“This evening we are invited to enter into a reflection upon that inner-life of God that God is not an impersonal force, but rather within God is community and life and in one God there are those three persons:
- The Father to whom has ascribed creation.
- The Son, the word who is the truth of the Father the perfect reflection of the Father himself who is our redeemer, our savior.
- The Holy Spirit generated through the love of the Father and Son that personification of love it’s very self.
And so we are invited to recognize that there is a dynamic dimension into the life of God and it’s done not so that we’ll have a mathematical problem to think about, but rather that we will be in some way insightful into the mystery of a God that goes way beyond our ability to understand, our ability to comprehend, but God does give us these insights so that we may know something about God’s dignity in our relationship with God himself for God reveals himself to us as Father, Son and Spirit so that we may truly know God as God the Father that we will know God as the Word, the truth become flesh in Jesus that we will know God as the gift of love that power of the Holy Spirit and that we enter into a relationship with each person of the Trinity. Again it’s a question that is not there to baffle the mind, but rather to inspire the heart to call us to something deeper in an appreciation of who we are in relationship to God for the revelation of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit comes about for our salvation. It comes about so that we may know how we share in that very life of the Trinity that we are baptised into relationship with the Father, the Son and the Spirit that that’s what the word baptism means is to be immersed into relationship. We were baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We were immersed into a relationship in which we can know God truly as our Father, the Son truly as our saviour, our redeemer, our truth, the Holy Spirit who is the spirit of love who transforms our own minds and hearts and so it is that question for each of us, ‘Am I really growing in a relationship with each person of the Trinity?’
Sometimes when I ask people about their prayer life, I find that it’s pretty truncated. A lot of people will say, ‘Well I just pray to God. That’s it. I just pray to God.’ Now it’s not bad to pray to God. I’m not against that, so don’t misunderstand me here, but just praying to God as God really neglects the deeper relationships to which we are called and some people will say, ‘Well I just pray to God the Father’ or ‘I pray to the Holy Spirit’ or ‘I pray to God the Son, but I kinda leave the other ones out.’ Once again we are truncating our relationship with God. If we want to have a full relationship with God it means that we grow in relationship with each one of the persons of the Trinity that yes, we come to know Jesus who is truth that absolute truth of the Father that we come to know the gift of the Spirit that spirit of love that spirit that transforms our lives that we come to know God the Father as the creator as the one who truly brings about our life and is the ultimate destiny of what we are about and the journey of this life and so I encourage you to kinda think about your own prayer life. You know, the Mass is the greatest prayer that we offer and the Mass is very, very trinitarian. I’m not sure how often we avert to this, but you know it begins with the sign of the cross. It ends with the sign of the cross, so our profession of faith in the Trinity are kind of the bookends for the whole Mass and then the prayers of the Mass are very much Trinitarian. The Gloria that we just sung a few minutes ago is first of all, God the Father, then God the Son, then God the Holy Spirit. The Creed that we will profess in a few minutes is Trinitarian. It speaks about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. The prayers, the opening prayers of the Mass are usually addressed to God the Father through God the Son in union with the Holy Spirit. The great prayer, the Eucharistic prayer is a prayer of praise addressed to God the Father through God the Son in union with the Holy Spirit as the priest raises up the body and the blood of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ. It’s very Trinitarian and we are invited to enter more deeply into that relationship through Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit in Holy Communion and then we are sent forth in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit so our prayer is truly called to be Trinitarian. It is called to be reflective of that mystery of God’s love. God gives us this beautiful insight into his own being into who He is, what He is about and how that can bring about our salvation and our eternal happiness and so we are invited to truly reflect upon this and maybe to expand our prayer life a bit maybe to reflect on how we can pray to one or other persons of the Trinity that maybe we don’t pray to that much but we are called to truly appreciate the fullness of the mystery of God in which we participate.
And of course this weekend we celebrate Father’s Day. It’s an appropriate time for us to celebrate Father’s Day in union with the Trinity because the Trinity truly begins with God the Father and God the Father’s fatherhood is reflected in human fatherhood and so we honor all fathers today. We thank you for the reflection of that creative life and love of God that is brought about in your relationships with your children, being creative and nurturing that gift of life. What a tremendous blessing fathers are as fathers and mothers join together in sharing that gift of life and of nurturing that life. What a tremendous blessing that is and so we are grateful for you who are fathers for your call and your response to that call to be reflective of the love of God himself and to teach your children the truth of Jesus to teach your children the love of the Holy Spirit to share with them that beautiful relationship with God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen.”