Thursday 11 June 2020

Trinity Sunday 7 Jun 2020 Sermon

Trinity Sunday 7.6.20 Immersed in the Mystery

We have feast days for angels and saints. If they deserve a feast day, how much more the One who is far and away the greatest Being. So today could be called the Feast of God Himself, one God, three Persons.

As we worship God we grow in understanding of Him, and love for Him.

We seek to love God for His own sake, and not just for what He can do for us. It is good to be grateful, and we could never recount all His kindness to us; but even better than gratitude is a pure response to His infinite goodness.

We are created to know, love and serve God. ‘Serving’ we can understand as that is definable – we do certain tasks, for instance.

But ‘loving’ God seems more abstract.  We are dealing with someone so much greater than ourselves. We love in proportion to how much of Him we experience.

That in turn will depend on how seriously we seek Him, or are open to receiving His initiatives.

We can love God while still having only imperfect understanding of Him. There is Mystery, which we can approach but never exhaust.

If we dive into an ocean we lose ourselves in a vast sea; our interacting with God is like that - we immerse ourselves in Him.

We let go of our own ideas and desires; and trust that God can give us something much better.

We open our hearts and minds to His influence; and the more we do that the more responsive we become.

Rather than expand ourselves towards God, there has always been the temptation to try to reduce God to our size.

The Trinity has been a case in point. Some say: you cannot have more than one God, so there can be no Trinity.

We reply that we also believe in one God, but it is not for us to limit Him; our part is to respond to what He reveals to us.

Clearly He has revealed Himself as a Trinity of Persons. Whether we understand or not does not change this basic truth.

Then there is the tendency to demand that God fit into our expectations: if something happens that we do not like, we blame God.

Or again, the tendency to love the things that God has given us – food, wine, the wonders of nature, human love and friendship etc - to put all these things ahead of the One who has given them to us.

Shedding all possible errors and imbalances, we present ourselves in the Divine Presence, and submit every thought or desire to His providence.

This is how to love God – total submission because we trust.

We share in His perfect oneness, where there is no discord or rivalry. Our human communities could learn some lessons from the Trinity.

Of the three Persons it is God the Son we know best. He is our main contact point, but we can approach any of the Three, and we find our prayers indicate that.

We have many images of God, and we can use them whenever they are helpful; remembering that no image can do more than point us in the right direction. No image can exhaust the full reality of God. He is not a triangle, or a shamrock!

Any one Divine Person possesses the full nature of God, so if you are speaking to One you are speaking to all.

We  benefit being caught up in such company! The closer we come to any of the three Divine Persons the stronger our human frailty will become.

There is a constant interaction between the three Persons, making God a Source of perfect love.

Anyone who thinks that God is passive and remote is very mistaken. There is great vitality in His inner life; and we are lucky enough to share in that life.

All Glory to the Blessed Trinity.








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