Trinity Sunday - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2024

I was first introduced to God as a little boy; and have continued to know God better as I have matured across life. As a little boy I was encouraged to love God; and I did — as little boys love. At school I was told that God was a mystery. That helped to quieten some of the questions that I had — and let the grown-ups I asked off the hook. I don’t remember if they also told me that a mystery may be something that we can come to know more about as we mature, yet will never exhaust all that is to be known.

We are used to mysteries. Human persons are mysteries, too. We can even be mysteries to ourselves. Human love can be a mystery that we can keep on depthing right across life.

But these mysteries are pretty insignificant when compared to the mystery of God! A bit like the arithmetic I learnt in primary school is different from quantum theory. “A bit like” is the best we can do when it comes to talking about God. But that “a bit like” can tantalise and fascinate us.

I find it intriguing when reading the Jewish Scriptures to see how the Jewish people, across those two thousand years of their history, came to develop their insights into their God, and their personal relationships towards him. God was their God, on their side, their fierce defender from all their political opponents. He became the God who cherished them, who related to their leaders, who came in time to relate also to each of them personally, with a jealous love — as a husband loves his wife. God came to be seen as a just God, but still as a God who judged, justly rewarding the good and punishing the wrong-doers. In time, they even came to see God as the God who forgave some wrong-doers, though somewhat arbitrarily. With the leadership of their prophets, some of them came to see God as one who forgave universally, who loved gratuitously — a consistently merciful God.

Nurtured by this spirituality, Mary, the Mother of Jesus, could “exult in God” whose love for her led her to see God as the one whose “mercy is from age to age, who exalts the lowly, who fills the hungry with good things, who has come to the help of Israel his servant, mindful of his mercy”.

It was this Mary who, graced by God, gave birth to her little Jewish boy Jesus, who in turn “grew in wisdom and age and grace” over the years, and eventually revealed himself as Son of God, of the God who loved not just Israel but the world — so much that he gave this only Son into hostile human hands so that everyone may have eternal life.

Israel had fulfilled its destiny, finally revealing to all the nations, to the world, the God of mercy and compassion, the God whose very essence is to forgive everyone.

Opening ourselves to the mystery of Love opens us effectively to the mystery of God. But the mystery does not stop there. The presence of Jesus in our world, a human among humans, raised the question “Who is this Jesus?”. The question was intensified in John’s Gospel when Jesus began talking of God as his Father; and further complicated when the crucified/raised from the dead Jesus showed up briefly among the terrified disciples and ate with them.

Our human language stretches to breaking point. The best we can do is to speak of “persons”, clearly aware that our words can mean no more than “a bit like”.

Yet all this is sufficient to enable us to get into deeply personal “contact” with the three “persons” in the one God — a mysterious contact, but enough to be wonderfully rewarding.