Does it matter to you- the concept of the Most Holy Trinity?\u00c2\u00a0 The greatest minds in the history of the Church have pondered the Trinity.\u00c2\u00a0 In the first 400 years of Christianity, they argued back and forth about what three persons in one God meant; about the divinity and humanity of Christ; and about how the persons of the Trinity related to each other.\u00c2\u00a0 And out of all that, many were condemned as heretics, and so, the Church worked through all these issues, and settled them.\u00c2\u00a0 That process gave us the Creed, the Nicene Creed.\u00c2\u00a0 We say it every Sunday just after the homily.\u00c2\u00a0 That Creed is a summary of what we are to believe about the Trinity and what God did for us.\u00c2\u00a0 Virtually all Christians profess that Creed- Catholics, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists, and Baptists for example.\u00c2\u00a0 And yet, the great minds in the Church all admit that the Trinity is a mystery and just can’t be fully explained or understood.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
When you recite the creed, do you even think about what it means?\u00c2\u00a0 Does it matter to you?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Well, consider this for a moment.\u00c2\u00a0 Suppose you had never met or even seen someone-\u00c2\u00a0 I will call that someone John.\u00c2\u00a0 And suppose that it was important for you to get to know John- he had the key to your future.\u00c2\u00a0 If I asked you whether or not you liked John, what would you say?\u00c2\u00a0 You really couldn’t say anything, could you.\u00c2\u00a0 People who have experienced John could tell you about him, but until you had first hand knowledge of John, you really wouldn’t know what John was like, whether you would like him or not, and how well you could relate to him.<\/p>\n
Knowing and relating to God is a similar issue.\u00c2\u00a0 Unless and until you know something about God, and unless you experience God, you won’t be able to relate to Him, and you won’t be able to satisfy your hunger for the meaning of life. That’s why it should matter that you know God and know something about Him.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
God tells us about himself in many ways- some examples are through His creation and through scripture.\u00c2\u00a0 He chose to reveal the Trinity to us through the scriptures.\u00c2\u00a0 There must be a reason why.\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus says some very interesting things about the Trinity in today’s Gospel.\u00c2\u00a0 He says that everything the Father has is his.\u00c2\u00a0 We know that Jesus is the connection between God and man, because He became man. And John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus is the Word of God. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0So, Jesus knows the Father and is able to share everything the Father has, like his thoughts and creative actions, with us.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Listen to what was said in the first reading about God the Father’s reaction to the human race after creation: \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0“And I found delight in the human race”.\u00c2\u00a0 Indeed, God delighted in us even before any of us knew Him.\u00c2\u00a0 This message, a message of Love for Humanity, was given to Jesus to communicate to us.\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus was sent to dwell among us, and to live as one of us, and to show us the way.\u00c2\u00a0 When He was with His apostles, Jesus could pass that message on directly and the apostles could experience it.\u00c2\u00a0 But now, Jesus has gone back to His Father.\u00c2\u00a0 So, Jesus says that the Spirit will “declare it to you”.\u00c2\u00a0 The Spirit, then, is the vehicle by which all of us today can hear the Word of God. Through the Spirit, we come by our knowledge of the Father.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
How could this knowledge of the God and the Trinity be of value to us and really matter?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, suppose we look at the relationship between the persons of the Trinity in more detail.\u00c2\u00a0 First of all, notice that these three persons of the Trinity are unified.\u00c2\u00a0 They are unified in both their goals and their actions.\u00c2\u00a0 They work together; they are striving to bring mankind into their kingdom.\u00c2\u00a0 Second, the relationship between the persons is characterized by Love.\u00c2\u00a0 That Love is expressed by each person giving totally to the other.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no holding back.\u00c2\u00a0 Whatever the Father has, the Son has as well.\u00c2\u00a0 The Son gives the Spirit everything that the Father has given Him.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, we also know that mankind is made in the image and likeness of God, according to scripture.\u00c2\u00a0 So, just as the Father, Son, and Spirit, the three persons of the Trinity, are unified as one God, then, each one of us who mirror the image and likeness of God possess the presence of the same three personages.\u00c2\u00a0 And that matters in our relationship with God.\u00c2\u00a0 Here are a few of the ways it matters:\u00c2\u00a0 First, Our Triune God loved us enough to be intimate with us.\u00c2\u00a0 He sent His only son to live with us, and show us the way.\u00c2\u00a0 God is not some distant creative force that isn’t interested in us.\u00c2\u00a0 Our families mirror the love and intimacy that God gave his son, to whom He gave everything, when we have children, whom we love and share everything with.\u00c2\u00a0 Second, God gave us talents akin to His own- gifts of creativity like the sciences and the arts and physical abilities.\u00c2\u00a0 We mirror God the Father when we use those talents in creative ways.\u00c2\u00a0 And third, God gave us his spirit, his life giving breath, the stuff that echoes the difference between passive creation and a living being, a Spirit that is capable of communicating everything about ourselves to others.\u00c2\u00a0 We mirror the Spirit in the uniqueness of our personalities as they project the fullness of life and as we share ourselves with others.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each of these examples shows how much we are like God.\u00c2\u00a0 And so, when we communicate with God, when we pray to God, we are not praying to some distant, remote, God, but rather, to a loving, intimate, creative, and unique life force; a God who is interested in you.\u00c2\u00a0 And that makes all the difference in the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Just as God is unity in three persons, so also our three vestiges of the Father, Son, and Spirit within us- our creativity, our desire to share ourselves, and the uniqueness of our spirits; are seeking unity of purpose, and unity in action.\u00c2\u00a0 That is what we all crave in our relationship with God.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, get to know God and the Trinity- it matters.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most Holy Trinity Prov 8:22-31; Rom 5: 1-5; John 16: 12-15 Dc. Larry Brockman Does it matter to you- the concept of the Most Holy Trinity?\u00c2\u00a0 The greatest minds in the history of the Church have pondered the Trinity.\u00c2\u00a0 In the first 400 years of Christianity, they argued back and forth about what three persons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}