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The Most Holy Trinity

Jan 30 2025

An Enthusiasm for the Divine

To be enthusiastic literally means to be “in God” (from the Greek: en + theos).  A true enthusiast can make you either want to run away or come closer. Listen to  the enthusiasm in today’s readings. 

Moses is bursting with enthusiasm for what the Lord God has done for this  once enslaved community. Hear the feeling in his words: “Did anything so great  ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? Did a people ever hear the voice of  God . . . did any god venture to go and make a nation for himself?” And he wants  to pull them into his enthusiasm: “That is why you must now know and fix in your  heart, that the Lord is God . . . You must keep his statutes . . . ” 

And we hear it in Paul’s words about the Spirit: “Those led by the Spirit are  [children] of God . . . [and] you received a Spirit of adoption, through whom we  cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ ” We are children of God and heirs with Christ—if we are willing to suffer with him, so as to be glorified with him. Enter his wonder at what  God’s gift of the Spirit means for us. 

The risen Christ reunites in Galilee with his disciples on a mountain, just as he  did early in Matthew’s Gospel when he preached the Sermon on the Mount. His  work completed, ours begins. Catch the excitement in his words: “All power in  heaven and earth has been given to me.” Then, he urges: “Go, make disciples . . .  baptizing them . . . teaching them . . . and [know] I am with you always.” 

Consider/Discuss

  • When have you felt an enthusiasm that lifted you out of yourself, out  of feeling blah or “down”? 
  • Can this mystery of God as Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit enter  more deeply into your life and affect your attitude as you begin the  day, be with you as you go through it, and be part of your thoughts  before sleep? 

Responding to the Word

God who is Father and Son and Spirit, draw me closer into the mystery of your  abiding presence in the world and in my life. Help me know the love that has  been with me from the first moment of my life, and will remain until I reach my  final destiny in you.

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Jan 30 2025

Scripture Study for

Moses admonishes the people to commit themselves to the Lord. He does this  by pointing out to them the singular majesty of the God who has taken such a personal interest in their welfare. He reminds them that God chose them out of all the  nations and delivered them through numerous signs and wonders, a reference to  the Exodus and Sinai events. The monotheism that Moses advocated comes from  human experience; since there never had been a god who was able to perform the  wonders performed by the God of Israel, there could be no other god. 

Paul very clearly states that those who are children of God are so not because  they obey the law but because they are led (compelled or constrained) by the  Spirit. Furthermore, we can say that it is with and through Christ that we become  children of God. If Jesus can call God Abba, then we who are joined to him can as  well. Finally, as children of God, we are heirs to the inheritance to which Jesus  is heir, namely, the glory of God in the coming reign of God. Once again it is our  union with Jesus that entitles us to privileges. 

The great missionary commission received by Jesus’ disciples before his  ascension is straightforward and all-encompassing. They are told to make other  disciples of all nations. All social or cultural boundaries are dissolved; ethnic and  gender restrictions are lifted. The way to accomplish this commission is twofold:  by baptizing and by teaching. It is in the name of the Trinitarian God (one name,  not three) that the disciples are to baptize. Those to be baptized are plunged  into the mystery of that name, and recreated as new beings. Jesus inaugurated  the reign of God, at the heart of which is a radically different way of life. This is to  be the essence of the teaching of the disciples. Jesus assures them that he will  be with them until the end of the age.

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Jan 27 2025

Our Yes! to God.

I am remembering a Sunday morning at Mass, as we stood to sing  before the reading of the Gospel. In the pew behind me, a little blond  boy sang “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” in his four-year-old voice at  the top of his lungs. Exuberantly! Loudly! Innocently, with joy in  his heart. 

Do you think that the angels and saints in heaven sing like that  little guy? Exuberantly, loudly, innocently, with joy in their hearts?  Can you hear them? “Alleluia!” to the Holy of Holies. “Alleluia!”  to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “Alleluia!” to the One-in-Three. 

What about us adults? On Trinity Sunday, we use metaphors of  clovers and candles to wrap our minds around the concept of One in-Three. We strain to understand God. We un-grand the grandeur  of the “Great I Am” so that we “get it.” But we don’t “get it.” It is as  though we try to capture the radiance of the sun and cup it in our  hands. 

Concepts are important. At the same time, the Intimate One  glows and whispers within us, “I am more than ideas. Go deeper.  Dwell in me.” The Big God of the Universe bursts into our grown-up  rationalizations and shouts, “I am more. Go bigger. Dwell in me.”  The grandeur of the living God permeates all that is. 

Those loud and innocent “Alleluias!” can be ours as well. We are  not to live a listless Christian life that limps along only on ideas. We  can recapture the exuberance of faith, that innocence of being four  years old and loving God! The Father-Son-and-Holy-Spirit is real.  The power of the Trinity is real. The God of the Universe is with us,  always faithful, never departing: “I am with you always.” That is  Good News! Sing Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! 

