Breaking Open the Word - Trinity Sunday, Year C
Trinity Sunday, Year C - June 12th, 2022
This Sunday was the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity – the central mystery of our faith. As one Sister noted, the antiphons in the Divine Office for this feast seem to be the Church Militant’s “practice” for Heaven – by seeing how many variations of the “Glory Be” she can possibly imagine! Indeed, it is our greatest hope to one day join the Church Triumphant, which has yet to (and never will!) exhaust this fathomless theme.
At Baptism, God grants each of us a share in His Divine Nature!
At the beginning of our Scripture sharing, a Sister commented on how mind-blowing it is to realize that the whole point of the Christian life is not merely seeing God in Heaven, but sharing in His very life and activity! St. Peter writes in his first epistle that we are “partakers in the divine nature,” and St. Paul repeatedly asserts that all those who are baptized are filled with the very Spirit of God. How would it change our approach to evangelization and catechesis if we fully grasped the implications of this awe-inspiring truth?
The Second Reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans caught the attention of several Sisters. One brought out the emphasis on hope. While we in common parlance tend to treat this word rather casually (“Well, I hope it’ll happen, but who knows”), the true theological virtue of hope is a far more solid and certain reality. It is a confident waiting for fulfillment, secure in the knowledge that Christ will always keep His promises. For this reason, as St. Paul asserts, “hope cannot disappoint.” In fact, through the gift of the Spirit, we have already begun to experience this fulfilment. The Kingdom of God is already among us, working miracles of grace on a daily basis. The great Saints insist that the reconciliation of one sinner with the Lord is a greater act of Divine power than the creation of the whole universe – what then of the countless large and small reconciliations that His grace works every day through the Church?
Another Sister was drawn by the reference to “the love of God poured out into our hearts.” So often we long to love God more, to give ourselves to Him more generously, only to be frustrated by our own weakness and inability to love and give as fully as we desire. Yet there is no need to become discouraged by this experience of our own poverty. The fact is, as mere creatures we will never be able to give God the love He deserves – but He gives us the desire to do what is beyond our power, so that we will turn to Him and receive the power to do so! The Holy Spirit, the Person-Love of the Holy Trinity, is eager to fill our hearts and “pour out” His own Self so that we may love God with His own love. What an awesome reality!
Finally, we discussed the exquisitely poetic First Reading from Proverbs. The theme of “delight” brings out a beautiful connection between the inner life of the Trinity and Their interactions with humanity. Wisdom/the Word/the Son “was [God’s] delight” from all eternity – but in time He shared this joy with us: “and My delight was in the human race.” In fact, as St. John of the Cross highlights in his Romances, humanity is the Father’s gift to the Son, the bride He prepared to delight the One in Whom He delights! Several Sisters also shared their thoughts on the way Wisdom is portrayed as “playing before Him.” How often do we think of God as playful? But even a quick glance at the abundance and variety of the created world bears out this observation – who but God would have thought of the duck-billed platypus?? On a deeper level, this Divine “playfulness” is on full display in “the absurdity of the preaching of the Gospel,” the “folly of the Cross,” in which God triumphed with the most unlikely means and defeated the Devil with his own weapons. May each of us share the joy and delight of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in this glorious drama of our Redemption!