Homily C Trinity Sunday 250615

This being Trinity Sunday, we are paying homage to God Our Father, the Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, the three persons who in their dynamic tension are the very life of God. Most Sundays we pray the Nicene Creed to profess our belief in the three persons who are the life of God. This year is the One Thousand and twenty-fifth anniversary of the Council of Nicaea where our text was formulated. A priest by the name of Arius had denied the divine nature of Jesus and the Holy Sprit. The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea brought to gather the great theological minds and the hierarchy to respond to the heresy know as Arianism.

Our Liturgical texts this morning offer us something of a mediation to examine the mystery of God-s life which is the mystery of our life.  

The word picture of creation from Proverbs is very beautiful in its playfulness, in its relationship, in its development. It calls to mind the pictures that modern technology is able to bring us from outer space that allow us to see the birth of stars that I find overwhelming and even frightening. To see creation as this great mass of energy in turmoil and to think of a creator God and creation still happening. One can feel overcome and insignificant. Still the revelation of Proverbs which is something of the same genera as the news pictures are in some way personal and relational that is very attractive and even soothing – imagine playing in front of God while creation happens.

The Gospel in some sense continues this playful figure or at least creative figure. The new creation of Jesus is not complete with his mission. There is a whole other dimension still to come. That is the Spirit who will actively guide us to all truth. And the truth he will give us is not a subjective reality but the completion of the revelation that Jesus gave. That revelation is about the Father, the life giver. The Spirit is making all of us not just a passive part of creation but involved in the very act of creation.

A common element in the Gospel text and in the words from Proverbs is relationship. The Spirit whom Jesus sends is in relation to Jesus. The Spirit is in relation to us to whom the Spirit is sent. And all are related to the Father. The whole of the life of God is relationship. Persons by definition come into being through another and require others to exist as persons. Who we are, who God is, can only be known in relationship which is always ongoing, always creative, always new. Human persons are made for loving communion with others. Because God is not solitary or self-sufficient, but lives eternally in ecstatic, out-going love, human persons created in the image of this God find their personhood not in isolation but in self-donation; we come to be ourselves through others.

Basic to the life prayer of a monk is this awareness of relationship. The communication, the conversation between the human and the spirit of God is a relationship that is constructive of the person’s true identity. To complete the prayer life there is the additional dimension which highlights the communal, social and public character of all prayer. Prayer disposes us and enables us to participate in the contemplative dimension of everyday living, and to recognize the action of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us every moment. Life in Christ is an expression of the praise and thanks given to God by all the baptized. Prayer is to be understood not only as conversation and communication in dialogue but as ongoing participation in the communion of persons which is the providence of God for all humanity.

Our reading from Romans reminds us of this aspect of life, our afflictions, the world’s afflictions are all apart of the growing pains of the new life in the Spirit. Endurance and hope are an expression of the life of the Spirit which is in us and is the New Creation; it is the completion of Jesus Mission to reveal the Father, the one life we all share.

The Eucharist that we share is Jesus, is our life. He is our life because he gave his life for us and to us so that we can share the life of Jesus with others by giving ourselves and so live the very life of God, the Trinity, I our daily lives.