Trinity, June 4, 2023
/Jesus is God’s love made visible
John 3: 16–18
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Music Meditations
- Pleni Sunt Coeli-Ola Gjeilo—Phoenix Chorale
- You Are My God—Tony Melendez (themaineman2001). Praise and Worship
- Ubi Caritas—Taize
- Holy God, We Praise thy Name—Robert E. Kreutz
Opening Prayer
From St Ignatius of Loyola:
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.”
Companions for the Journey
Barbara Brown Taylor, a scripture scholar and preacher, quotes Robert Farrar Capon, who says that when we humans try to describe God it’s like a bunch of oysters trying to describe a ballerina.
By Jude Siciliano, O.P., from “First Impressions”, 2023, a service of the Southern Dominican Province:
How can God be one and three? How can God be three and one? How can Jesus operate on his own? Who is the Holy Spirit; is it the spirit of God? The spirit of Jesus? How can one come to us, leave and then send another, as Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit after he left? Don’t be discouraged by these questions. Since the beginning the greatest saints and scholars have tried to answer questions like these, and have come up short.
We are going to be disappointed if we think the Scripture readings chosen for this feast will help us “explain” the Trinity. The feast doesn’t pose a problem to be solved; but a mystery to be celebrated -- the mystery of God’s wonderful ways of interacting with us. Those ways are more numerous than even the Bible can describe, or enumerate. But that hasn’t kept the scriptural authors from trying! We may not be able to explain the Trinity today, but we get help from the Scriptures so we can be more aware who our God is, how God relates to us and how we are to respond in our daily lives.
We earthly creatures build barricades of one kind or another. We put “those people” on one side and ourselves and those like us, on the other. We keep “them” over there and, as evidenced by the local and international news today, we will distance ourselves from them, hate and even kill them. After all, the logic concludes, they deserve to be punished because they are so bad.
If it were up to me and I had God’s power, I would wreak vengeance on all the evildoers in the world. “Enough is enough!” I would come down hard with my divine hammer of justice. Martin Luther had a similar instinct. He said if he were God and knew what God knows about the world, he would just put an end to it all and submit it to hellfire. But he wasn’t God, nor am I. On this feast of the Trinity, we need to relearn who God is and how God operates. We do that by turning a believing ear to the Word of God. Contrary to our way of thinking God acts differently from us. The Word teaches us that we are made in the image and likeness of God and so, we are called to imitate that God whom the Bible reveals to us.
Earlier in the Exodus account Moses had asked God, “Show me your glory, I pray” (33:18). God responded, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and I will proclaim before you the name, ‘the Lord’….But you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (3:19-20). God tucks Moses into the cleft of the rock and covers him until God passes by. Moses is allowed to only see God’s back (32:23). Then God speaks and it is necessary for us to hear the description of who our God is, “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” Thus, along with Moses, we hear an oft-repeated biblical description of God. Is it not also how our gospel reading describes God for us today, “God so loved the world….?” God’s love has been constant and faithful, proven by the gift of the Son for us. This is a good time to ask how does our own image of God and our actions, measure up to the revelation of God the Scriptures present to us today and throughout both the Hebrew texts and the New Testament?
In 2 Corinthians Paul encourages the community, “to mend your ways.” He instructs them to live together in love and peace. His concern is for the unity of the church community. He knows well the dissension among those Corinthians, the barricades between rich and poor, old timers and newcomers. On their own they could never reflect the peace and unity he wants for the community of believers. But grace can make it possible and so he prays, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
Our church today has the same human tensions Paul observed among the Christians in Corinth. So, as we hear his prayer, we pray it for ourselves. Who is this God Paul preachers and calls upon to bless the divided Corinthians? Paul clearly believes that our triune God loves us, freely graces us in Jesus and, through the Holy Spirit, is the source of our communion with each other.
