1. -- Lanie LeBlanc OP -
2. -- Dennis Keller OP -
3. -- Fr. John Boll OP -
4. --
5. --(Your reflection can be here!)

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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

June 15, 2025

Proverbs 8:22-31; Responsorial Psalm 8:4-9; Romans 5:1-5; Gospel Acclamation Revelation 1:9; John 16:12-15

This first Sunday after Pentecost celebrates the Holy Trinity. God who is three persons but one is obviously a mystery for us. Talk about God, study about God and how God is, works, and lives runs is primarily speculation as only those who have died and Moses and his elders have seen God. Jesus is God and human. His divine nature is hidden in his incarnated body and its nature. While logic is helpful to scholastics and academics, for the rest of us the Trinity remains a mystery. We worship the Trinity, but we do not know the Trinity. In first letter of John (4:20) it is written: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” Again, John writes (4:8) “Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.” And again in 4:11-12: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we must love one another. No one has seen God. Yet if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.”

The first reading this Sunday is from the book of Proverbs. Its description of the creation of the world is evidence of Wisdom. This writer personifies wisdom. He sees creation as designed, well put together in a functional manner as only great wisdom could do. This proverb teaches that creation itself tells us about God. Only a Creator with great wisdom could have done such an intricate, complex, complicated job.

As we grow in experience, we tend to have illness or accidents. Those have a way of reminding us of the complexity of our bodies. I found out that my feet have nerves hardwired to my balance system. Without those nerves deadened by chemo, my balance is tenuous. I know that because of my experience of loss of those nerves to function as designed. Each part of our bodies, each minuscule bit of our brain is complex. How can this complexity be and still function mostly without our realizing the details?

When I share time with special friends, I am amazed at my feelings and the understanding of their feelings. I feel an attraction to them and appreciate them and overlook failings. How does this work, how do I have feelings: how do they arise? How do I understand love, even for those who died? How is love possible that we voluntarily sacrifice for family, friends, nation? How could God care enough about us that the son of God took on the evil that exists in the world and conquers it? What is even more challenging to note is that we are also moved to take on the evil that exists. We have hope this will have an ultimate positive outcome because Jesus’ struggle was won by his death. Then his victory was his rising from the tomb.

Anyone appreciating botany or animal science, or geology marvels at its complexity. There is a visible beauty, understandable, and attractive to anyone who takes time to enjoy it. Where does beauty come from? Is it only in the eye of the beholder? Or is beauty a standard that is born in us without any effort on our part? That is what the first reading from the book of Proverbs is about.

The second reading taken from Paul’s letter to the Romans begins with the gift of faith. We should not think we have faith because we decided to get it. We can accept faith or reject it. But it is a gift. That is Paul’s teaching. Because we accept faith we experience peace with God. Faith is a grace, a power by which we stand. Even our afflictions, our troubles have value in the light of faith. Those produce endurance in our characters. We know that affliction produces endurance and endurance character, and character hope. This hope does not disappoint us. Because of hope, the love of God pours into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. That love is the grace that powers us through affliction, producing endurance, producing proven character, and hope for union with God, and one another. In the experience of selfless loving, we learn how to love God.

The gospel presents Jesus speaking to the disciples. He spent three years teaching them, demonstrating how to grow in love with one another in their small but ever-expanding community. He promises they will receive the Spirit of Truth to guide them to all truth. In the Morning Prayer for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, the alternate prayer is this: “Eternal Father, reaching from end to end of the Universe and ordering all things with your mighty arm; for you, time is the unfolding of truth that already is; the unveiling of beauty that is yet to be. Your son saved us in history by rising from the dead, so that transcending time he might free us from death. May his presence among us lead to the vision of unlimited truth and unfold the beauty of your love.”

Why all these words? The only way we can come to know God is by what God has done in the visible world. Certainly, there are in history mystics having direct contact with God. Reading a practical guide to those mystics, we note they grew into their relationship with God. It was effort, it was work. Most of us learn through experience. If we comprehend the wisdom in creation; if we look beyond mere existence to see the detail, the complexity, the interdependence that exists in all creation, we discover beauty in its structure, its complexity, its development, its reproduction, its ability to heal itself. In its beauty we discover wisdom.

When we learn to love one another, especially our first love, there is a change in us. Others become subjects, no longer objects to be used for our advantage. Any person incapable of love is a sorrowful sight. Their living is an endurance marathon. We experience feelings. We have faith, often in things, sometimes in others. Whomever grows in faith in Jesus who reveals God to us has a human nature like our own. Having hearts that believe God loves “me” encourages us to endure afflictions. That endurance feeds growth of character to increased selflessness. Our love of one another becomes stronger and our lives more complete. That love becomes directed by our love for another and others to the Creator in the revelation of the Word, and in the power and energy of the Spirit. They are a Trinity so bound up in selfless love for one another that they are one. They are the model for us of Community. The Trinity is a Community of three bound together by selfless love. Our Parish Community is a Community bound by the Spirit that graces us with love. We hear the Word each Sunday and we receive that Word as nourishment and unifying energy in Communion. We become One with our faith Community. That is the eternal life of God promised us. We begin to live it now and can grow in the minutes and hours of this life. That is why we have the gift of time, so we can grow. Let us trust in God who loves us. Let us give thanks to God always for the gift of life and faith.

Dennis Keller Dennis@PreacherExchange.com
 

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Volume 2 is for you. Your thoughts, reflections, and insights on the next Sundays readings can influence the preaching you hear. Send them to preacherexchange@att.net. Deadline is Wednesday Noon. Include your Name, and Email Address.
-- Fr. John