Feast of the Holy Trinity

19 June 2011

Homily

My dear friends,

The Irish writer Clare Boylan, in a radio interview, was reflecting on the power of her parent’s love and she said;  ‘My parents did two things for me; they gave me a sense of my own dignity and they let me know that I was loved.  That gives you tremendous confidence – and it lasts.  If your parents have given you these two things – a sense of self and their love – you have them all your life.  If not you are forever looking for them – I don’t think anything else matters.’

In the first reading of today’s Mass God and Moses are pictured in conversation.  Moses acknowledges that the people are headstrong with a litany of faults and sins to their names.  But he says that this does not alter God’s nature, he is ‘a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithfulness.’ Whatever happens, God’s love is never at issue.

It is the nature of God that his love abides forever.  And if there is one thing we all long to experience in our lives, it is the love that we can depend on, the love that is not withdrawn when difficulties come, the love that sees beyond our frailty and faults because it sets no limit to forgiveness.  None of us has experienced the fullness of this authentic love, yet it is to this love that our whole person aspires.  We catch glimpses of it in our own experience of loving.

Jesus explained to Nicodemus, “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone – may have eternal life – For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world but so that through him the world might be saved.”  God’s relationship with the world is rooted in love.  It is that same love which gives all of us our essential dignity.

Each time we gather to pray and worship and celebrate the mysteries of God, we might think we have taken the initiative to come together ourselves.  The truth is rather that God has initiated this encounter by calling together a family of faith.  If we are here today it is because God the Father has called us into being; Jesus, the Son, has called us to follow his Way, and the Spirit who lives with and within each of us has inspired our minds and hearts to remember, to believe, to celebrate and to serve.

As we contemplate the family of God we have come to call the Trinity, we realise that all God’s actions are grounded in love – unconditional, unending and unselfish love.  The Father, Son and Holy Spirit express the unity of God’s love.  We experience something of that love when it is communicated in simple ways through the people of grace we meet in our lives.  Most of us have experienced it first in the generosity of our parents’ love.  Love is the essential atmosphere for every child to grow in and for our continued growth.  We are all responsible for playing our own part in this drama, in helping to make our family and community places where God’s love gives shape to what happens.  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all in this task.  Amen