Category: Parish News & Events

Today is Trinity Sunday. The First and Second Reading, as well as the Gospel, all speak to the reality of the Trinity. The First Reading foreshadows what we will come to understand more deeply through the person of Christ and his apostles in the New Testament. Namely that the Trinity is three persons in one God…existing from all eternity. 

“Wisdom” in Proverbs 8:30-31 it says: “I [was] beside [the Lord] as his craftsman, and I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing on the surface of his earth; and I found delight in the human race.” 

Wisdom foreshadows the Holy Spirit. The phrase “…playing on the surface of the earth” brings to mind the “wind” referred to in Genesis 1:1, which at the dawn of creation “swept over the waters.” 

This personification of wisdom also foreshadows the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, the Word made flesh: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things came to be through him, and without Him nothing came to be.” 

The concept of the Trinity, three persons in one God, who has no beginning and no end, is mind-boggling. If you have ever tried to explain the triune God to a young person or a person who has never heard of it, you will know how intimidating such a task can be. There is no easy way to explain the Trinity. Maybe that’s because there is no way to explain it, period! We can explore it intellectually, but we will always fall short. The Godhead is simply too big for our finite minds to comprehend. 

When one of my children was 7 years old, I heard her talking out loud to herself while she was slowly raking leaves into a huge pile in our front yard. “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” she said meditatively, “Three persons in one God.” 

Yes, the doctrine of the Trinity is a great mystery! But even little ones can be sure that it is true, because it has been revealed to us by Christ Himself and, for 2000 years, has been taught by His Church. Happy Trinity Sunday!

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Jesus is particularly clear in today’s Gospel from Matthew, a selection from his Sermon on the Mount: Speak the truth.

“Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” There are any number of euphemisms for that directive: Say what you mean and mean what you say. Give it to them straight. Tell it like it is. Don’t lie. 

It comes down to being a person of integrity, a true follower of Christ. If you always tell the truth, you can never be questioned. Now, Jesus’ directive isn’t “Always give an answer whether they like it or not.” Think of Pilate’s question of Jesus on Good Friday: “Are you the king of the Jews?” Our Lord replied not with a “yes” where he meant “yes,” but with a question of his own: “Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?”

The point of saying what you mean and meaning what you say is, as Jesus tells Pilate a little later, to “testify to the truth.” Swearing by heaven, earth, Jerusalem or our very head is worthless on our part: God is in charge, and we have no right to make Him our witness. On the contrary, it is our job to be witnesses for Him. 

This is a good point to bring in our saint of the day, Barnabas. Originally named Joseph, he made quite an impression by selling property and putting the proceeds at the feet of the Apostles for the needs of the new Christian community. The gift earned him his new name, “Barnabas, or “son of encouragement.”

Even more important to the new Church was Barnabas letting his “yes” mean yes” and his “no” mean “no.” He risked his own integrity by bringing Saul — Paul, the future Apostle to the Gentiles — to them and vouching for this former persecutor of Christians as being trustworthy and converted to the Gospel message. Barnabas then mentored Paul and together they spread the Gospel to Antioch and beyond. Barnabas proved a follower of the truth, a witness for God’s own Son, and for God’s plan for the world. 

Let us pray that we, too, can be better followers of the truth, better witnesses for God and his plan for salvation, better instruments for building the kingdom of heaven here among us. May we ourselves be sons and daughters of encouragement, aiding our fellow Christians in their faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

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Jesus always calls us to MORE – more joy, more peace, more love. And he tells us how to receive this: he calls us to more love, more trust, more generous self-sacrifice, more letting go.

The Chosen People were called to live in ways that were counter-cultural in order to be a sign to the nations that there is one God, a Supreme God, Creator of all, and we must love that God with our whole heart and soul and strength (the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4-5). In order to make sure they lived within the parameters of chosen people, God gave them rules (the 10 Commandments) and prophetic wisdom (the Wisdom books) and an understanding of history with an eternal perspective (the Pentateuch). And the elders of the chosen people pondered all this and worked out ways to live within those parameters in a world that did not observe the rules, and they wrote down their understandings and insights and instituted laws about everything from working to washing to worshipping. Many laws. Hundreds of laws. More laws than any regular person could keep track of or observe faithfully.

And Jesus tells his disciples that actually, these hundreds of laws don’t go far enough! Why? Because they don’t go deep enough. The laws were intended to guide people to correct behavior, but they were unable to change anyone’s heart. The laws led some people to strict observance in order to keep a firm grip of themselves and keep them from straying from the path of righteousness. But Jesus tells them that the actual observance of the law must happen deep within us, at the very place where we let go of ourselves in order to embrace the other.

So the Law remains (Jesus “did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it”!), but its full meaning is revealed in the life of Christ. We certainly should not kill, as we have no right to take another’s life. But the full meaning of respecting the life of another is to refrain from unrighteous anger, or name-calling, or holding grudges and withholding forgiveness! In tomorrow’s Gospel, we will hear the same kind of unfolding of another law: we certainly should not commit adultery, but the full meaning of the covenant of marriage is to control any distracting or lustful looking or thinking, and to direct our energy toward our commitment to full, faithful, and fruitful family life.

What Jesus came to reveal is that the full meaning of the law is LOVE – love of God, and love of others. We must learn to let go of our “grabbing” so that we can learn to GIVE lovingly and generously, from the heart, respecting others and trusting in the gift of grace. We must learn to love others as Jesus loves us! Only then do we begin to understand the full meaning of the laws of God, and then, at last, we can receive more peace, more love, and the fullness of joy.

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