Solemnity of The Most Holy Trinity year B 03-06-12 Theme: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit 1st Reading Deut 4:32-34 God’s mercy is limitless. 2nd Reading: Romans 8:14-17The Spirit of God allows us to call God our Father. Gospel Mt. 28:16-20 Mission with a promise of presence. The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the most fundamental of our faith. On it everything else depends and from it everything else derives. Hence the Church’s constant concern to safeguard the revealed truth that God is One in nature and Three in Persons. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity teaches the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. The doctrine of the "Trinity" or "Tri-unity of God" refers to the idea that "there is one God, eternally existent in three Persons, ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. There are various tenets of faith which indicate the mystery of the Trinity we profess. 1. The sign of the cross we make on ourselves as adult Christians expresses our belief in the one triune God. 2. The creed we recite every time telling our belief in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. 3. Our Christian life is expressive of this mystery at every stage of our lives. If we try to understand the experience of our forefathers on religious experience, which rested on the emotional sensitive feeling level than on intellectual and mind level. If we go to our own parents who might have not been as ‘educated’ as we are but their belief in the mystery of the Trinity is deeper than our own. The three readings of today indicate the whole gamut of salvation history. How God the Father who is equal to the other three persons of the trinity have been instrumental in creation. The author is revealing a picturesque scene of the activity of Godhead. Moses a prophet who is chosen to lead his People through the desert and the valley of darkness to find the Promised Land, which is the resting place of the chosen people’ is demonstrated in the whole reading. The love of God is instrumental in persevering the chosen race. God’s glory is man fully alive, becomes clear in the activity of man in doing God’s will. The second reading is indicative of the Spirit’s activity in us. We are given the natural capacity to be calling God our Father. This happens because of the innate feelings God has placed in each one of us which becomes clearer every time we experience the presence of God in our lives. How conscious are we in exercising our relationship to the Trinity? We get engrossed in our daily tasks so much, we forget some times that we are children of God and the task we are doing is only because God has given us the opportunity to extend his presence through us. The suffering mission of Jesus Christ becomes a valuable vehicle of God’s glory in every believing Christian. Therefore when we are beset by difficulties and challenges of daily life we must happily be living witnesses of the Glory of God because Christ himself has shown us the way. Gospel is an express invitation by Jesus to his disciples to leave Jerusalem where they have had the tragic experience of his death and glorification. They are go to Galilee where he would give them a new experience of the faith they would have to share with the people for whom they would be witnessing the reality of God’s love. This is the birth of a new believing community. The sign of the cross we make every day and say we are the children of God who created us. Every sign of the cross indicates a living presence of the Trinity in each one of us. Let us, as Christians become aware the power we possess. Every time we do works of Charity or the works of missionary endeavor give us a unique identity as Christians who are full of God’s goodness in a very visible and realistic way. Let us be grateful to God for giving us the opportunity to be living witnesses in this modern age. This challenge of becoming living witness gives us added responsibility as Christians in the 21st century. In the earlier centuries to witness was so easy. Even the presence of the Chirstians was taken to be a sign of goodness. But today we are challenged to give visible signs of our being true to our faith. I recall a small story told by one of the priests in our church when I was a child, about the Trinity. The story goes like this: St. Augustine was beset by the problem of the mystery of the Trinity. He was agitated and began to walk (pssayo marunk laglo) on the sea shore to unravel this mystery. And all the walking up and down the shore, did not help. He then saw a small boy playing on the sea shore. He had made a small pit on the sea shore and was trying to bring the water from the sea in a small shell and fill the small pit with it. When Augustine saw this he asked the boy, “what are you up to little young man?”. The boy replied “I am trying to empty the sea in this pit” Augustine said in wonder, “you little boy are you so foolish to think that you can fill this pit with this vast sea?” The boy in reply said, “Sir if I try hard I may be able to empty it here. The way you are trying to solve the mystery of the Trinity in your mind is also as foolish as this and may be even more so.” Augustine was taken aback and realized his foolishness to resolve the mystery. Let us all be humble enough to be always at the service of the Trinity. In proclaiming the love of God and the compassion of Jesus and the wisdom the Spirit in our daily lives we will be living witness of the goodness of God the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. In the divine Word wishing all the readers here a happy Feast of the Holy Trinity Fr. Juze Vaz svd