The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity [C]
Proverbs 8:22-31  +  Romans 5:1-5  +  John 16:12-15
May 22, 2016

“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.”

As the Church celebrates the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, it might seem difficult to meditate upon this mystery of God’s divine nature:  three persons in one God.  Of course God knows us even better than we know ourselves, and so knowing the weakness of our human intellect, he demonstrated his divine nature very clearly through Christ’s Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension:  what we call the Paschal Mystery.

When we consider the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Son, we have to remember that He existed from all eternity with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  God the Son never had to become human.  God the Son could have remained divine for all eternity without ever descending to earth and taking on our human nature.

But in the Paschal Mystery of the Word made Flesh, God makes clear to us—in the love of His Sacred Heart—not only His divine nature.  We also see in Christ Jesus—true God and true man—the fulfillment of what it means to be human.

We realize this if we consider that scene in the gospels where one of the Scribes comes up to Jesus and asks Him which is the first of all the commandments.  Jesus replies not only to the scribe, but to each one of you as well:  “‘Hear, O Israel!  The Lord our God is Lord alone!’  …  This is the second, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Love, quite obviously, is the common denominator between these two commands:  “Love the Lord completely,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Understanding these two as one means having Christ at the center of our entire spiritual focus:  seeing in Christ our neighbor, and seeing in Christ our Lord and God.  And so, first of all, we are to love others as Christ has loved us.  But we must even go one step further.  We are to love others so that others will love as Christ has loved us.  That this is difficult for us is clear.  But the Word made Flesh strengthens us through worthy reception of Him in the Eucharist, as the Church will celebrate next Sunday.