June 7, 2009

Trinity Sunday - Cycle C

Fr. Larry Richards

Good morning. First we want to recognize our guests from Grace Baptist. I know you are here

somewhere. Where are you? Stand on up. Let us welcome you. Tell Al I am going to beat him for not

coming. I know he is away but just tell him anyway. As we come today and we celebrate the mystery of

the Trinity, I don’t think most people get even what the Trinity is, huh? You know the Trinity of God, by

definition is a mystery of course but I don’t think the people really realize. These last two days I was up

speaking at Walsh University up at North Canton, Ohio. And someone came and they were talking to

me and they say oh something about they were talking about “God oh I mean Jesus.” And I say, “Huh?”

And they say, “Well, Jesus.” And I say, “Well, Jesus is God.” “Well, yeah, I guess.” “Not yeah I guess. He

is; One in being with the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” The mystery

of the Trinity course is that God is One Person in Three Divine Persons - One God in Three Divine Persons

- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Is the Father greater than the Son? No. Is the Son greater than the

Father? No. Is the Spirit greater than either? No. They are all equal. One in being, One God in Three

Persons. We couldn’t even begin to get this unless it was Revelation. God revealed to us. He told us

about Himself.

And what we have to do is we meet this mystery with the ascent of what? Faith. It is saying, “Yes God, I

believe that you are God in which you tell me I believe and it is ascent of faith that gives us life to this

reality. It’s not just the ascent of faith that we stay after we have this homily we all stand up and profess

our faith. That is an intellectual thing. When we are talking about this faith, we are talking about a faith

that demands our life; a faith that demands everything as we enter in to relationship with the Trinity of

God. And yet by definition, we will never understand the Trinity. Correct? You know, if you ever want

to blow your mind, I want to blow it right now. I like to do this to people. So what we want to do is just

try to for a moment, go with me, and try to think that something had no beginning. Just try to think for

a second of no beginning. You know because what we try to do is then when we see something we

think, “Where is it coming from?” “Where did that come from?” “When was it created?” God by

definition had no beginning, right? So let your mind try to get around that concept for a moment. Go

for it. Sit there and try to think about God. God had no beginning. Do you comprehend it? No. Your

mind goes, pew! It cannot take something having no beginning. It is beyond us. Way beyond us. And

by definition God must be beyond us. He cannot, we can only ascend the faith of the mystery of the

Trinity, but, we can experience the mystery of the Trinity in our own life. Because the spirit, through the

power of God’s Holy Spirit we can enter into this relationship.

You know, you come into our church and the first thing you see up here, well most people anyway is the

Trinity. The Father holds the Son. The Father and the Son brings forth the Holy Spirit. And so if you look

at this representation, the Father is giving. The Son is giving. The Spirit is giving. By definition, you

know some people sit there and say, “I wonder was God lonely before He created everybody?” God has

never been lonely. God by definition is a community of Trinity and always gives. The Father always

gives. The Son always gives. The Spirit always gives. And that is why we call the God of the Universe

the God of Love. God is love. It is about giving away yourself. So this God of love is constantly giving of

Himself in communion with each other. And then this God of love by definition goes beyond itself and

creates us out of love. And so we, every time we enter in, every time we as Catholics say prayers, what

is the first thing you do when you say a prayer? Make a sign of the cross. And again, when we make the

sign of the cross, it is like God sweeping us into His own love. When we say in the name of the Father

and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, it is like God the Holy Spirit coming down and bringing us in this

community of Trinity. That every prayer is involving the whole Trinity of God. That there is no way to

separate one from the other. It is always involving this community of love. And to sit there and think of

the greatness.

Like again when I was, yesterday, or Friday night when I start speaking to these people up in Canton. I

said, “Listen, I want you to experience God. I don’t want to just talk about God. Because if I just talk

about Him you will just go right from here and saying, “Oh wasn’t that nice. Father said some nice

things and I got some insights in to God.” Who cares? I want you to experience God. So then again I

took them through my regular ten minute experiential prayer. I said, “Okay. Be still,” as I always do.

“Now close your eyes. Now breathe deeply. And just start to reflect that God is all around you. Right

now as we are breathing God is all around us.” But boy that isn’t enough. If God is all around us, so

what? We as Christians believe God is… where is God? In us. The Trinity of God dwells within you and

me. The day we were baptized and right after this mass we will baptize two babies. And when we

baptize these two babies, we do this so that they can experience now, in their young lives, the

indwelling of God’s Spirit; the indwelling of God the Father; the indwelling of Jesus Christ. So they can

experience now what it is to be in relationship with the God of the Universe. That God always wants,

not just to be up here looking down, but in here. Living and dwelling within you and me.

And so what needs to happen, we have to come to that reality in our daily life. That know, back when I

was sitting here and I was, there was a great sister, Sister Ann Shields who was preaching with me this

past weekend. She is an older lady. Now she has been involved in the Charismatics from the beginning.

And as she sits there, this woman just permeates the Trinity of God. You looked at her and you could

just see the God of the Universe dwelling within her. And see as I was looking at her I was thinking, this

is what we are all called to become. We are called to become this image, this dwelling place of God;

that when people look at us we become this shell and they see the God of the Universe dwelling within

us. You see we bring forth the Trinity of God to everybody we meet when we act like the Trinity. And

when we act like the Trinity, means that we become people of love; that this Trinity is always about

unity. So we are never exclusive. We always bring everybody together. God is the Father of us all. And

so our job then is to always unify, never divide. So anybody who comes in to our church, anybody who

comes in to our life, anybody who ever comes in to our work, anybody ever, our job is to expose them to

the Trinity of God living within us.

And we do this by two things, by inviting them into this relationship of the Trinity, and the way we invite

them in to the relationship of the Trinity is by doing what? Loving them, loving them. God is love. The

only commandment God ever gave us in Christ was what? Love one another as I have loved you. So the

way we invite people the way we bring people in to this relationship with the Trinity is we love them and

we love them just the way God does, by giving our life for them; by being more concerned about others

than we are about ourselves. You see when we do this we are participating in the outpouring of God’s

Trinity. And this can’t just be a theological nice thing I think about. It has to be something that I live.

That every day when someone comes in to my life, when I just meet somebody, when somebody is

introduced to me, my job is, Lord help me to give my life for this person in the way you are calling me to

give this life to this person so that they can experience your love within me; that they can be invited into

this relationship with the Trinity.

Because when it is all said and done the only thing heaven is going to be is the place where God loves us,

where we love Him, and we love each other forever. And that begins now when we become people of

love; when we start exemplifying in our lives the love of the trinity; when we sit there and we give away

our life. Not just live for self, give away our life. So today is the day we focus on the mystery but we just

don’t focus on it as a teaching, we experience it in the reality of the way we live. We enter in deeply

when we pray and then we enter in deeply when we meet others by inviting them in to this relationship

by our loving them. And our humanity would do it weakly, in a weak way. That we just don’t have to

worry about our humanity we get the grace of God, the power of God that all you have to do is just

surrender to that power and God will do the rest. You got it? Get it? Going to live it? You better! May

each of you know His love today and forever, amen.