship with right faith, firm hope and perfect love.
In the Gospel according to John, Jesus in his farewell alludes to the mystery of the triune God: The Spirit that comes through Jesus and the Father will guide our global Catholic community of disciples into all truth. We pray the Spirit of truth will guide us in our daily lives.
The mystery of the triune God (a God who is one yet distinctive in modalities or “persons” --Father, Son, and Spirit; a God in whom none is the “other”; a God who is love) invites us to reflect upon our own relationship with God and one another. I like to think most people do have a relationship with God, perhaps more subconscious than conscious. Why? Because we are forever trying to make better sense out of our lives, trying to find answers, especially in moments of crisis—for example, the death of a family member or close friend, a broken marriage, the loss of a job, a life-threatening illness, misunderstandings, and so forth.
In moments such as those, people often ask the most fundamental questions of human life. What is the purpose of my life? Where is my life going? These are religious questions, questions we cannot help but try to answer.
As we go through the cycle of our own human development, we are forever trying to better integrate our lives or get our act together, so to speak. When we are young, we have so many hopes and dreams. The world is our oyster, so to speak. As we move through the middle years, we may not be as dreamy eyed. We want to live for something greater than ourselves, something that gives ultimate meaning.
But at times, we begin to wonder. We accomplished so little, and now it is almost over. What was it all about? Life seems to be marred by too many tragedies: violence, international threats, natural disasters.
But then again at other moments, we have experiences that lift us up out of our routine—moments that make us wonder. A starry sky, the joy of friendship, the golden rays of a sunset, the accomplishment of a goal. Such experiences can take us out of ourselves and into the presence of an awesome power. We begin to experience the transcendent dimension of our own lives. Yes, we say, there must be a purposeful and gracious God who is responsible for this magnificent universe and for creating our very lives.
Catholic Christianity says that there is indeed a gracious God who can heal the brokenness of human life. Yes, this God became flesh in Jesus and is alive among us by the power of the Spirit. That is the mystery of the triune God, a God who is one in three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit.
This triune God, the model of self-giving love, empowers us to reach out in love to one another with compassion, forgiveness, a smile, a kind word, a helping hand. And in reaching out to one another in love, we become like the triune God in their self-giving love.
And so let us pray on this feast, to quote the musical Godspell, for the grace to see the triune God more clearly, love this God more dearly and follow this God more nearly in our daily lives. Amen.
