Gospel Reflection for Sunday May 26th 2024 – Trinity Sunday

By Fr Brian Maher OMI

Gospel Reflection for Sunday May 26th 2024 | Trinity Sunday, Matthew 28:16-20

Most people are turned off by the very mention of ‘the Trinity’. They scream “mystery” and decry anyone who talks about the Trinity as filled with pride and too arrogant to accept the fact that we can never know God and must simply have faith.

There is a truth in this reasoning, and there is also a problem with it. On the one hand, we can read libraries of books on the Blessed Trinity – one God, three distinct persons – and we can analyse forever the meaning of the word ‘person’ when applied to God, or the various relationships there can be between three persons, or how one eternal/timeless/spaceless being can ever ‘act’ in finite time and space in any meaningful way, and at the end of our analysis we will not be one jot closer to understanding the nature of God or the Trinity.

On the other hand, not to take the time to genuinely reflect on the Trinity seems to me to pointedly insult God. Our faith is entirely based on the premise that it was God who chose to reveal ‘him’self to us; it was God who spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai and made a covenant with him; it was God who chose to enter into our time/space in the person of Jesus; it was God who sent his Holy Spirit to us at Pentecost, to be with us always, to the end of time. Therefore, not to reflect on God as Trinity seems to me to actually deny our faith and to throw God’s invitation to share in ‘his’ life back in ‘his’ face.

Our intelligence is God’s gift. Our questioning is God’s gift. Even our doubts are God’s gifts to us. Using these gifts in the ways God intended us to use them does not undermine or deny faith, but enhances it and makes it stronger.

Personally, I like the definition of ‘mystery’ as not something we can’t understand, but something which has infinite understandings. In other words, ever time we return to think about it we will find new understandings and questions.  

To the question, why bother thinking about the Trinity, or any other mystery of our faith that we can never fully understand, (Incarnation, Eucharist, Resurrection, Pentecost, the Immaculate Conception, etc.) I answer simply, because we have been invited to think about them by the wonderful God who created us.

Think about ‘prayer’, for instance. Prayer is a very real mystery of our faith. The mere idea that the Creator of all that exists would want to talk directly to us is unthinkable. The idea that the Creator of all that exists would want to listen to us is even more far-fetched. Most mind-boggling of all is the idea that God, the Creator of all that exists, might want to talk and listen to just ‘ME’. Yet, we believe it is true.

God does not need my prayer – God does not need anything! My prayer does not, and cannot, influence or affect God in any way – to think otherwise really would be arrogance!

In the last minutes of an important game when my team is a goal down, it might be good and comforting for me to pray that they will score and win, but to think that my prayer influences God to allow them score, or not score, is madness. Just imagine if this were true: All we would be need are two packed Churches, each praying fervently for their team to win. The game starts and the team with the strongest prayer scores and wins. Game over in one minute!

We may not think of it as a mystery of faith, but every time I ‘say’ a prayer, read scripture or close my eyes in meditation I am entering into a very real ‘mystery’ of faith. I am talking to God – unbelievable – and I believe God hears me – even more unbelievable – because, let’s face it, if you believe you are just talking to yourself, you really ought see a doctor!

This mystery or ‘prayer’ was one St. Teresa of Avila thought about. She spent long hours, days, weeks talking and listening to God in prayer, so it made perfect sense that she would want to understand what she was doing. Her conclusion was “not that we MUST pray or SHOULD pray.” What was remarkable for her “…was that we CAN pray, because God, through Jesus, has made it possible for us to enter into intimacy with God.”

For St. Teresa, God does not need our prayer, nor does God demand that we must pray, or should pray. The miracle is that ‘prayer’ itself is a gift from God. We pray because we CAN pray; because God has made it possible for us to do so; because, as Jesus tells us, “I no longer call you servants, I call you friends….”

Our first words to God every time we pray should be, “…Thanks for allowing me to talk and listen to you, who made everything that exists, yet who wants to talk and listen to little old ME!”

Every time I come back to think about it the awesomeness of it, the sheer wonder of it, overwhelms me. This is what makes it a mystery. Every time I think about it something new and wonderful about the gift of ‘prayer’ opens to me. If I really understood it, I think I would want to do nothing else other than pray, simply because I CAN pray.

Each Sunday, after each reading from Scripture the person reading says, “This is the word of the Lord.” and we answer, “Thanks be to God.”

The Bible is God’s revealed word to us. The Bible is God talking to us, telling us about ‘him’self and inviting us to do the same. Listening to the readings (when we do actively listen to them!) is Prayer.

Why do we say, “Thanks be to God” at the end of the reading? Because God talks to us only because ‘he’ wants to do so. We hear God speaking to us only because God makes it possible for us to do so. We pray simply because we CAN pray. The only appropriate response is, “Thanks be to God.”

