A summary of the great mystery of the Blessed Trinity is found in three words: God is love.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen   This is how we begin our liturgy, and this is the way we most often begin our prayer. We profess our faith in God as a Blessed Trinity, in the communion of three persons.

All of us have been baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  We began our journey of faith with receiving the Spirit of Christ into our hearts and souls.  With each sacrament we receive, we deepen the life of Christ Jesus with us.

Embedded within us is a Trinitarian Spirituality.   We believe in God the Father who is our creator and life-giver.  All is a gift of God.  We believe that God sent his only begotten Son, Christ Jesus, into the God to reveal God’s love for us and to be our Savior and Lord.  We believe in God the Holy Spirit who, on the great feast of Pentecost which we celebrated last Sunday, was sent to us as the Breath and the Spirit of God who will be with us all days until the end of time.  We are the recipients of the gifts of the Spirit that are to be used and shared in the service of one another and the building up of our faith community.

A summary of the great mystery of the Trinity is that God is love.  God is revealed as a communion of persons.  The love that is within the union of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is shared with us.  As the Gospel proclaims:  “God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him may not be lost, but may have eternal life.”

What is eternal life?  Eternal life is our life with God.  It is our unending relationship with Jesus.  Eternal life is in contrast with “temporary life.”  It means life that can survive every form of death; can survive failure in relationships in family or the work place; can survive defeat or humiliation; and can survive even the loss of a loved one.  Eternal life transforms death into a rebirth into the fullness of life with God.

Our participation in the life of God is seen in the liturgical greeting that the priest gives immediately following the sign of the cross in every Mass.  “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.”  This is the greeting St Paul gave to the Corinthian community in the second Scripture reading.

Plain and simple, we are God’s beloved sons and daughters.  There is nothing we can do to stop God from loving us.  God is love.  As we participate in the divine life of God in the sacraments, we share in the love of God and are God’s beloved.

We might expect the feast of the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity that celebrates such a complex core belief would include long Scriptures readings helping us understand the mystery.  Surprisingly, it is the fact of fewer words that may clue us into the depth of this mystery -- it will be explained by words, but it must be known in the experience of God that goes beyond words.

We see in the first Scripture reading from the Book of Exodus on Mt Sinai that God offers to his chosen people a covenant relationship of love, but the Israelites commitment to this covenant is unsteady at best.  In this account, Moses goes to the mountain in order to intercede on behalf of a sinful people.  Moses hopes to convince God to be merciful, but neither the people or Moses himself have earned this gift, but God’s forgiveness is given anyway.  God is revealed as a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and of great kindness.

The very brief passage from the Gospel of John comes from the story of the encounter between Nicodemus and Jesus.  Recall that Nicodemus has difficulty perceiving the deeper truths.  He sees the surface while Jesus challenges him to look with the eyes of faith.  These verses summarize God’s gracious plan of salvation.  They are words of beauty and joy, simple and sublime.  The fundamental basis of our relationship with God is not a matter of guilt or expiation.  There is not price to be paid or reward to be earned.  First and last there is merciful love.

It is good we have such brief readings this Sunday.  The fact reminds that we need to go beyond words.  May we meditate on the mystery of the Trinity, let the words sink in, and allow our hearts to go beyond words on a page to the experience of God.

I would like to share with you a profound experience of God that I had recently.  It was about noon on Friday, May 26 at Strong Memorial hospital.  I was holding in my arms my grandniece Taylor Mae  (No, I was not consulted as to a saint’s name to be given this most beautiful child.)  Taylor was just 12 hours old, the very day of her birth.  My niece Emily, the baby’s mother, was with us beaming with such beautiful joy as she had just this day given birth to her 5^th child.   There are no words that can express my joy in holding this child of God, and there are no words that can express the joy that I saw in the face and the eyes of her mom.  For me, this moment was a beautiful spiritual experience of God’s love as I held this newborn child.

Indeed, this was an experience of God that goes beyond the words I can express in a homily.  My heart was just deeply moved by the profound gift to life that was given to our family.  For me as I try to experience God deeply in my prayer life, as I reflect and meditate on the mystery of the Trinity, this experience of holding Taylor in my arms was a prayer that went beyond words.

To see the joy on my niece Emily’s face deepens the experience of God’s love in my life.  I am sure over the course of years Emily and her wonderful husband Josh will have many things to worry about in raising five children – be it how to finance their education, how to form them in their faith journey, and how to deal with life questions they will surely experience for better or for worse.  Yes, yes, yes, to all those questions they will face one day, but I do know on this day Emily and Taylor and I were filled with a profound experience of God’s love.  And I trust in God’s promise that He will be with Taylor all the days of her life.

While I may question the name given to my grandniece, perhaps even more important is that her mom was at the Ascension Thursday Mass 12 hours before giving birth and therefore Taylor was at Mass within the womb of her mom.   I rejoice therefore that Taylor went to Mass on the day of her birth.  For me, it doesn’t get better than that.

I rejoice also in this liturgy in which we bless our home schooled students as they move to another chapter in the life cycle.  I am deeply by the love and faith of the parents of these precious students.  Thank you for living out the blessing that was given on the day of your child’s baptism that you are to be the first and best teachers of your children in the ways of faith.  Thank you for teaching your child how to pray, how to love, and how to share their giftedness with us in their faith community.

On this day of the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, we give thanks for the mystery of God’s love in our lives, and we give thanks for the ways we share with each other the blessings we have received from God.

Have a blessed day.