The Solemnity of the Holy Trinity

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060312.cfm

Did anything so great ever happen before?
Was it ever heard of?
Did a people ever hear the voice of God
speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?

The doctrine of the Trinity stands high on our list of “infallible” doctrines, along with the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, and Grace as the unearned gift of our merciful God. A denomination or sect which denies the Trinity relegates itself to the further reaches of Christian fellowship. Their deity becomes less and less familiar to Roman Catholics.

But the doctrine of the Trinity has not found much sympathy in our dominant culture. The American Civil Religion rarely-if-ever acknowledges it. It is too subtle for bumper stickers and too esoteric for tent revivals and crusades. Muslims and Jews, of course, flatly deny it.

The doctrine also challenges the American ethos of individuality. Our notion of freedom lionizes the lone (male) hero who bows his head to no one. He thinks his own thoughts, advances his own career, despises bureaucracy and relies on himself alone. Though he might claim Jesus as his personal savior, he doesn’t ponder Jesus’ obedient love of His Father. The rugged individual has no use for an obedient God. 

In today’s second reading Saint Paul reminds the Romans:

... you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a Spirit of adoption,
through whom we cry, "Abba, Father!"

In these few words we learn of our place. Unlike Jesus the Son of God, we are “adopted children;” but nonetheless we enjoy the privilege of praying in the familiar language of Jewish children, “Abba, Father!” The Holy Spirit has taught us that unearned but dear familiarity.

We recognize the primacy of God the Father in the Holy Trinity. He is the Speaker of the Spoken Word and the Breather of the Spirit. In so doing The Father has exhausted his infinitely resourceful love, if we can use such bold language. The infinitely generous Father has poured himself out with perfect abandon in speaking the Word and breathing the Spirit. Nothing more can be given.

In their turn Jesus and the Holy Spirit (the Paraclete or Advocate) receive God’s perfect love and respond accordingly. When Jesus gave himself utterly and without stint both in life and in death we could say with Saint John, “We have seen his glory.” As Catholics gaze upon the crucifix we see the utter abandonment of Jesus in love. Like his Father, he has poured out his life, his blood and his spirit. There is nothing left.

Lest we misunderstand Jesus’ love of the Father as a pious affectation, we should hear his insistence upon his obedience to the Father. It appears throughout the Gospels, and is explained most clearly in the fifth chapter of Saint John. There is no love which is not obedient.

When we forget the binding authority of love, we are left only with the empty shells of sterile piety and impotent knowledge. That seems to be problem with American Civil Religion. It is eager to wave flags but unwilling to make sacrifice for the common good.

Because Christians worship an obedient, supremely generous God we are bound to community, church and world. We cannot divorce ourselves from any of these relationships, much less our spouses or children. We belong to one another as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit belong to one another. Without that grounding we are like a kite without string -- unanchored, blown hither and yon, without purpose, meaning or hope.