May 30, 2021 at Saint William Church in Naples, FL
Deuteronomy 4, 32-34, 39-40 + Psalm 33 + Romans 8: 14-17 + Matthew 28, 16-20
This day focused on the Trinity brings together all that we have celebrated during the Lenten and Easter season. The creative, saving, and sanctifying world of God not only frees us from the power of sin and death restoring creation to its first and original goodness, binds us together as people of faith and children of God, a church. Think of that when in our tradition we sign ourselves giving witness to our faith and remembering who we are. Let’s do it again with thought this time. We believe in a God who Creates, Saves, and Sanctifies. +.
The God revealed to us is essentially a God of relationships, discovered, experienced, and always adored within the Trinity. The whole saving wonder of Jesus Christ and his ministry was to draw us into the relationship he shares with the Father and the Spirit. It is a relationship that God intended at the beginning, and the only thing we can call it is love. It’s a love that never ceased even when the relationship was broken by self-willed human beings. As the Word of God insists, God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to reveal and Father’s will for us to be holy and blameless. By fulfilling the Father’s will so perfectly, he taught us to let God’s will replace our will. It’s all one unmistakable act of love that finds its perfect fulfillment through their Spirit which they have sent into us. The result is that all of our relationships in love become reflections of that unique and dynamic communion that exists within God. The love of husband and wife, the love of parents for their children: it’s all a reflection of how God loves.
When near the end of John’s Gospel Jesus speaks and prays about his relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, he says that God will take from what is mine and declare it ours, and then, “everything that the Father has is mine” which he gives on to us. You see, there is no yours and mine in God. It is only “ours”. There is no possessiveness.
In the end, my friends, it must be the same with us. This day we hear an invitation to continue moving beyond ourselves. This day we hear an invitation to surrender our will and to embrace a life style that see and knows that we share all good things in Christ. Most human suffering comes from broken relationships. Anger, jealousy, resentment, and feelings of rejection find their source in conflict between people who long for unity, community and a deep sense of belonging. Claiming the Holy Trinity as our home and our destiny, we claim the truth that God gives us what we most desire, grace to forgive each other for not being perfect in love.
It always seems to me that the Trinity is a love story of selfless, outpouring love that holds nothing back, that never says “that’s mine”, but day and day out draws us out of ourselves and roots us deeply in the divine heart that waits with patient love for us to come home empty handed having surrendered everything that keeps us apart from one another.