“Behold I am with you until the end of the age.”
Every now and then I come across a word that I really love
because it expresses something in single word
that often takes a sentence to express in other ways.
Once such word is “ineffable.”
It means that whatever you are trying to describe
is inexpressible in words.
It is one of those things “onomatopoeia”
that sounds like what it is.
It is ineffable.
The feast day of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is ineffable.
No words can ever explain the mystery.
In fact, God is ineffable.
There are no words that can ever contain God;
can ever fully describe God;
words can give attributes to God
but can never in totality explain who God is.
Hilary of Poitiers in France in the 3rd century said that
“When they defined the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity
that they put into words something
that was better left unexpressed
because it is ineffable.”
I think that is true.
And yet, here we are, celebrating the feast day of the Most Holy Trinity
and in every church all over the world,
there will be homilies preached poorly about this subject.
Just like mine we will fail to articulate
what the Holy Trinity really means but we will try.
I premise my comments today with a reminder the Trinity is ineffable.
Still we need to address it because it is a feast day.
But know that the words are not intended to bring any finality,
any completion to this subject of the Most Holy Trinity,
the God who is three persons in one.
For centuries, theologians, priests and religious people
have tried to express the meaning of the Trinity
and some are more memorable than others.
Of course, being from Ireland I have to mention
St. Patrick’s classic of the three-leaf shamrock.
Three persons on one leaf.
But none of these explain what the Trinity means.
There is the concept of three persons in one God.
It is beyond our comprehension.
There is one metaphor that for me stands the test of time
as the best chance of communicating the essence of this mystery.
It is St. Augustine’s most beautiful one.
He says that God the Father is the lover.
God the Son is the beloved.
And the flow of love between them is God the Holy Spirit.
And that there is a constant flow of love
that goes back and forth the members of the Trinity.
When we love someone,
we enter into God’s love;
we participate in the Holy Trinity.
I think that is probably the best way to describe it.
But again, the challenge with this is that we still stay in our heads.
And we need to bring this down into our hearts
because love is not a head thing.
Love is a heart thing.
If we stay in our head,
we can learn a lot about love by thinking about it
but it does not really allow us to experience love
until we allow our heart,
to allow ourselves to be loved and to love.
That is how we then can live the Most Holy Trinity.
Let me give you an example:
Think for a moment of somebody in your life who loves you:
I am hoping there is some one person in your life
that could fill this description.
I pray that it is true for everyone but I do not think it is necessarily so.
But if there is some one person who has,
no matter what you have done or would do
you know that they would love you.
No matter what you have done or would do,
you know that they will love you for who you are.
They may not like what you have done in those bad things
but they will love you and you and you know it.
You know that they will love you through and through.
When we move from just thinking about that
and allowing that into our heart, that changes us.
When we know in our heart, not just in our head,
that we are loved in that way it changes everything.
The whole world becomes larger.
It just becomes almost infinite.
Because well it does not matter what we do.
That person may have been a mother or a father.
It may have been a sibling who has loved you through and through;
or maybe it is a best friend or spouse.
When we feel loved like that,
and it may be only for a moment that we feel that,
but that is how God loves us.
There is nothing that we could do
or have ever done to separate us from God’s love.
And the challenge for us is not just to have that as a thought,
as a mind, as a head concept
but like the Trinity to allow it into our hearts
because that changes everything.
Then life life becomes exactly what he promised in Christ Jesus;
life is eternal because love is eternal.
That is the fundamental message of the Most Holy Trinity
that God so loved the world that
he entered into the world as one of us in Jesus Christ;
and that the love flowed continuously and still flows;
and that is for every one of us who is human;
he wants everyone of us to know
that he loves us in that same, profound way
and that nothing will ever separate us from that love.
No sickness.
No death.
Nothing will separate us.
My friends, that changes everything
Again, the danger is to stay up in the head on this one.
So how are we meant to participate?
We participate when we allow ourselves to be loved
by a mother, father, friends, spouse, siblings
and then we love them in that same way.
Now it seems impossible but
when you love not for some gain,
not for something in return,
but love for the sake of the other
then we are stepping into that flow of love of the Holy Spirit.
It is like stepping into a river of love,
and it keeps on flowing.
No moment of that river is ever the same
and yet it is always, always flowing.
Our role today is to celebrate the Most Holy Trinity.
I am hoping that you can spend some moments today,
allowing yourself to be loved by your loved ones
and to love them unconditionally.
And know that in doing so,
you are participating in the divine flow of love between God
and his Son the gift of the Spirit.
And that, my friends, changes everything.
And he will be with us until the end of time.
