This is my homily for Sunday, June 15, 2025, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle C (and also Father's Day). The readings for this Sunday are here.
Happy Father’s Day, dads.
We have a double celebration today. Of course, today is Father’s Day. And on the church’s calendar, today is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.
The Holy Trinity is the dogma of the three Persons in one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As we recite at the very beginning of the Creed, “I believe in one God” – not three gods, but one God. Three Persons in one God. Holy Trinity in Unity – that’s what we believe.
How three Persons can be one God is hard for most of us to wrap our brains around. Speaking as a person who used to teach for a living: when we have a difficult or unfamiliar concept to explain to people, we use metaphors. St. Patrick is said to have used the shamrock to explain how there can be three Persons in one God: the three leaves each distinct, yet united in a single plant.
Of course, all metaphors have their limits. The shamrock is passive and inert, but that’s not how our Triune God is. St. Augustine taught us that the divine nature of our God is an internal dynamic relationship: the Father loves the Son; and the Son loves the Father; and the Holy Spirit is that love between Father and Son. God is an active, loving communion.
That Trinitarian love isn’t just internal to God: it’s so abundant and potent that it extends to us as well. It’s God’s fervent wish that we all be able to share in his divine love. So God’s love is constantly reaching out to us, constantly beckoning to us, constantly seeking to draw us closer to him. Think of the Father in the Prodigal Son parable, not passively waiting for his son to show up, but dashing out to meet him.
The shamrock was St. Patrick’s metaphor. I’d like to propose a different metaphor for the Holy Trinity: the human family. Like all metaphors, it has its limits; but if it’s a good metaphor, then it sheds light on the nature of God. I might even say, the metaphor travels in both directions, because the nature of the Holy Trinity may point to what our family life should be like, too.
The Trinity is three persons in one God, in a communion of love; a human family is two or more persons in one family, united in a bond of love. Often, but not always, the members of the family are related by blood. The key thing isn’t the genetics, it’s the bond of love. As with all things from God, it’s always rooted in love.
The foundation of the human family is intended to be a husband and wife, two individual persons who are united to one another and become one through solemn and sacred promises. Those promises aren’t just spoken; they should be lived out, too.
And for many couples, their union results in more members of the family, as one or more children come along. I have six brothers and sisters, so when I was growing up, we wren’t a trinity because there were too many of us - but we did mostly love one another, so perhaps there was a glimmer of the Holy Trinity in there, as I believe there is for most of our families. Counting my mom and dad, there were nine of us altogether, so I guess you might say we were a novinity. My dad and my mom tried their best to make us a Holy Novinity, but we didn’t always achieve the ideal of holiness. But I don’t blame my mom and dad for our family not being perfect. They really did their best. Today, in their eighties, they’re still doing their best.
No family fully achieves the ideal of perfect, divine love. None of us live in ideal families. But all of us, dad, mom and children, can strive to grow in holiness – to draw closer to God. Even if Dad and Mom aren’t together anymore, they can still cooperate in fulfilling the promises they made at their children’s baptisms to try to rear them in the faith of the church.
Dads, here’s a Father’s Day admonition for us: we dads have a critical role to play in making our own families into images of the Holy Trinity. Research shows that, when we dads are religiously engaged, such as by attending church regularly, praying regularly and being supportive of our children’s religious education, our children are more likely to become attached and stay attached to the Christian community.
Our families are meant to be images of the Holy Trinity: relationships of active love, even when that love involves difficulty and suffering. Our families change over time, but our obligations of love to one another don’t change. Dad’s, let’s do our best to make our families, whatever configurations they happen to be, sanctuaries where we are free to love one another; and greenhouses where love grows and flourishes.
I think abt the Trinity as three manifestations of God: Father the Creator, Son the Teacher, Spirit the Sustainer. I presume my brain was influenced by St Julian of Norwich, who often spoke in threes: "God made us, God loves us, God protects us."
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of being creator, teacher, and sustainer of faith to our children, but way too late for me to do anything with that. RCIA leaders could offer your advice to Catholic parents to good effect. Ours were big on proper Mass attire and punishments for fidgety children. In my experience, threats of getting smacked at home and being forced to wear uncomfortable clothes doesn't do much to stoke a kid's faith.
Too late for me and my kids, too. If grandchildren were to come along, that might be a new generation to influence...
DeleteIt was the deacons' weekend to preach here too. K. covered some of the same themes you did with his homily. Trinity Sunday fits in nicely with Father's Day observance.
