This past week we returned to Ordinary Time. However, the mood reverted quickly this weekend with the solemnity of the Holy Trinity and reappears next Sunday with the celebration of Corpus Christi – the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.
The Gospel just proclaimed comes near the end of Jesus’ discourse at the Last Supper and is an example of the implicit teaching on the Trinity. Jesus tells his disciples that the Spirit will declare what the Spirit hears from Jesus. Elsewhere Jesus says, “The Father and I are one.” If Jesus and the Father are one and the Spirit speaks what Jesus says, it follows that the three must be one. Further evidence found in Scripture regarding the doctrine of the Trinity is found in the other readings for the feast. But, if one expects today’s readings to give a clear presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity – they will be disappointed.
Remember the old saying “Two is company, three’s a crowd?” The Trinity shows us that three is community, three is love at its best; three is not a crowd. When Love becomes complete is Trinity. Each one of us becomes fully human only when we are in relationship with God and in relationship with others. I am truly Christian insofar as I live in a relationship of love with God and other people.
The important question for us today is: What does this doctrine of the Trinity tell us about the kind of God we worship and what does this say about the kind of people we should be? With our three-fold vows, we are reminded of our commitment to a balance of prayer, labor and leisure. We pray many times a day, in various ways, the familiar words of one of the first prayers many of us learned: the “Glory Be” in honor of, and thanksgiving for, the revelation of the Trinity: Glory be to the Father…..
~by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB
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