Trinity Sunday - Year B
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity replaces the Ordinary Time Mass this weekend, so vestments are white again, even though they were green during the week for Ordinary Time (which resumed last Monday).
The Trinity is, of course, a mystery we can never completely comprehend. Yet God did not reveal the Trinity just to mystify us. The doctrine of the Trinity is our attempt to express the ways that humans have experienced God’s presence. In one of his daily meditations, Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr writes: “The fourth-century Cappadocian Fathers tried to communicate this notion of life as mutual participation by calling the Trinitarian flow a ‘circle dance’ (perichoresis) between the three. They were saying that whatever is going on in God is a flow that’s like a dance; and God is not just the dancer, God is the dance itself ! The Incarnation is a movement — Jesus comes forth from the Father and the Holy Spirit to take us back with him into this eternal embrace, from which we first came (John 14:3). We are invited to join in the dance and have participatory knowledge of God through the Trinity.”
The key point here is participation. We do not celebrate the Trinity as an abstract concept. What we celebrate is the truth that we have been invited to share in the very life of the Trinity, to be caught up in the divine dance and the divine embrace. This is what salvation means, and it is the whole goal of salvation history.
So this is a day to rejoice in the Father’s love and the Son’s grace and the Spirit’s unifying and life-giving presence. At the end of this celebration, the assembly should be ready to echo the words of Moses: “Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of?” How privileged we are to share God’s very life!
Then, of course, we are called to share the good news and invite others to share in our good fortune. The motive for evangelization should not be primarily to increase church membership but to lead people to know and love God as we do, to invite them to experience the love that makes our lives worth living.
On Stewardship
Today’s second reading reminds us that we are the adopted sons and daughters — the heirs — of God. We are good stewards of our inheritance when we share our faith and fulfill Our Lord’s command to “go . . . and make disciples of all the nations.”
Go, Make Disciples Of All Nations
God the Father, Creator; God the Son, Redeemer; God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier. When we go out to "make disciples of all nations", we have a lot to tell! God is present everywhere. Would you be willing to proclaim the truth of God’s love and presence in your life as a priest, religious or deacon? If so, call
Fr. Matthew McCarthy
Vocation Director, Archdiocese of Toronto
(416) 261-7207 ext. 801,
vocations@archtoronto.org
www.vocationstoronto.ca
