+AGREE WITH ONE ANOTHER 31st May, 2026
This solemnity of the most holy Trinity runs through the whole of our Christian lives, my brothers and sisters. It is like the air we breathe, like the footsteps that carry us through life. We just began the celebration of this Eucharist in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Most of us were hardly born from our mother’s womb when we were baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This mystery, while it remains just that, is woven into the whole of our lives.
Most of us blessed ourselves with holy water as we entered this church this morning, an action we do routinely but it is a reminder of how the three Divine Persons embrace us all day long. As we heard in our first reading from Exodus: “The Lord, the Lord [is] a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” We have a God who is lovingly watching over us all day long, seeking to fill our minds and hearts with an abiding love that will touch the hearts of all those with whom we work or live all day long.
How deeply woven this trinitarian mystery us our lives was brought home early on in my monastic life by William of St Thierry, one of our early Cistercian fathers. He knew that all of us have been made in the image and likeness of God, a potential that enables us to mature throughout our lives as we respond to the many graces coming our way each day. He saw how our very memory, intellect and will, reflect the very life of the Trinity, so that as often as we use them in keeping with our faith, we are fulfilling God’s very own trinitarian life. Our memories reflect God our Father, our intellects reflect God’s beloved Son Jesus, and our wills responding to grace, glow with the life of the Holy Spirit.
We have been taught from our earliest years that our lives are to conform to that of Christ. Whenever we remember this calling and respond to it, Christ’s presence fills our lives, grounding them in his own truth and wisdom. And as we carry out with love the truth with which we have been blessed, the Holy Spirit takes hold of our lives. This is not our own doing but the gift of God, a sharing in God’s very own trinitarian life.
Today we are hearing a lot about the synodal nature of the Church, how we are all being called to share with one another a wide variety of gifts we have all received as members of the whole Body of Christ. As we heard from St Paul: “encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you.” This what it means to by a synodal Church, a Church that reflects the very inner life of the Holy Trinity.
As our gospel has reminded us: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” What does this saving of the world mean but that of its being made to share in God’s own life, made to find delight in the very relational experience of the three Divine Persons.
We have all gathered around this Altar this morning where Christ’s ultimate response to the Father’s love and that of the Father towards him takes place. There is no greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one another. Here it is that a little bread and wine become the very Body and Blood of Christ who gave us his life out of love. There is nothing the Holy Trinity desires so much as to share their own divine life and draw us into their own eternal embrace that will never end.
Exod 34:4b-6,8-9; 2 Cor 13:11-13; John3:16-18