ReplyDeleteI confess I have never understood the Filioque (and it wasn't the theme of anyone's homily). It doesn't seem like it ought to have precipitated a schism, but maybe it was the excuse rather than the cause.
There are scripture passages to support both views. Difficult to see either side changing its mind in that point, but I don't want to underestimate ecumenism.
DeleteWhen I was in formation, one of our priest instructors confessed that pastors love to assign Trinity Sunday to deacons because it's considered one of the worst themes of the year to preach on.
DeleteDeacons around here always get Father's Day assigned, too. In my early days as a deacon, I got in trouble once with the then-pastor for making the father-child relationship sound too complicated and fraught. People want sentimentality.
If anybody's sick of sentimentalilty, there have been a spate of fraught father-son stories over on "This American Life."
DeleteBelieving in the Holy Trinity became a lot easier after studying modern physics than before. Not really about new facts. More like a new way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to learn more about how the church arrived at the dogma. It's not intuitive. I think it was more along the lines of that Sherlock Holmes quote, which I'm too lazy to Google, that runs something like this: once you've considered and rejected all other possibilities, then whatever remains, no matter how unlikely, must be the solution.
DeleteIn the case of the Trinity and God, I think the more it’s paradoxical and counterintuitive, the more likely it’s closer to the mark. I think it is very central and vital for the Christian faith and should be meditated on frequently. I don’t do it nearly enough myself. The Trinity is “unreasonable” in that it doesn’t fit into finite human logic. For me, that’s quite ok.
DeleteI agree about the Trinity being central. I don't have a problem with the teaching; if we could understand God, He/They would be God.
DeleteYes, it is central. Accepting the divinity of Jesus was a big step away from my Unitarian upbringing. I had a lot of discussions with my baptismal sponsor in the Episcopal Church about it. She had also been raised a Unitarian.
DeleteTypo, "...He/They would be God" above should read "...He/They wouldn't be God."
DeleteThe shamrock- Trinity lesson I was taught in parochial school wasn’t enlightening, nor convincing. Years ago I decided that since God can do anything s/he could manifest in any way that would reveal more of the divine nature. So Creator, human teacher, Sophia - wisdom. At some point I learned this is a heresy.
DeleteIt’s mystery, and not truly something mini- minds (that we humans have) can understand. Theology is a search to understand God, but God is beyond human understanding. So I pretty much tune out theology now. I don’t worry much about the filioque dispute that has resulted in a 1000 year schism.
BTW, Jim, it’s too bad that your pastor (and 99% of ordained, childless clergy) doesn’t understand that most parent- child relationships are “fraught” - one of the problems with celibates defining teachings for the folk who are married and parents. I tuned them out also, decades ago. And some of us had lousy fathers, even if they weren’t physically abusive. My concept of “God the father” has been problematic throughout my life. I didn’t trust a father God, nor feel any love for that manifestation of the divine. God is spirit, not a man. My image of “father” was definitely not warm and fuzzy sentimentality. My husband is a wonderful father though, so that helps. Our sons are also wonderful fathers.
Anne - God the Father, especially as portrayed in the Old Testament, isn't much of a hugger. We can get overly sentimental about him, too. When I preach, I usually emphasize the love, and maybe don't push enough the idea that it's not a treacly, sentimental love. CS Lewis noted that most of us want God the Grandfather, who smiles benignly on what we do and spoils us rotten. That's not the God of the Old Testament.
Delete"The shamrock- Trinity lesson I was taught in parochial school wasn’t enlightening, nor convincing."
DeleteI can see how it might work, maybe even be brilliant, if your audience is a pagan audience who believes in a pantheon of nature gods and war gods. The key thing to that audience is - God isn't a pantheon, he's one God, but comprising three Persons, each co-equal and distinct. The shamrock might help illustrate those aspects.
