HOMILY: THE MOST HOLY TRINITY ‘A’ 2017

Last Monday evening there was a TV programme that was remarkably chilling.  It was not the first programme there has been about the unsolved mystery of the disappearance of Lord Lucan in 1974.  But it was unique in that it was Lady Lucan’s own version of the events that led up to Lord Lucan’s disappearance – and her account of their marriage. And it was chilling, not primarily because in it Lady Lucan spelt out the story of her husband’s ill treatment of her and his attempt to kill her.  It was chilling, rather, because of what she had to say about the way she had treated her children.  When she was pressed by her interviewer about her sounding ‘cold’ towards her children, she said, ‘All my relationships are cold’.

On this Trinity Sunday, each of the Readings the Church sets before us reminds us of one supreme truth:  the warmth of the relationship, the Covenant Love, that God has with us, his Holy People; and the warmth of Love too, that overflows in the heart of God Himself.  

St John gives us the Lord’s words to Nicodemus: ‘God loved the world so much, that he gave his only Son…so that everyone may have eternal life’.  

St Paul, in his Second Letter to the Corinthian Church, first urges the Corinth Christians to abound in love: ‘live in peace; try to grow perfect; help one another.  Be united; live in peace’.  And from those words of encouragement on the human level, he moves seamlessly to call down on the Church the blessing of the one eternal God, in whom this love finds its perfection: ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.’

And then again, from the earliest days of the Lord God’s taking to himself his Chosen People, Moses echoes the Divine words: ‘Lord, Lord, a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithfulness’.

Today we are challenged by the unfathomable mystery of God.  But though his mystery is unfathomable, he has given us to know the fundamental truth of who he is and his will for us.  Jesus is his witness: Jesus tells us of the infinite warmth of love that his Father has for him and he for the Father – even to laying down his life, because that was what loving to the end demanded.  And Jesus is the witness too of the Father’s love for us – making himself poor that we might be made rich, pouring into our hearts the riches of his Spirit, giving himself away, so that we might not be alone, but rather gently drawing us into the warmth of friendship with himself, making us sharers in fact in his own divine life.