Sunday, June 15, 2025

Homily: Love, simply love

 

Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 11  / Holy Trinity Sunday (solemnity)

Readings: Proverbs 8.22-31/ Psalm 8.4-5, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 2a) / Romans 5.1-5 / John 16.12-15



I like travelling. Who doesn’t? I especially like going to the furthest reaches when I visit a place. Like the furthest tip of Point Reyes National Park just north of San Francisco. There, where it juts out into the Pacific Ocean I pondered its wide blue expanse. Or, canoeing way out in the waters, off the coast of Kaikōura, New Zealand and marvelling at the seals swimming about and the snow-capped mountains on land. These places, to my younger, inquisitive mind, were beautiful. They were also mysterious. 


Today is Trinity Sunday, that one day in the Church year when we’re all confronted with the mystery of God – God as three and one. It’s a day we priests try, however imperfectly, to ponder and speak about this mystery of God who the Scriptures reveal as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Try as I will, I know that whatever analogy or image I use to describe the Trinity will be insufficient. It always is.


And so, I find myself searching as I did before at Point Reyes and Kaikōura — and perhaps you have too on your travels — for that infinite vanishing point between uniqueness and unity as we gaze outwards to some scene before us, something, someone. In that moment, if we look hard enough, we just might glimpse something of beauty and experience something of mystery.


Today, let’s search for that infinite vanishing point between uniqueness and unity that the Holy Trinity is. Then, God willing, we’ll enter more fully into its mystery, and there, experience its beauty.


Uniqueness and unity. Perhaps this is a better way we can speak  about God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Here is the theological mystery that theologians and preachers, artists and writers and all kinds of people have had much to say. They are trying to map the Trinity — its contours and characteristics, its depth, breadth and height, even the best ways we can approach it. We reference them because we all want to “get it” or get close to it. Yet no matter how close we get, we will never quite reach the center of what or where or how the Trinity isSuch is the mystery of God.


Perhaps, this is that infinite vanishing point where Father, Son and Spirit touch and intertwine.It is beyond our limited human perception and knowledge. It is hidden from us, out of reach. Isn’t this why it is mysterious, even beautiful in its mystery that God is one being existing in the three persons of Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?


Christians give themselves to God every time we sign ourselves in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Isn’t it exciting and humbling we do, even when we don’t know or understand God fully? Isn’t this what love is also all about? A headlong leap into mystery, into losing ourselves in its beauty?


Love is at the heart of the Trinity and its divine life that Father, Son and Spirit share. And love — or charity — is indeed the goal and the means of Christian life. Every one of us wants to love and be loved, to know and be known. We want to have perfect harmony within ourselves and with everyone else — be they family, friends, work colleagues or strangers, and here too as we sit side by side in church — without losing who we are uniquely. 

And so, what we want, perfect unity and perfect relationship, is who God is as the Holy Trinity, even as we know that our human relationships are an incomplete reflection of the life of God.  


Today let’s honour that mystery of God’s love. Let’s not try to solve it like a puzzle or simplify it into a map. Rather, let’s celebrate the journey we’re all making together. To God’s promise that lies beyond the horizon of this moment. To that destination at the end of life’s road. To that place where our stories meet our hopes. Indeed, to that place where Jesus has revealed God’s life and love as our possible life and love, even if we can’t quite see or experience it, even more, describe it yet.


Now isn’t this the whole point about the Trinity, about life and faith, even about our journey — we haven’t fully arrived? It’s all very much work in progress. So take heart, the Trinity, the truth of God’s very self, is still being revealed to us. This is why we can still hope.


And hope we must. It saves us from self-satisfaction, self-centredness and self-righteousness. It keeps us tender, open to being surprised, ready to admit that maybe God is even more loving, more liberating, more wondrous, than anyone, including you and me here, can ever dare to hope. 


No other than Jesus declares this. In today’s gospel passage he says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…he will declare to you the things that are to come.” 


Truly, The Trinity continues to reveal itself: “he will declare to you the things that are to come,” Jesus teaches. And so it is. The Spirit is still working within us, even in this present moment. The Son is still journeying with us, even to the end of time. The Father stills waits to greet us, his prodigal, wayward children, running towards us, arms open wide to welcome us home. The Trinity is all of this, and more. Yet it is mysterious and it is beautiful.


So what must we do? We who profess our God is the Trinity. Just keep going on. Keep going, even when we stumble. Keep going, even when we feel we’ve lost the way. Keep going, even when nobody else walks besides us. Keep going, even when the map to God is stained with our tears and its lines blurred. 


Keep going: where to? To God. We should. We must. For God himself is coming to us. This is what mutual love looks like – two in love desiring each other, living with and for each other. And when we meet, we’ll converge at that point of uniqueness and unity – of God and us, of his flesh and blood and our bread and wine, of his heartbeat and our heartbeat beating as one. Right there and then, we’ll stand at the intersection of heaven and earth. And here, finally, we will know the beauty, the mystery that we are known by God – not just known but also seen, heard and valued. Most of all, loved. So like the Holy Trinity, let us love, simply love.




Adapted in parts from the writings of Fr Phil, a priest.
Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart Photo by Josue Escoto on Unsplash (detail)


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