Thursday 15 June 2017

Trinity Sunday 11 June 2017 Sermon

Trinity Sunday 11.6.17 Praising God

Who made the world? God made the world.

But who made God, the question sometimes follows. No one made God because He had no beginning. He always was.

Or, better to say that He exists outside of time and does not change. It was He who created time, with its past and future. For Himself there is no past or future; only an eternal Now.

This is hard to grasp, but no less true for that. Many falter on belief in God because they cannot understand His infinity, His eternity, and they settle for some view that they find more manageable – like saying there is no God at all; or forming a lesser god, such as an animal or something of one’s own making (eg golden calf, Ex 32).

Dealing with God we have to start with what He tells us, not what we tell Him! We have to deal with reality as it is, not how we might shape it.

So today we acknowledge our belief in God, and all He has revealed to us.

Today is God's own feast day, a day for reflection on His own self. On this day especially we give Him praise and thanks.

Our main purpose for existing is to know love and serve God. This we might find difficult: for one thing we are tempted to ignore God and go our own way. For another thing, even with the right intentions, we find it hard to hold concepts of God in our mind, being creatures who rely so much on what we can see, hear, touch etc.

We can work our way to the mysterious world of God through prayer, sacraments, and holy lives.

We have the liturgical worship of the Church to help us along because the Mass and Office and Adoration are direct praise of God. We do not have to rely only on what we can produce in our own minds.

God the Son, having human nature, helps us greatly because in that human nature He worships God also!

We are very small players here, being lifted to great heights, to which we could never ascend without God’s own help.

We are finite beings and we cannot hope to exhaust Infinity. It is sufficient if we can just get within His range (comparable to getting sunlight, without needing to go to the Sun).

We must avoid the temptation to skip the worship of God, and go straight into asking Him for things. He wants us to ask, but we should position ourselves correctly before we do that.

Yet while we honour Him for His infinite goodness, we can still claim His direct attention in our tiny lives.

He can be micro as well as macro.

We can talk to Him, without even needing a phone! But we must not forget His greatness and take Him for granted. We can be close but never disrespectful.

Our requests will come out of a proper perspective, humble and expectant, able to adapt to whatever He decides.

What He most wants from us is that we learn to love – firstly, to love Him, in awe of His wonders, and in gratitude for His goodness to us.

Then, to love one another, which is the natural consequence of a proper relationship with God.

Considering God as Trinity we gain some insight into His nature: that He is within Himself a community of Love.

We are striving to get everyone to love one another down here, but God does it perfectly.

There has never been a single argument in His own community. The Church on earth should be as harmonious as the life of the Trinity in Heaven. Obviously we have to do a lot more work on that point, but at least we know where we are headed.

It is an insult to God if we introduce discord into His perfect creation – We owe it to Him to get this right.


All glory be to God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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