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Then go to all nations and baptize them
in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit.
Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity.
A lot of ink has been spilled over
the mystery of the Holy Trinity for the past many years.
Indeed, actually sadly, even more blood has been spilled over it.
There are all sorts of wars that have been fought over it.
It always befuddles me why it is so important to kill about it,
why they would get so upset about it.
Even now, the East and the West Church are still split
over a single word called the Filioque.
This means that the spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
That phrase is what keeps us apart, for 1100 years.
I must be missing something!
But the gospel today brings us back to the core of the gospel.
It is more about mission than mystery.
It is, of course, a mystery that we will never fully comprehend.
The core of the Trinity is about mission and movement.
The movement, is best explained or best illustrated by St. Augustine,
who brought much clarity to this back in the fourth century.
He basically used a metaphor to help us to understand the Trinity.
He says that the father is the lover,
the son is the beloved and
the love that flows between them is the Holy Spirit.
I always love that definition or that metaphor,
because it speaks of the movement,
the dynamic movement between father and son.
The father is always loving the son,
and the son is always loving the Father.
And this movement is what the Trinity is about;
and it is what we are called to enter into.
In the letter from St. Paul to the Romans today,
he reminds us that we are adopted children like him.
So we are like him in the sense that we are children of God.
We enter into that Trinitarian formula of
loving the Father and the Father loving us.
And the spirit that enables us to do that flows in and through us.
The challenge is, that it is still up here.
How do we get it from here in the head down to here, the heart?
What do we need to do to live the Trinity in life?
There are many different ways,
but in every relationship it is so important
that we are present to the relationship.
Many of you are married and have loved your spouse for years.
And yet, if we are honest,
how many times has your spouse been talking
and you have no idea what they just said?
You were not paying any attention.
Or with your kids.
You love your kids and your kids love you.
But how often boys and girls, face it,
how often does mom and dad say something to you
and you no idea what they just said, right?
So what happens?
Yeah, you are not, you are all honest and we all do it.
It is hard to pay attention all the time.
That English phrase that we use, “pay attention” is curuious.
If we could look at it in other languages,
it does not translate that way.
In other languages, it translates as not “pay attention”
but it often is translated as “give attention” or to “hold attention.”
Sometimes it is not even translated as give or pay attention at all.
There is no translation in Gaelic,
there is no translation in Irish,
there is no translation for pay attention.
It actually is, “look at me.”
How many times have you said that to your son and daughter?
Hey, look at me. Right?
There is another Irish phrase that goes with it.
It is very close to it and, basically it says, “listen to me.”
In a lot of the African languages, there is no pay attention.
There is no such translation.
The translation is “listen to me.”
And of course, that is exactly what pay attention is all about.
When we love somebody, we pay attention
but it is best if we listen to them or we look at them.
I am going to give you two examples to illustrate this.
One with my dog and one with my bishop and they are not related!
My dog, Bella, is a German shepherd, and she loves squirrels.
In her mind, squirrels are meant to be hunted.
There is no training to change that.
So when she sees a squirrel,
she just tracks that squirrel wherever it goes,
talk about paying attention.
If I want her to do something, I have to say
“Hey, hey Bella, look at me. Bella Bella.”
And the squirrel is there and she is looking at me
and if I hold a treat, then she will look at me.
But eventually, she does look at me,
but it is the look at me that keeps her focus.
And then we can go on our way.
When I come in from a long day, she is waiting for me
to give her some attention and love.
She stares at me until I give it; “look at me” she is saying!!
Then the second one is about Bishop PJ,
who God rest his soul, passed away one year ago.
When I was his vicar general,
we would meet every single week
and we would go through a list of the things I was working on
or he needed me to do or attend to.
Eventually he would realize I was not listening.
He would say, “Brendan, Brendan, look at me, Brendan, look at me.”
And then I would look up and he would say
“No, we are not going to do that.”
I was shocked.
It would be like, what happened?
Where did we go?
Of course I was not paying attention.
I was not looking at him.
That idea to look at me, listen to me,
is critical in every loving relationship,
whether it be a dog or a bishop,
or a spouse or a friend or a child.
It is the very thing that Christ asks us to do
in our relationship with him and the Father and the Son, the Trinity,
is to pay attention, is to look at the Father and listen to him;
to pay attention to what his will is for us in our lives.
Because each day it will be slightly different.
One day you are being called to comfort somebody,
be present to somebody else in their loss, in their grief.
Another day you are called to be ministered to
in your loss in a different way.
Another day, you are just to be present to somebody
so that that their light can shine for a moment,
another day it might be your light that is called to shine.
But unless we pay attention,
as in looking at and listening to what God wants us to do,
we will never know what our role is meant to be.
The mystery of the Trinity is more mission,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
the love that is shared between them.
We enter into this love as disciples so that we look at God.
Let us listen to God so that we can do his will in our lives.
Then go to all nations and baptize them
in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit.
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