Jim, the OT God is a major reason that I almost left Christianity completely. So I learned to pretty much ignore it. Jesus offered a different understanding. I don’t take the Bible literally, so I look at the messages., The OT is too full of violence and hate for me, and I can’t admire a vengeful God. There are positives, some wisdom, but also a pretty violent history. Jesus taught love, forgiveness, mercy, and an Abba Father God instead of a king- warrior God who kills the enemy - including the innocents even. Many of us never had a loving Abba. I don’t know who or what God is. I do not grasp the Trinity - it’s a mystery- but the concept of the three “ persons” do convey some decent ideas, metaphorically at least. So use a shamrock, or a circle dance or some other image, but we still don’t know really. I don’t know if Jesus was “divine”. I am 78 as of today, and I’m old enough that I don’t really worry much about these things anymore. Jesus taught a lot of good things. So I am a Christian in the sense that I try to figure out how to live guided by Jesus’s teachings. Jesus seemed to present an image of God as a loving father, not a violent father. Jesus’s teachings are the guide, and it really doesn’t matter to me whether he was divine or just a very enlightened man - the teachings are the same. Catholicism “formed” me, and has always informed my understandings even though I don’t accept many of its teachings, including dogma. They are valiant attempts by well-meaning human beings to understand what can’t be understood, and to codify and box in what really can’t be boxed in. We humans have trouble with mystery - we want the concrete, to KNOW- so theologians try to define God even though that’s not possible, by definition. I was born and raised a Catholic Christian, and there are a lot of good things about Catholic Christianity. It has produced some great thinkers, and great “do-ers “. So I hang on to Catholicism but only by a slender thread. I pray even though I have no idea if anyone is listening. I think we all have a mysterious non- physical element that is our essence (in the Thomistic sense) , that we call a soul, and that our souls may continue to live in some unimaginable form after our bodies die, but also think that it may just be wishful thinking. It’s hard for people to imagine that some part of us won’t continue to live in some way after bodily death. That who we are, all that we’ve experienced, all that we’ve thought, will simply vanish as if we had never lived.
DeleteI admire those who at least try to preach about all of these things because nobody really understands it all. As long as the good teachings of Jesus are passed on, then its a worthwhile homily.
" I pray even though I have no idea if anyone is listening"
DeleteI've had mystical experiences, in a very modest way. They're important in their own right, and the memory of them helps me hold on when it's otherwise hard to discern God.
Perhaps you've had spiritually rewarding experiences, as on some centering prayer occasions.
Bishop's Barron's Sunday homily was on the Theology of the Trinity
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh3N-5W4z0k
We encountered it after Sunday morning mass live streamed from Saint Cecilia in Boston; the YouTube algorithm evidently decided it was what we either wanted or should want to watch. Betty kept it on because she was doing some artwork on the Trinity. I don't think YouTube knew about that.
Barron did a good job of covering the history of the idea, especially giving a big nod to Augustine. I guess all the bishops and priests now will be brushing up on their Augustine to impress one another and support Pope Leo.
I remember the approach of Augustine because I found it in a thin book that was somewhat larger in height and width than normal books. I can't remember its title; and I don't remember if it was excerpts from Augustine or a commentary on him or some of both. It was during my undergraduate years, so I did not buy a copy.
A little aside on Augustine. Evidently, he did not write out his homilies. Rather wealthy people in his diocese had their notaries take them down as he spoke. We did not know this for a long time until in the last few decades an earlier version of his homilies was discovered. Most of the homilies we now have from Augustine were edited by monks to feature all the theology by editing out all the interesting, colorful but dated things that he said to keep the people's attention.
A real treasure for historians though. Romans were tough audiences and expected a lot from their orators. So, there were often challenges and jeers. At one point Augustine actually went back to his bishop's chair from his preaching point at the lectern nearer to the center of the church. He told them he would only resume speaking when they became more orderly.
" Betty kept it on because she was doing some artwork on the Trinity. I don't think YouTube knew about that."
DeleteI wouldn't be so sure...it's truly frightening what Google is aware of these days. Sometimes I feel it is watching what I type in Gmail.
As an example: suppose I send an email to one of the kids about doing a New York theatre getaway to see the revival of Gypsy. Youtube will then - immediately! - feed me a video of the Broadway revival of Gypsy.
DeleteGoogle owns YouTube . There are probably privacy settings somewhere but the default is no privacy!
DeleteRichard Rohr wrote a book on Trinity. I have many of his books, but I haven’t read that one. An AI summary -
ReplyDelete“ Trinity as Relationship:
Rohr emphasizes that the Trinity is fundamentally about relationship, not just separate divine beings. It's a dance of love, a perfect communion between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God as a Dance:
He uses the image of a circle dance to illustrate this dynamic. God is a centrifugal force, flowing outward in love, and also a centripetal force, drawing all things back into that love.
Transformation:
Rohr believes that understanding the Trinity in this way can be deeply transformative, leading to a more vibrant and hopeful understanding of God and our place in the universe.
Beyond Dualities:
The Trinity, for Rohr, helps us move beyond dualistic thinking (like good vs. evil) and embrace a more holistic view of reality, recognizing the interconnectedness of all things.
God is a Verb:
He famously states, "God is a verb, not a noun," highlighting the dynamic, active nature of God as revealed in the Trinity.
