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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity - Cycle C

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With last week’s celebration of Pentecost, we officially put the Easter season behind us.  But in typical Catholic style, we’re not quite ready to bring the party to an end.  We open this period of Ordinary Time with two very important Solemnities:  This week, the Most Holy Trinity (Trinity Sunday) and next week, the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi).

The Word for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Proverbs 8:22-31
Psalm 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

Now that we are in Ordinary Time, our first reading returns to the Hebrew scriptures.  We open this Solemnity with a reading from the Book of Proverbs.  One of the early wisdom books, a large portion of this book is considered to be a collection of the sayings from King Solomon.  While portions of the text do date to the early monarchy, scholars also believe the book continued to be edited and developed through to the post-exilic period.  One of the trademarks of wisdom literature in the Bible is that wisdom itself is personified or anthropomorphized, most often as a beautiful woman.

Our passage for this Sunday is unique in that instead of presenting wisdom and her lessons in the third person, Wisdom herself is the narrator.  This is an important point, because the opening line of the reading can cause us some confusion with the rest of the text.  Our passage opens with, “Thus says the wisdom of God:”  That might cause us to think that God himself is talking to us, which makes the rest of the text very confusing.  Many of our prophetic readings open with “Thus says the Lord,” so we know that it is the Lord speaking, and not another party.  The opening for this passage can be easily mistaken as something similar, but it is not.  Instead, we have Wisdom herself narrating how God and she were together from the start, playing witness to creation itself.  Not unlike how the Son of God always was and always will be.  So we need to consider this passage carefully if we are to understand its meaning, which on this Trinity Sunday, is establishing the nature of God the Father as the Creator.  Our Psalm reminds us of the beauty of his creation when we sing, “O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth.”

Our second reading is a short passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Here Paul reminds us that God the Son, Jesus Christ, is the integral component of the Trinity, for it is through Christ we have peace with God, and through Christ we receive the Holy Spirit.  It is through Christ that our faith is justified, and through Christ we are able to live that faith.

So with God the Father and God the Son represented in our readings, God in the form of the Holy Spirit is the message from John’s Gospel.  Our passage, from the Farewell discourse right before the Passion, has Jesus telling his disciples about the “Spirit of truth.”  Jesus knows what is about to happen and he knows his disciples are still not ready for how events will be unfolding soon.  He reminds them that the Spirit will guide them and tell them what to do.  He concludes by reminding them that God has given him everything, and that now he gives it to them.

Final thoughts:
Our Trinitarian understanding of the nature of God is a core element of our faith, and it is our baptism in the Trinitarian form (In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit) that binds us to the Christian community.  Pentecost, which we celebrated last Sunday, marks the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, providing that final piece of the puzzle that reveals our Trinitarian understanding of God.  It seems only fitting then that we celebrate the Trinity as we begin our long journey through Ordinary Time.  During the Easter Season the nature of our God is revealed.  Now as we enter into Ordinary Time, we take this lesson along with us as we begin our journey together with Jesus through his ministry, now able to view the Jesus’ ministry and teaching through a clearer lens than the Apostles were able to do.  the lessons of Christ will be revealed as we journey through his ministry together.  But not before celebrating two of our greatest mysteries:  The Trinity and the Eucharist.

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