Trinity Sunday is Testimony Sunday: The God that We have Experienced
Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20
Today is testimony Sunday! When we recall and celebrate what God has done in our lives, we testify to his goodness to us. We count our blessings and acknowledge that we are beneficiaries of a lot of good things, which we frankly do not either merit or deserve. Like the proverbial blind men who touched different parts of an elephant and described the animal from the parts of the body they touched, as children of God, we have experienced God in varied ways, and we confess today that he is three-in-one!
Eureka moments reveal the God we have experienced. Having left his country and people, Abram was cornered by the King of Egypt, his wife Sarah taken away from him, and his lot and destiny about to be hijacked, God intervened and sealed up the wombs of the Egyptians and rendered the King of Egypt impotent! The apologies of the King of Egypt to Abram, followed by his liberation and the restoration of Sarah to him, made it clear to Abram that God intervenes in human affairs, and he grants justice to the oppressed – the intervenor God. The flight of Jacob, after the usurpation of the position of Esau, led to his encounter with God, where God’s angels were ascending and descending over his head. Jacob not only realized that “Bethel” – House of God – extends even to where sinners run to, but the journey of Jacob ended with a change of name from Jacob to Israel: a God who protects even sinners, and changes their names to great influence and power – the God of sinners. Elijah, who was full of zeal for God and killed hundreds of the prophets of Baal and worshippers of Ashirah, encountered God in a gentle breeze and not in earthquakes or stormy winds. Elijah’s flight from the murderous intent of Jezebel led him to an encounter with God on Horeb – the God of the mountains, seas, winds and earthquakes. Although invisible to naked eyes, God made himself visible through the presences of Pillar of Cloud (during the day) and column of light (during the night) as he journeyed with the Israelites out of Egypt. This is a God who becomes visible when he chooses and where he chooses to. He used Moses as his instrument to lead his people out of the slavery in Egypt, with “mighty hands” or miraculous wonders – the God that we know and experience!
God is our subject, his appearances is our theme, the various ways we encounter him is our message, and the Trinity is the summary of our God, the God that we know. If God chose to reveal himself to our ancestors in the Faith, through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses; if God chose the modes of his appearances in the Old Testament in the bid to communicate to humanity that he was present among them and journeyed with them; if the people of old were able to realize God’s presence and worship God in the different ways he manifested himself to them; then, the fundamental subject matter of the solemnity of today is that God reveals himself to humanity the way God chooses, and humanity’s role is to realize and accept the fact that God lives among his people from all eternity to eternity. Just explore the different names given to God and you’ll notice how he has been conceived and experienced. That is the Trinity, that is the God we know!
The incarnation of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, continues the good news of God’s presence among his people. The visibility of God in his Son continued God’s eternal plan to be close and near to his people. For God to be man simply purports God’s mediated presence on the basis of God’s volition. The choice of Mary as the Mother of God authenticates the inexhaustible forms and ways through which God reaches out to his children. The setting of judgment day, according to Matthew 25, where charity to every human being is charity done directly to God, continues the idea of the ubiquity (omnipresence) of God, wherever his creatures are found God is there. The salvific presence of God and the unfathomable mystery of his being situates today’s solemnity in the confession of a God who is knowable but places God beyond every human knowledge. As Paul would put it, “we only see dimly in a mirror”; nonetheless, we talk about the God we know, we confess and profess how he has impacted our lives and history.
If the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity comes after the Pentecost, it is because we have experienced God in three major ways, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the Holy Spirit we continue to see that God lives in concealment, but reveals himself for the purposes of salvation. God leaves his Spirit among human beings as an eternal abiding presence of himself. The invisible God remains invisible but visits humanity visibly, and humanity recounts the blessings of this Trinity in the confessions of gratitudes for graces received and anticipated. Sometimes, our names are bearers of God’s magnanimity towards us!
If “mystery” is not what is inexplicably, but what God has revealed, it follows that God continues to reveal himself to us all the times; therefore, the solemnity of today encourages the narrations of how God makes himself known to each human being personally, beyond the universal manifestation of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In fact, if the readings of today prove anything, it is that individuals’ experiences of the Trinity in their lives are of paramount importance than the desire to argue for the rationality and logicality of the God who is three in one. For instance, our second reading lays exclusive emphasis on the adoption of every Christian through the Holy Spirit, the fact that God has incorporated us into the Trinity. In other words, the meaning of the Trinity is incomplete without the inclusion of you and me. The mystery of love which makes God to share his divinity with mere human beings elevates the status of human beings to a divine status; that the manifestation of the Trinity upon earth is for the purposes of bringing humanity into divinity. As a matter of fact, the mystery of the Trinity will continue to be complex because we only know what God has done, but we have no clear knowledge of what God will do in the future; the past doesn’t exhaust the meaning of the Trinity because the future is part and parcel of the Trinity also.
Our first reading convinces us that the journey of the Trinity, which started with the adoption of a group of people, the Israelites, was just a beginning, which has not been exhausted yet. Today, the Trinity brings every human being within the range of his love and adoption. If he started with the adoption of Israel, it is because God wants and anticipated the adoption of the whole of humanity. If Israel only realized the universal project of God to adopt humanity as his children during their Babylonian captivity, then, humanity only has one project, the celebration and confession of what God has done in people’s lives, because God has no favorites. Our gospel today opens the door for the adoption of the entire human race in the words: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
The good news of Trinity Sunday consolidates and confirms that of Pentecost – universalism: just as Pentecost announces the universality of the Church, and the reversal of Babel – the symbol of division, Trinity Sunday celebrates the power and unity in difference. Just as the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, neither is the Holy Spirit the Father nor the Son, yet, there is only one God, it follows that difference is planned, accepted and promoted by God. Indeed, it is in difference that God lives, and reveals himself. To be anti-difference is to be anti-Trinity. “Difference” is not the enemy of unity, but the principle of complementarity: each human being has a purpose from God, and remains vital to the integral manifestation of God upon earth. Yes, welcome difference and let us celebrate the oneness of the different persons of the Most Holy Trinity!
Assignment for the Week:
Give yourself three reasons that make those different from you worthy of acceptance and love!