In essence, Rohr's perspective on the Trinity is a call to experience God as a living, breathing, and relational reality, rather than a static or abstract”.
There is a video too - I haven’t watched it yet, but if anyone is interested, here is the link
https://youtu.be/U1rA_gOgcjs?si=YrnqD-PCdFr-4hJt
Anne thanks for this. Not only is it interesting in its own right, but I feel affirmed in a few things I said in my homily, too.
Delete(Which, true confessions: I checked some of the things I said about the Trinity in the homily with AI. It's way too easy to say something heretical about the Trinity - I've heard preachers say hair-raising things over the years! I don't completely trust AI, either - AI is known to "hallucinate", ie., start making stuff up - but the things it told me accorded with my own understandings, so I ran with it.)
Yes, cede your lifetime of Catholic upbringing and knowledge and clerical training to the hallucinating robot overlords. Jim, Jim.
DeleteJim, your homily reminded me a bit of Rohr’s understanding of Trinity which is why I looked up the book. AI summed it up. Although I find AI often gets things wrong, I think it gets the basics right here. I haven’t read the book, but have read several meditations and commentaries by Rohr on the subject. He has been my favorite spiritual writer for more than 20 years. But you might want to worry about yourself if you are beginning to think like him. He’s considered a heretic by the conservative wing of the church, often reported to his bishop. I’m guessing you don’t want to be reported to your bishop., Rohr must have had open minded bishops because he’s never been silenced. His books and talks also got me interested in Franciscan thought, especially its focus on the incarnation, and not so subtle rejection of much of atonement theology, ideas that affirmed views I had reached on my own. I flew to LA one summer just to take a one week class he was giving at my undergraduate alma mater, LMU. I had heard him speak several times in the DC area, but there were hundreds of people in the audiences. So I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to attend the class with only about 40 people (most were church employees getting getting credits for some kind of certificate) . It allowed genuine discussion and conversation between Rohr and those of us in the class. It was a great class - on Paul mostly. All the lectures were recorded ( several hours each day) and later folded into his books and retreats on Paul.
DeleteAndrew "never an unpublished thought" Greeley wrote a good book on Religion as Poetry. Although he wrote in a very positive vein about poetry, he was probably motivated by all the bad impressions we get about religion as prose from endless homilies, and commentaries on scripture. One of the reasons that religion has become obsolete is that homilies and catechesis are boring.
ReplyDeleteInstead of doing better liturgies we have longer periods of preparation for baptism, first communion, confirmation and marriage. The idea behind reforming the liturgy, putting it into English and unleashing our creatively was to make it more vibrant especially in comparison to the Latin Low Mass with English hymns and readings, and people reading English translations in their missals. Unfortunately, all the flexibility in the New Missal has mostly led to mediocre liturgies, although I have been to some really great ones.
And of course, on Christmas and Easter everybody still comes. I am particularly amazed by the fact that people do not leave Church on those days before the Mass is ended, and in fact linger around talking to all their fellow Catholic whom they haven't seen since last Christmas and Easter.
I read Greeley's book on the Catholic imagination some years ago. However I think Catholics in America have become infected with Protestant notions of "correct" belief. I have heard some RCC priests warn against a "checklist" approach to faith. But I think that all these programs like preCana, RCIA, two years of Confirmation, etc. are exactly that: checklists.
DeleteActually those things seem to me more like gates than checklists. The thing about gates, are they letting people in, or keeping them out? I guess it can work both ways.
DeleteWhat Jack said about people showing up for Christmas and Easter, the Mass where there was literally standing room only here was Ash Wednesday. It's like that every year. Which is puzzling.
Just meant that the info covered in gatekeeping programs becomes a list of do's and don'ts of Catholic practices. No spontaneity, no personal discussion, lots of emphasis on ritual and what to do when in the Mass. And they d-r-a-g on and on for monthd.
DeleteSeems like the programs focus too much on the do' and don'ts, and not enough on the relationship with God.
DeleteSome dioceses have online programs where people can fulfill part of the requirements. The young people especially jump into those and bypass some church lady stuff. Not sure if those programs do any better at fostering a relationship with God.
Interesting. Guessing the use of online programs might be driven by lack of volunteers and low numbers of people who present themselves for instruction. Or maybe it's a way to standardize catechesis. I got the impression from friends and from some of you folks here that RCIA is very different in larger parishes from what we experienced.
DeleteTalked with one of my fellow "graduates" recently, and she reminisced about the time one of the Church Ladies brought her mom's rosary for show and tell and ended up talking the whole time about her big strict German family. Neither of us could figure out what we were supposed to learn from that.
