Trinity Sunday 2022 - God revealed in Creation, Cross, & Church

 Throughout the Church year, the feasts and solemnities of the liturgical calendar celebrate different dimensions of our Catholic faith. We celebrate events from the life of Jesus: like his joyous birth at Christmas, his salvific death on Good Friday, his glorious Resurrection on Easter Sunday. We also celebrate the feast days of the saints, typically on the anniversaries of their martyrdoms or natural deaths – like the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch on October 17.

But today, on this solemnity of the Holy Trinity, we don’t celebrate an event from the life of Jesus or one of his holy saints, we celebrate the nature of God, who God is, and what God has done.

And as a way of gently handling this most august and mysterious of topics, I’d like to reflect on three C’s. Three C’s. Creation, Crucifixion, and Church.

In the first reading, we heard of the glories of Creation: mountains, hills, fountains, fields, earth and dirt, the heavens and skies, sea and water. God Created all these things and therefore must have pre-existed all of these things. God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—has existed from all eternity—and the three divine persons, working together, have brought all aspects of creation into being. 

What is the most beautiful place you’ve ever visited? A mountain top, the grand canyon, the ocean, a lush forest, a secluded lake? I’ve been blessed to have been able to travel to a lot of different locals. I remember vacationing in Canada one year, up in the Kawartha Lakes of Northern Ontario and waking up one early morn and seeing the first glimmers of sunlight on the glassy lake, the morning mist just gently hovering over the waters, the calm ever-green forest lining the shores of the lake, just being moved to tears at how grateful I was to take in the beauty of Creation.

Creation is beautiful-- because God—the Creator—is infinitely beautiful—and He has made creation very good. Pope Pius XII back in 1955 reflected upon how finite Creation hints at God’s infinite beauty. He said, Creation, “which offers itself to the inspection of the attentive observer, reveals an inexhaustible wealth of goodness and beauty, reflecting back with transparent sincerity the infinite superabundance of the perfection and beauty of nature's Creator.”

“Sometimes one is enchanted and overcome by the majesty of towering mountains, at other times by the irresistible fury of the ocean tempest, the solitude of polar glaciers, the vast stretch of virgin forests, the melancholy of the desert sands, the loveliness of flowers, the limpid quality of water, the violent rush of waterfalls, the distinctive beauty of the Northern Lights... Greater astonishment and wealth of knowledge are offered by... the secrets of the animal kingdom... in forests and in inhospitable deserts, on rivers and in the depths of the sea. What a testimony to the richness and manifold variety of nature... to soothe, recreate and refresh the spirit."

So, on this Trinity Sunday, reflect, perhaps on the beauty of nature, tell someone about the most beautiful place you’ve ever visited. Thank God for his beautiful creation. And endeavor to be a good steward of that creation.

The first C—Creation. The Second C--The Cross. The Cross too reveals something about God to us, it reveals God’s love. On the Cross we see the love of God made visible. The Father so loved the world, that he sent his Son to suffer and die to redeem us. God is love, and there is no greater love than one who lays down his life for others. Creation was a labor of love, well, so was the cross, the greatest labor of love: the labor that saved us from the grasp of hell. 

And through the Cross, through the Crucifixion, the Holy Trinity has transformed the ugliness of suffering into an instrument of human sanctification and redemption. Suffering now has meaning and redemptive power, so much so that we can say with St. Paul in our second reading: “we are able, now to boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

On this Trinity Sunday, turn to a crucifix, contemplate the love of God for you, in suffering for you, dying for you, you a sinner, loved with love beyond all telling. Ask the Father to help you to love as much as he does, Ask the Son to help you to love as much as he does, as the Holy Spirit to help you love as much as He does.

Creation, Cross, and finally, Church. The Church also reveals something about God—she reveals that God is still at work. The Church’s very existence is willed by God, she is sustained by God, animated by God, taught by God, directed toward God, protected by God, ordered by God, sent out by God. The Church reveals that God involves us in His work—to save souls. 

Also, St. Basil the Great, the fourth century doctor of the Church, taught that the Church has the duty to reflect God’s nature. The world is to know that God is a Trinity—a Communion of Love—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—through the way we worship and treat each other.

The Trinitarian nature of God is certainly seen in the way we worship. In the celebration of Mass, we unite ourselves to the Son, who offers Himself to the Father, that the grace of salvation may redeem the human race through the power of the Holy Spirit. Our sacred hymns today especially invoke, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We baptized in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Sins are absolved in Sacramental Confession in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit. The dying are comforted and the sick are brought healing and strength in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit.

But the nature of the Triune God is not just revealed by the Church’s worship and sacramental life, but the Church acts in his name out in the world. We seek to be faithful to the Commands of the Father, as Christ was obedient. We seek to imitate Christ’s goodness, his self-sacrifice, his self-donation, his endurance, his love for sinners. And we seek to be animated by the gifts of the holy spirit and the fruits of the holy spirit for the building up of the church and the mission of spreading the Gospel. Just like the beauty of God can be detected in creation, just like the love of God was revealed on the cross, the truth, goodness, and beauty of the living God—Father, Son, and Spirit, are to be manifest in the life of the Church.

So, on this great Solemnity consider how your life is called to mirror, reflect, make manifest, make known the Triune God—His Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Love for the glory of God and salvation of souls.