The gospel today presents again the central message of the Bible: God loves the world. Instead of coming down on us humans for our sins, God loves us, frees us from our guilt and offers us eternal life. The opening verse (3:16) is a summary of the whole gospel message, “God so loved the world….” In a few words we come face-to-face with the mystery of who our God is and how God has acted towards us. If you can tell a tree by its fruit, then you can learn about God by what God has done for us: loved us and demonstrated that love by the concrete sign of Jesus’ life. Love is what moves God to get involved with us. And more, Jesus tells us, God wants to give us eternal life now.
Today’s gospel passage is from a conversation Jesus is having with Nicodemus. Jesus tells him that we can put faith in Jesus and what he reveals about God’s love for us -- or we can self-judge ourselves by rejecting Jesus. If we do put faith in Jesus we have eternal life. We usually think of “eternal life” as something that will begin for us at the moment of death and go on and on without end. But that’s not what eternal life is in John. Jesus says that believers can “have eternal life.” He is speaking in the present tense and is offering the gift of eternal life to us – beginning right now!
What might this gift of “eternal life” look like in our lives? First of all, it is union in the very life of God. We have that intimacy with God through our union with Christ and the Holy Spirit in Baptism. This union frees us from fear of judgment. In Jesus we can see the true nature of our God-- who already loves us. Now we are living in a new age and have passed from death to life. For John, Jesus is our saving gift in this present moment and through the Spirit, believers can recognize God’s gifts already present to us. Not on our own human efforts, but through our faith, we can have optimism, peace and gratitude to God. We can also accept the challenge faith puts before us -- to be instruments of the peace and reconciliation to others that Jesus has already given us.
Jesus did not wish to see anyone condemned. Today’s reading shows that once we acknowledge Jesus as the one who will determine our life’s orientation, then we judge ourselves by his life and teachings. In his own life he shows what faithfulness to God entails. If we reject him we bring on our own self-condemnation (“Whoever does not believe has already been condemned.”) Sent by God, Jesus unites time and eternity. In him our future is made present.
No image can capture the holiness and greatness of our God. What words can describe God? God is more present to us than we are to ourselves. God is at the very core of our being; the source of all we are and can do. The contradiction we must admit today on this feast of the Trinity is this: the closer we get to God, the more alien we feel from our world and its ways. The closer and more comfortable we feel with our world, the more distinctively alien we are from the God the Scriptures reveal to us.
Further reading:
Weekly Memorization
Taken from the gospel for today’s session…
God so loved the world…
Living the Good News
What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?
Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:
Reflection Questions
Meditations
A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:
How do you explain the sentence: "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life"?
One theory, resurrected every now and then is called Divine Retribution, which posits that God’s anger at sinful humanity could only be appeased by God becoming human and dying to assuage that anger. Otherwise, God, in his righteous sense of true justice, would keep all of us from union with himself because we, as heirs of Adam and Eve and sinful people ourselves, do not deserve salvation. Jesus purchased our salvation with His life.
Another possibility is that God “gave his only son” to show us how to live. If so, His death was a fully expected outcome of being human; in addition, his kind of death was not wholly unexpected, given what he was preaching. The death of an innocent Son of God proclaims solidarity with all those in the world who have suffered abuse, who have been wrongly accused, who have died violently in their innocence. Which theory do you prefer?
A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:
I read the following hymn from Philippians 2:5-8.
Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross
Do I see in Jesus a reflection of my own humanity? Do I seek to emulate Jesus in not desiring rank and power for myself? Am I, like Jesus, motivated by love to act as I do? What am I willing to endure for the sake of someone in my life whom I love? What am I willing to endure for the sake of God whom I love?
A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action:
This was taken from Praying with Julian of Norwich, by Gloria Durka:
I saw and understood that the high might of the Trinity is our Father, and the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our mother, and the great love of the Trinity is our Lord; all these things we have in nature and in our substantial creation. Thus in our Father, God almighty, we have our being, and in our Mother of mercy we have our reforming and restoring, in whom our parts are united and all made perfect man, and through the rewards of Grace of the Holy Spirit we are fulfilled (excerpted from Julian of Norwich, Showings pp. 293, 295)
Reflect for a time on the image of God as our Mother with wisdom and mercy, reforming and restoring us. Does this image offer you a new way of experiencing God’s love?
