SUNDAY, MAY 18, 2008AD
TRINITY SUNDAY
Yet………
On June 6, 1994, a young girl stood on a dock in Dover, England as an honorary flotilla to Calais, France was about to set sail in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. She said a prayer which our community prays every Thursday morning after Holy Communion. It is called the Universal Prayer for Peace.
Jesus, lead us from death to life.
Jesus, lead us from falsehood to truth.
Jesus, lead us from despair to hope.
Jesus, lead us from fear to trust
Jesus, lead us from darkness to light.
Jesus, lead us from hatred to love.
Jesus, lead us from war to peace.
Prince of Peace, give Your Peace to our hearts, our nations, our planet, our universe.
We still need to offer the prayer which the young girl offered. Sadly, our world offers us negatives from which we need true liberation. We live in a world of violent death, falsehood, despair, fear, darkness, hatred and war.
We believe, as Catholics, that Jesus can, indeed, lead us to where God wants us to be. Yet, the Way can be difficult.
On Trinity Sunday, we are reminded that ultimately each of us is created in image and likeness of God. Yet, despite our apparent insignificance compared to the wonders of nature, God made us little less than the angels and crowned us with honor and glory.
The Trinity reminds us of three realities about ourselves, since we are created in that divine image and likeness. Early on, Church writers spoke of the Process of Perichoresis (literally, a dancing around) in the Trinity. The Trinity exists in mystery; the Trinity exists in relationship; the Trinity exists in equality. One thing that the Trinity tells us is that somehow, the very nature of God is relational. Is it any wonder or surprise that our nature is relational also?
We are created in the image of the Trinity. We exist in mystery; we exist in relationship; we exist in equality. As St Luke tells us, “In God, we live and move and have our being.” The Triune God exists in us; we exist in the Triune God.
If each of us, as disciples of Jesus, takes our humanity and His Gospel seriously, then, with God’s Help, we can try not to change the world. We can try to change ourselves.
We can never know ourselves completely. We know that we thrive in relationships. We say that we are all equal in God’s eyes, although we do not always take that seriously.
We can use a reverse human image to understand God. We can imagine God with two hands. God’s right hand showers us with countless blessings, for which we occasionally express gratitude. However, God has a left hand as well. It is sometimes through the painful mysteries of life that are sent our way that we can become the person created in the divine image and likeness that God wants us to be. Still, because of the Incarnation of the God-Man, the Christ Quantum brings all creation, most especially human persons into the Life of the Trinity. Christ lives in us now; we live in Christ now. We are drawn into the Divine Orbit.
Yet, Christians speak of the Paschal Mystery. It is through the process of dying and rising again and again in our journey through life that our old selves can die to illusion and be born into the Life that God has intended for us all from the beginning.
Let us try to live by the Three Noble Truths, viz., 1) Life will get hard for us someday and someday, we will die. 2) We are not the center of the universe. 3) Our lives are not about us; our lives are about Something greater. Our lives are about Life in Christ died and Risen.
All in all, everything ultimately is infinitely knowable and infinitely unknowable at the same time. The Trinity is ultimately beyond comprehension; reality is ultimately beyond comprehension; the other person is ultimately beyond comprehension. Surprise, we are ultimately beyond comprehension!! We are all created in the Image and Likeness of the Trinitarian God.
When our telescopes look into the far reaches of the Outer Space, they see galaxies obviously in relationship; when our microscopes look into far reaches of Inner Space, they see atoms and molecules obviously in relationship.
The Creator is in relationship. Why would not the Creation, the Creator’s handiwork, of which Christ Jesus is the archetype of creation (according to