Re: checklists and gate-keeping: I recall one of the (many) things Greeley criticized was bishops rolling out 'programs' (like RCIA, baptism prep, pre-Cana) rather than doing genuine pastoral care.
DeleteI'd like to think that genuine pastoral care can take place in the midst of the 'programs'. Personally, that's what I try to offer. But a 'program' can be run by people who are pastorally tone-deaf. (And honestly, not sure how tone-deaf I am when it comes to pastoral care.) And pastors tend to be happy if the 'program' is running, e.g. if the religious ed classes take place at the appointed time.
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DeleteGenuine pastoral care can look like a lot of things. It's really whether the leader is interested in people or in shoveling info on a timetable in increments that last no more than an hour.
DeleteI remember one of my extremely intelligent high school friends argued that perfect communication between three "persons" would actually be impossible without actually making the three "persons" only one person. Perfect unity of knowledge and will couldn't be divided into three.
ReplyDeleteI have occasionally said that one problem with Catholicism is that it explains not too little, but too much. And it seems to me that an analogy (like a shamrock) is helpful only in cases where somebody actually understands a concept but knows how to "dumb it down" for people who can't understand things in their full complexity (for example, the planetary model of the atom).
"I have occasionally said that one problem with Catholicism is that it explains not too little, but too much."
DeleteMaybe part of that is that our Western minds aren't comfortable with paradox and ambiguity. Puzzles must be solved.
Apply Schrödinger’s equation to the configuration of a negative charge electron bound by electrostatic force to a relatively large mass nucleus. The resulting differential equation can then be solved using Legendre polynomials describing the “cloud” configurations for the different energy levels. Then throw in the Pauli exclusion principle disallowing two electrons of the same spin to occupy the same energy level. How hard can it be?
ReplyDeletelol!
DeleteYah, but what if I run low on dilithium crystals for the transmogrification diffuser and can't initiate the GORP sequence???
Delete😂
Delete...and what about the poor cat?! (Schroedinger's, I mean)
DeleteFor that, Jim, I turn to the Kiffness.
Deletehttps://youtu.be/3BrCvZmSnKA?feature=shared
Haha! This cat is definitely alive: https://youtu.be/ndl9OClJjXo?si=Q1kYlaxN_ACbKSlP
DeleteThanks for the smiles. I loved the cat Kiffness videos. Perfect timing.
DeleteGotta say: in the universe of cat videos, those two are...unique.
DeleteAfter watching those two, this is what Youtube fed me next. Hardly a cat video at all, and YMMV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMK8mEG89ik&list=RDpMK8mEG89ik&start_radio=1
Off topic. From the western front - My son and his wife live in an area with many Mexican immigrants, including their new next door neighbors. He said that a police or military helicopter hovered over their houses for an uncomfortably long time this weekend. They are worried that there will be raids in their own neighborhood. They worry about the kids being frightened.. They go to Spain again for a month this summer, leaving in mid- July. They will be glad to be away. But this year they have had to rent a place for the first time and will only be gone 5 weeks instead of 8 weeks. In past years they arranged home exchanges, so paid no rent. That’s how they could afford going to Spain all summer. But nobody wants to exchange into a home in Los Angeles this year.
DeleteThanks, Jim! Cat vids and Gilbert and Sullivan get me thru the bad days!
DeleteHere's another Pirates of Penzance favorite with Kevin Kline in a puffy shirt.
Deletehttps://youtu.be/uH4IuO55U9I?si=xSsleWCeDPtwcM2Wl
OK, I'll stop now.
My husband is a huge fan of Gilbert and Sullivan. I will look for these on the YouTube channel.
DeleteBy coincidence, for the last few days I have been watching and rewatching a YouTube video of When the Foeman Bares His Steel from the same production as Jean's video above with Kevin Kline. I have loved the number since the first time I encountered it, and I have also loved everything Linda Ronstadt has ever done, but also fascinating to me in this video is the dancing of the man playing the Police Sergeant (Tony Azito). I looked him up in Wikipedia, where he is identified as "an American eccentric dancer and character actor. He was best known for comedic and grotesque parts, which were accentuated by his hyperextended body." He went to Juilliard in 1968 and was in the same class as Patti LuPone and Kevin Kline, but did not graduate. The production of The Pirates of Penzance was in 1983. Azito died of HIV/AIDS in 1995 at the age of 46.
DeleteThat's really sad, David. So many talented people were lost to AIDS. It's hard to find many clips of Azito on YouTube, but he seems to have been one of those double-jointed dancers like Bill Irwin.
Delete