How have you shared your wisdom and mercy lately? Bring to mind some of the ways in which you have been a wise counselor and merciful mother to people in the last week or so.
Think about some ways in which you have increased in your own love of God. Compare your love for God with what it was when you were a child. Thank God now for this increasing in your life.
Pray for awareness of how you can help someone else think of God’s love as being like a mother’s love—someone in your family, a friend who is distressed, or someone else who is in need of love and loving.
A Meditation on the Franciscan Style/ Action:
Read 2 Corinthians 13: 11-13. Imagine God saying these things to you: Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace……How do you see yourself concretely living out these exhortations? Where do you need some extra help from the Spirit? Pick one circumstance in your life which needs to change, or one relationship which could use improvement and talk to God about ways in which you need to change. Do it.
A Meditation in the Augustinian Style/Relationship:
Think of someone you love. How often does she come to mind? Do you have a pet name for him, or do you have several? Does thinking about her make you smile? What do you do that you know makes him happy? How do you picture God (Do you pick one person of the Blessed Trinity, or do you pick all three symbolized by two men (one old, one young) and a bird? How often during the day do you think of God?? What do you call God? (Anne Lamott says she has a friend who calls God ‘Howard”, as in, “our Father Howard in heaven.) If you don’t have a pet name for God, try to think of one—it tells you something about your relationship to God. What do you think would make God happy? Do you do it? St. Peter, when asked by Jesus if he loved him, responded in the affirmative, but used the Greek word philia instead of the Greek word agape—a more self-rewarding kind of love, which prompted Jesus to tell him that love for Jesus meant feeding Jesus’ sheep—caring for others. How often does your love for God (or for only one of the Trinity) motivate you to care for others?
Poetic Reflection:
Thomas Merton, monk and poet, enters a mystical realm as he contemplates the Trinity:
For the sound of my beloved,
The voice of the sound of my Three-Beloved
(One of my Three of my One Beloved)
Comes down out of the heavenly depths
And hits my heart like thunder;
And lo! I am alive and dead
With heart held fast in the Three-Personed love.
And lo! God! My God!
Look! Look! I travel in Thy Strength
I swing in the grasp of Thy Love, They great Love’s
One strength,
I run Thy swift ways, Thy straightest rails
Until my life becomes Thy Life and sails or rides
Like an express!—from Collected Poems
Poetic Reflection:
How does this poem help us see different “persona” of God as reflected in the Trinity?
“From Narrow Places”
From narrow places
the strength of our voice
rises:our every breath
is prayer,
the great poem of need,
a constant scattering
of praise.Early
we reach to God
in the claim of our hearts,
while he,
our father,
mothers us
in his—Ed Ingebretsen, S.J.
Poetic Reflection:
Read the following poem. Do you see in this an affirmation of God’s love for us?
"Gather the People"
What return can we make
for all the Lord has done in our lives?
We bring bread, wine, our clay dishes
and our clay feet
to this altar
and we pray that we may here
make a beginning—
that somehow in our days
we can begin to see the promises
the Lord has made us.The promises do not always
glow with obvious light, or
overwhelm us by their obvious truth.
No matter what anyone says,
it is difficult to understand an invisible God
and belief is not always
the easy way out.So we gather the people
and we tell the story again
and we break the bread
and in the memory of the one
who saves us,
we eat and drink
and we pray and we believe.We gather, we pray, we eat.
These things are for human beings.
God has no need of them.
Yet he himself gathered the people,
prayed, broke bread
and gave it to his friends.And so the invisible God became
visible
and lives with us.—Ed Ingebretzen, S.J., from Psalms of the Still Country
Closing Prayer
The first sentence is from Thomas Merton.
How far I have to go to find you in whom I have already arrived!
God, You are puzzle to me in so many ways. Keep me from distracting myself with endless theological questions, and keep me from giving up on knowing you better. For you know me, with all my faults, and love me utterly. That is all I need to know.
