Solemnity of the Holy Trinity

So I went bowling last night! It was great fun. My friends and I have been very busy lately, and bowling was a great and concrete way to finally get together. We had to put aside the good intentions and choose to get together, even if it meant driving over an hour for some of us. Choose to be present to one another, to maintain these relationships, to live intentionally in friendship, to build up community. It was a great choice!

Choosing to maintain relationships is the only way that relationships of any kind thrive. If we don't get intentional, our busy lives pull us apart and communities slowly dissolve, connections fade away. It can be tempting in our world where we all have many things to do, with such great technology at our finger tips, to think that we can be adequately connected simply through social media, texting, or the like. Friends, co-workers, spouses, you name it, any relationship or any community where persons do not choose to get together and be present in relationship will eventually fade. This may mean (gulp) sacrificing our precious time and perhaps putting aside our self-will to encounter and experience the other.

Did you ever think about this: God chooses to initiate and maintain a relationship with us. And God knows a thing or two about relationships. God IS relationship, a community of love -- the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Absolute Being from which flows all that is…God…IS a relationship, a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is a Trinity in Unity, a family or community of perfect love.
We are right to celebrate and review on this and other truths of our faith on this Feast of the Holy Trinity. We recall that the Trinity is not three gods, but One, Three Persons united in infinite Love. And the Father, Son and Holy Spirit area do not each possess one-third of God-ness (this would be the error of “partialism”) but are all fully Divine, without any confusion of their uniqueness as Persons. We want to also avoid the error of Noetus and Sabelius (also known as “modalism”) who taught contrary to the Catholic faith that the Trinity was simply one God who appeared in various modes - sometimes appearing as God the Father, then somehow changes his “costume” so to speak to later appear on earth as Jesus, God the Son, and later changes form to be in our midst in another form, as God the Holy Spirit. As Catholic disciples and members of the very community of love of the Trinity through is the community of love that is the Church, we want to know, believe, and be able to articulate these truths.

But before we get too complex, before we present our faith and the wonderful relationship of the Trinity as something primarily about our head-knowledge, or before we forget that the inner-realities of the Holy Trinity will always remain a profound mystery, let us return to the basic truth: our God is a community of love, a family of perfect love. God is in His very essence, relational, and He draws us into right relationship with Him and with one another. 
God the Holy Trinity who loves automatically, eternally - who will never stop loving us no matter what -- chose to draw us, sinful and self-oriented humanity, into this wonderful community of love.

We hear of the great plan of God for our thriving in relationship in the Gospel today. We rejoice to hear again the well-told truth that God the Father so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish, but might have eternal live. This verse, John 3:16, is probably a verse of the Bible that we are all familiar with, perhaps have even memorized. It is painted on murals, raised aloft on signs at sporting events. And we do well to truly unpack this verse, in light of the Holy Trinity.     

God the Father, and thus the entire Trinity, so loved the world that the Holy Spirit was sent to a humble maiden of Nazareth, Mary our Mother, that the very Son of God, Jesus Christ, might be given completely over to us, to save us from ourselves, from our tendency to sin and isolation. God the Father chose to give up His most prized possession, His Son, and to offer Divinity itself to us creatures, that we might no longer live in sin. We who may curse and blaspheme God, who hurt one another, even who refuse to love one another and reject community or right relationship, we were the ones the Holy Trinity chose to love in community. God so loved US, this fallen world, that He gave His only Son in love to redeem us. This is great news! This is glorious news!
And here is some even better news. We who have been baptized have been joined the community of love that is the Holy Trinity. We are made part of the family of God, the perfect family of love. Eternally united, the Trinity pours out Love itself into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. We can live together in Christ, and can know God the Father and His great love for us.

How can we do this? How can we as the Second Reading from Second Corinthians chapter 13 literally rejoice, but also mend our ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and be with the God of love and peace? We are called to act like the Trinity, we are called to choose to love. We are called to choose to live in right relationship, in a community of love.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of us this week, that we might review where we are at in choosing to love. Love itself is not a feeling, but a choice. Infatuation, having a crush is merely a feeling, but true love is choosing to love, choosing to sacrifice something of our time, talent, treasure, or just our presence, to be with another, to encounter them. We are all busy. We all have a million things going on. But let us celebrate the gift of the Holy Trinity, and our membership in this community of Love via baptism by choosing to make our faith real in our world this week. I was greatly blessed to choose to get together, even via bowling, with my friends, and it invigorated me, inspired me to maintain those relationships, deepen, and extend them. May we choose concretely to love one another, even in the smallest and most subtle ways. Here are concrete some steps to ponder for the week ahead:

1. Attending Holy Mass - choose to come at least every Sunday that you might be connected with the source of Love and community itself. Any worthy reception of Holy Communion invites the love and relationship-perfecting power of the Trinity into our souls, by reception of the very Body and Blood of Christ. This is an energizing, wonderful gift!

2. Pray daily, that the fire of God’s love might be fanned into a flame in our hearts. Apps like iBrieviary (http://www.ibreviary.org/en/) prayers throughout the day. We can also find the daily readings on our electronic devices/phones or by visiting www.usccb.org/readings. Through prayer we allow the love of the Trinity to blossom, to bring us the peace that the world cannot give.

3. Choose to love in service or in relationship. When we are seeking to thrive in relationship with God, we cannot but want to let the goodness of God flow into our relationships with neighbors, family, and friends. Choose to love, and don’t be overwhelmed, but start small if you have to: Simple things like making eye contact. Putting the phone down. Making time for family dinners. Visiting a relative in a nursing home or calling someone we've been estranged from and trying to begin the process of reconciliation.

If we all chose one concrete and loving thing to do today, this very Feast of the Holy Trinity, think of how much more visible the God's community of love would be present in our world. God so loved the world, that He chose to give so much. May we choose to make relationships a priority – our relationship with God, and through Him, right relationship with one another.