Imagine, every Sunday over so many years when we answered, “Thanks be to God”, whether we were aware of it or not, and probably must times we were not aware of it, we were in fact praying.

When St. Paul talked about the ‘Holy Spirit’ living within each of us, he said that “when we cannot pray ourselves, the Spirit prays on our behalf…” Every time we answered, “Thanks be to God” without thinking about it, the Holy Spirit living within us, prayed it to God on our behalf. Isn’t that soooooo wonderful?

But, of course, the Holy Spirit living within us is another mystery to ponder. Once we find ourselves open to reflecting upon mysteries that we will never fully understand, and happy to do so because it is what God wants us to do, then we need never be bored with faith and religion again. There are so many mysteries of our faith; so many opportunities for us come to know the God who reveals ‘him’self to us.

Without doubt the greatest mystery of all is the nature of God ‘him’self. God has revealed ‘him’self to us as ‘One God, in three distinct Persons.’ God has also revealed ‘him’self to us as ‘LOVE’. We don’t say “God loves…..”, like God is ‘doing’ something. No! God IS love. There is nothing in God except love. God doesn’t ‘do’ anything because God IS Love. Anybody who tells you they understand this is lying to you, but anyone who tells you they understand bits of it, and know they will understand more bits each time they reflect on it, is telling you the truth.

For example: God IS love. That I cannot understand…But, in my own fragile, human way I can love and I know what love feels like. Most of us have experienced the love of parents or grandparents, of brothers and sisters and family. Most of us have experienced the love of true friendship. Many of us have experienced the love of a husband, wife or partner. So we can say that we know something of what Love is. Therefore I can know something of who God is.

For example. Do those who love one another forgive? Yes. So in God there is forgiveness – forgiveness far greater than I can ever understand but it is there.

Do those who love one another hate or seek revenge or purposely cause hurt to each other? No! Therefore I can understand that these are not in God. And we can go on and say the same about all the emotions and qualities of love that exist in a loving relationship.

Does this mean that we will ever understand who God is….Never! all we will do is, as St Paul tells us, “…see now dimly as in a mirror…but later face to face.

Love itself is a mystery. Even those deeply ‘in love’ or people who have been ‘in love’ for fifty and more years will say that they don’t understand it, cannot express it in words, yet know it is real.

When we look at Rublev’s icon of ‘The Trinity’ – the three identical persons, sitting around a low table, quietly and serenely gazing at each other – we are looking at a representation of God…of Love.

Gazing at it in prayer and thinking about our own experiences of love, we may be able to understand just a fraction, a hint, of what the three persons are communicating to one another in their gazes. The words I use to express what I see there – peace, gentleness, serenity, understanding, compassion, etc……will not ever describe God, but they will allow ME, in a human way, to understand what God has chosen to share with me. It is God who revealed ‘him’self as Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and it is God who revealed ‘him’self as Love. Therefore it is God who wants us to approach ‘him’, using our experience of human love to learn about God’s eternal Love.

Let me finish with a very childish understanding of the Trinity. I say ‘childish’ because it has been with me since I was a child.

Loneliness is maybe the most awful experience we can have. To be alone, isolated, with no one to talk to, no one to listen to us, no one who cares for us, must be unbelievably awful.

As a child in school, I remember being shown all the usual images of God as an old man on a throne, surrounded by angels, looking stern and commanding, and I well remember feeling only sorry for him. He just looked so alone and lonely. There was never anyone in the images with whom he could talk when he came off his throne. There was no one like him there, and I felt so sad about that, without ever being fully sure why.

Then, later, probably in my mid-teens, when I came across Rublev’s icon of the Trinity, and I saw the three identical and equal figures gazing at one another I realised for the first time what I had missed as a child.

Yes, in school I learned that God was Father, Son and Spirit, yet, in all of the pictures I saw there, only God as ONE being was shown. The Three Persons were missing.

Yes, I know it is childish, but when I look at the Rublev’s beautiful icon, I say to myself, “God is not lonely on his throne in Heaven. He is never, ever lonely because there are three equal persons there too.”

And still in a childish way, I no longer feel sorry for God, just thankful that he’s not lonely!

We will never understand God or Trinity or any of the other mysteries of our faith but each one of us, in our own childish, weak, dim way can come to know what God wants us to know.

For me, the realisation that God was never lonely because there were three persons in God, was such a warm feeling. I didn’t fully understand it but I just knew that God was OK, he was not alone, and I didn’t have to feel sorry for him.

We can all come to understand something of the Love that is God in the Trinity. Mine always comes back to, “He’s not lonely!”

What is your understanding of Trinity?

Many thanks,

Brian.

If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email me at b.maher@oblates.ie

Go and make disciples of all nations