Trinity Sunday - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2022

I find today’s First Reading from the ancient Hebrew book of Proverbs a beautiful though brief reflection on the mystery of God. The Book is quite ancient, composed four or five centuries before the Word of God, the Christ, became human in Jesus. In today’s poem, the Christ is personified as Wisdom, existing “from the beginning, before earth came into being… when God fixed the heavens firm”. More than that, Wisdom declared of itself, “I was by God’s side, a master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence, at play everywhere in God’s world, delighting to be with [human persons]”.

This was written centuries before St John’s Gospel, in its introduction, said of the Word, or the Christ, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him”. More academic than Proverbs — but not as poetic.

The First Vatican Council, dating back to the year 1870, assured us that we can know God and talk about God, but it immediately qualified that claim by stating that our language is essentially
metaphorical. More technically, it said that our language about God is at best analogical. Analogy means that our ideas and words about God mean something essentially different, but can make sense up to a point.

When we say that “God is love”, we do not know what God’s love is like. We can be familiar with human love and know what it means — up to a point, depending on our maturity. But when we apply the word “love” to God, we need to remove all love’s human limitations and multiply what is left by infinity — by which stage we barely know what we are talking about. At least, our language can be better than mere metaphor. With an analogy, the opposite of what we claim is not true. To say “God is not love” is simply wrong. And even though we accept that human language is hopelessly inadequate to define God accurately, it is enough to enable us to be “ever at play in God’s presence”. Our words are like a finger pointing at the amazing universe stretched out beyond the moon that we can see. It still remains mystery.

There are so any things we experience in our world that point to mystery beyond. Our perceptions always fall short; they are invariably imperfect. Our capacity to receive and to give love, for example, never totally quench our thirst or our hopes. It is so important to notice and to cultivate those consistent experiences of longing for more, not to make us dissatisfied or discontent, but to spur our reaching out and our quiet hope for that “more”, the unseen, silent Mystery — that people like ourselves for centuries before us have called “God.”

We are immensely blessed that Jesus briefly came among us. John’s Gospel so beautifully declared, “The Word of God became flesh, and dwelt among us”. St Paul wrote of that same Word [which he referred to as “the Christ”] as “…the image of the unseen God, the firstborn of all creation”. Better than words and ideas, Jesus revealed the essence of God by who he was, by what he did. His love, his mercy, his thirst for justice speak more eloquently than words. And though he “dwelt among us” for that brief time only of about thirty years, so long ago, he departed from us to take his place “at God’s right hand” [as Luke colourfully phrased it]. Once there, his first formal task was to send his Spirit to us, the “Spirit of truth” [that we heard about in today’s Gospel], to “lead us to the complete truth” and to “tell us of the things to come”…

… and, as the Book of Proverbs might have added, “to deepen our delight as we play together with the Spirit of God delighting to be present here among us”.