Consider/Discuss 

  • The Holy Trinity, one God, is Mystery beyond Mystery. In biblical  parlance, God is the Father under whose wings we take refuge; God is the  Son who has redeemed us from the muck; God is the Spirit who surrounds  us and warms us and upholds us and empowers us. How have each of the  members of the Holy Trinity made an impact on your life? 
  • If we say yes to the power of the Trinity, what kind of power does God  want to give us? Are we looking for the “lord-it-over-others” power that  squashes others and pushes its way around? Does power mean this world’s  muscling that hurts those who are small? With others of good faith, we  shout no to that. How can we more fully give God a roaring Yes! to the  Trinitarian power that raises up the lowly, sets captives free, and loosens  the bonds of the oppressed?

Living and Praying with the Word 

Jesus, you said that “all power on heaven and earth” has been  given to you. I am small. I need your power. Help me to give a  mighty Yes! to the strength of the Holy Spirit. Well up within me to  love when I do not feel like loving. Strengthen me to give when I do  not feel like giving. Empower me to make a difference in this world,  a difference that matters to you. Holy Trinity, One God, flood me  with the very fullness of you.

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Jan 27 2025

Scripture Study for

Deuteronomy is one long speech by Moses to Israel as they  prepare to enter the Promised Land, the point of which is: Be  faithful to God, who has been faithful to you. The great temptation  Israel will face is to worship other gods, which Moses addresses by  reminding Israel that the God whom they encountered in “the midst  of the fire” at Sinai has treated them exceptionally well in rescuing  them from Egypt. Two things flow from this. First, God’s mighty acts  have demonstrated that there is no other god than the all-powerful  God of Israel. Second, that God is consistently faithful and can be  counted on. Israel must reciprocate by being faithful to the God who  has done so much for them. 

In his letter to the Roman Christians, Paul has been outlining the  fundamental difference between their lives before and after baptism.  Before, they were subject to the law of sin and death, and they lived  entirely “in the flesh,” that is, in mindset and behavior at odds with  God. But in baptism they received the Holy Spirit, who delivered  them from the realm of sin, death, and the flesh, and made them  children of God through “adoption.” Thus it is the Spirit that allows  them to address God as “Father,” and this same Spirit unites them to  Christ as “co-heirs.” This means, however, that they must be willing  to share the sufferings of Christ so that they may also enjoy his glory. 

When Jesus appears to the Eleven in Galilee, they immediately  worship him, but the text notes that they “doubted,” which suggests  an incomplete comprehension of the reality and meaning of the  Resurrection. Having been given “all power,” or authority, Christ is  now the ruler in the reign of God, the scope of which he begins to  extend by sending his apostles to make more “disciples of all the  nations.” Although there is no developed trinitarian theology in  Matthew, the “formula” for baptism reflects an identity among the  Father, Son, and Spirit—as seen in the fact that Jesus tells the disciples  to baptize in “the name” of all three, rather than in three names.

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Jan 15 2025

Who Are You? What Do You Do?

Once a young priest was giving a blessing in our seminary chapel and he left  out the ands separating the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. An older  priest loudly whispered: “Modalism!” This was a heresy in the early church that  taught that there was one God but not three distinct persons, only three modes  or ways of experiencing God. Thus, those ands were important, giving emphasis  to three distinct persons. We believe in one God who is three: the Father and  the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

Your head can hurt trying to wrap your mind around this mystery. Today’s readings don’t try to “figure it out.” They simply allow God to be introduced. First God  gives Moses a name: “Lord.” God then spells out what that means for Moses and  a people liberated from slavery. God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and  rich in kindness and fidelity.”

The Gospel of John reveals Jesus as beloved Son sent into the world. For “God  so loved the world he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him  might not perish but have eternal life” (3:16). God really loves creation and all  that continues to be created in love. 

Finally, Paul’s farewell to the Corinthians refers to the Lord Jesus who graces,  the Father who loves, and the Holy Spirit who draws everyone into community. In  brief, at the heart of God is found love, grace, mercy, community, kindness, and  fidelity. Not a bad introduction. More ways to know the Trinity will be discovered  as we move through “ordinary” time. 

Consider/Discuss

  • Do you have a favorite name for God? How do you think of the  Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit? 
  • How would you “introduce” the Father and the Son and the Holy  Spirit to someone who does not know them? 

Responding to the Word

We place ourselves before the most Holy Trinity, praying for a faith that can  humbly bow before this mystery, accepting that we have been given to know  God as three in one, that God is drawing us ever more deeply into sharing the  life and love that flow between and among these three Persons. We pray our  lives may witness to this love.

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