CALLED BY NAME
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C

1 Reading: Proverbs 8:22-31
Psalm: O Lord our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
2 Reading: Romans 5:1-5
Gospel: John 16: 12-15

An experience of a gardener can be an eye-opener to us.  A gardener knows each seed and treats each seed differently.  One planted seed needs more sun, another seed needs more water.  Another seed must be tended with great care. Another seed needs a stick to hand on. A real gardener calls each seed by name.

Today, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, we celebrate the gift of knowing God’s name.  Our faith tells us that we worship one God; but this same faith marvelously proclaims that we worship this God as Father, as Son and Spirit. This we see in Paul’s words in his letter to the Corinthians which he ends with the blessing which the priest usually uses at the beginning of the Mass: “The grace of our Lord  Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

There is only one God but in God is a community of persons who are caught up in a wonderful eternal exchange of  love.  For us who sign ourselves with the Trinity’s holy name every time we start anything, this might seem a plain and trite reality. But if we really wrap our minds around it, and if we clasp our hands in prayer to contemplate on it, we soon discover how the Trinity is THE Mystery of mysteries—not an idea we can fully grasp but a deep reality we are all invited to enter.  That is why we find it striking that in the first reading, we see the God of Israel introducing himself to Moses, making known to man his name: Lord. He even describes himself, attaching divine adjectives to his name: a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, rich in kindness and fidelity.  The God of Israel introduces himself as Lord who through and through, is LOVE. And yet while talking to Moses, the Lord remains covered in a cloud.  He remains hidden. Paul, in another part in the letter to the Corinthians, describes this hiddenness as “seeing through a glass but darkly.” 

Isn’t this what we also experience? There are graced moments in our lives when we see God clearly, when we can call him by name, when we feel his love for us—but even in these moments of clarity, he remains hidden from us, our sight obscured by a cloud. The good news for us is that God does not delight in playing hide-and-seek. The evangelist John gives us one of the more famous and powerful words in Scriptures: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” He sent his son so that we may know him and in knowing him intimately, not anymore darkly or dimly but as clearly as the sun on a bright summer’s day.  In knowing him intimately, we are saved.

Thus, the Father gave—he sent, he delivered His son Jesus so that all may be gathered again in his holy name. And this son with the Father, sends the Holy Spirit to be with us, to accompany us to this very day.

Today, we celebrate God as Trinity. God as revealing himself through his most profound name. The Church marks this because many times we forget to call him by his name. Most often, our forgetfulness, our amnesia of God being Father, Son and Holy Spirit takes the form of taking for granted our being members of one community: as a family, as a ministry, as a parish, as a church, as a country. We must guard ourselves against this amnesia since we are deep into a culture that glorifies independence and self-reliance—values that can easily morph into isolation and indifference.  Thus, one way of truly giving glory to the Triune God is to give oneself totally and freely in community, to reach out to others at this time of great fear and uncertainty, division and suspicion of one another. To celebrate Trinity Sunday at a renewed time of being together as a family, as a ministry, as a parish, as a country, as Church—could really be a cause of joy and thanksgiving.

On the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, we give thanks, we give thanks of knowing God’s name as Three Persons in One, of recognizing him as community, and of being given the mission to continue building bridges with one another in his name.   Because God introduced his name as Father, Son and Spirit, we know that the love shared among the persons in this divine relation is also given without limit to us.  However, in the same way that gardeners or farmers can care for their plants, better by knowing their names, we are also given the wonderful opportunity to enter more into his mystery as love because we know his name. Naming him does not only allow us to be loved by him; naming him allows us to love him even more. Amen.