The Most Holy Trinity (A); June 4, 2023

Ex 34:4-9.  Dn 3   2 Cor 13:11-13.  Jn 3:16-18

Deacon Jim McFadden

         Our country has had deal with political polarization from the date of our birth as a nation, but as seemed to become more problematic in recent years as politics has become a blood sport.  Our democracy weakens when citizens no longer treat each other with basic respect and refuse to accept that we really belong together.  As people of faith, we wonder can we hold our country together?  This concern reminds me of W.B. Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming:

           “Turning and turning in widening the widening gyre

            the falcon cannot hear the falcon;

            things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

            mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

            the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

            the ceremony of innocence is drowned;

            the best lack all conviction, while the worst

            are full of passionate intensity.”

     “The center cannot hold.”  Is that true; is that our fate?  As Christians, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we have to look at the model of the Trinity, which we are celebrating today, to know that the center can hold together only if we make God the  Ultimate Center.  We believe in a Communitarian God, The Most Holy Trinity, which reveals to us Who God is.   The nature of God offers us a way to regain our equilibrium, to align ourselves with the Ultimate Reality, and to foster relationships with each other.  Since we are made in the image of God, who is a family of three Persons sharing one divine nature, we are meant to live together in solidarity with one another.  That’s not an option, but is grounded in who God is and who we are.  Polarization flies in the face of what ought to be!  That’s the reality and if we don’t live out of that communitarian, Trinitarian reality, the center cannot possible hold and we will perish.  We either live and participate in God’s being, which is Love, which means we foster just relationships based or we exile ourselves  in to the chora macra, described in the Prodigal Son parable as the big emptiness, empty of Life, of Love, of Being—another expression for Hell.

            God is Love—that’s not an attribute of God but is God’s very nature.  The core of our faith is that there are three distinct persons (not individuals) who share equally, mutually, and inter-dependently in the one divine nature.  To say that God is Triune is to say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in communion with one another.  Unlike an individual who is autonomous, a person moves towards and is for the other, and that is what God does by his very nature.  God is by nature self-giving and made in God’s image, we are most human when we do the same.

            Trinitarian language helps us to understand God.  The Father is the origin of Love; as such he is the Giver or Lover.  The Son is the Given or the Beloved which we hear at Jesus’ baptism and Transfiguration.  And, the Holy Spirit is the Giving or Loving between the Father and the Son. 

            The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct in the way they act towards each other and the unique functions they have: the Father is the Creator, the Son is the Redeemer, the Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier.  At the same time, they are One-with-each-other because they participate in the same gifting nature.

            Trinitarian language is not just about the Ultimate Reality, but is the model by which Christians should become and by extension how society should operate.   Since God is a relational, communitarian Being, we who are imago Dei are also at our very core relational beings.  Since God is Giver, Given, and Giving, we are going to be authentically human, when we do the same, which means our society should be based upon principles of solidarity and justice.

            Brothers and sisters, the shared life of giving and receiving is played out in the political, economic, and social sectors of our society.  Anything short of that which promotes systemic and institutional injustice must be resisted because our center cannot possibly hold together without God.  Hence, as Catholics we need to forge a cooperative community by living God’s existence by recognizing that we are radically equal;  that we have to have a mutual regard for one another with our unique gifts, talents, and personal histories; that we are all in this together—everything is inter-connected in which the Lord draws all things unto himself.  John Donne was right: “No man is an island.”

            When we live with God as our Center, then the center of or society can hold.  Grounding our hearts in the Triune God, we will live as God operates: we pour ourselves, our life, into others.  In so doing, we don’t seek advantage or dominance, but we help to build solidarity grounded in God.   As Catholics, when we say, “we’re all in this together,” we know what that means because it speaks of God and the nature of the Church.  With God as our center, we can strive to guarantee that the American experience of republican democracy will endure because it is a good worth preserving.  Amen.