His Excellency,
The Most Reverend Edward K. Braxton, Ph.D., S.T.D.
Diocese of Belleville
Trinity Sunday
June 15, 2025, 9:00 AM Mass
St. Luke Parish, Belleville
The Mystery of The Blesssed Trinity: A Communion of Love
(This is the text as originally written. During the actual delivery, some passages were omitted and other comments were added spontaneously. Nota bene: This text has not been thoroughly proofread. Therefore, there may be errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation.)
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
Many things have happened in our Church and our world since the last time I was the celebrant here at St. Luke. I have been at Saints Peter and Paul in Waterloo. His Holiness, Pope Francis suffered intensely from double pneumonia in Gemelli Hospital for more than a month and then returned to the Vatican where he heroically managed the give his final Urbi et Orbe blessing from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica to the city of Rome and to the world on Easter Sunday. Then, on Easter Monday, somewhat unexpectedly, The Holy Father died.
Weeks later few Catholics were thinking of an Augustinian friar from the south side of Chicago who spent most of his ministry as a missionary in Peru when they heard the Cardinal Protodeacon Dominique Mamberti, proclaim “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus papam!” The Most Reverend and The Most Eminent Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost, who has chosen the name Leo XIV. Most were stunned. Could it be an American? Why the name Leo XIV?
Tragically, during these same days, a deadly and dangerous war erupted when Isael attacked Iran killing key leaders and destroying nuclear facilities destabilizing the Middle East and indirectly involving the United States. This added to the ongoing terrible Russian war against Ukraine and the devastating war between Hamas and Israel. Meanwhile, here at home, demonstrations and protests against government immigration policies have led to the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines. Two days ago , Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman were assassinated in a politically motivated shooting. We are living in uncertain times.
Another event that happened since I was last with you, which you may not have noticed, was the beginnings of the celebration of the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, which was held in modern day Türkiye. The council, which began in May 325 AD, was the first ecumenical council which produced the great Nicene Creed which we shall proclaim shortly. While there were 1,800 Catholic bishops, only about 318 of them attended. Pope Sylvester himself did not attend the gathering which was convoked by Emperor Constitine. The Bishop of Rome did send delegates. This historic Council clarified the Church’s beliefs about Jesus’ identity and the mystery of the Trinity which we honor in a special way today, Trinity Sunday.
While many Americans doubt that God even exists, we Catholics ponder how God is God in the Christian belief in the mystery of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, one God in three persons. Many Christians rarely think about this Trinity of love and, if they do, they say they do not understand it. When Catholics pray, they are more likely to pray the Our Father, or devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, or prayers through the intercession of Mary, the Mother of Jesus and not the Trinity. The one exception might be, “Glory be to the father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” But, because of the changes in the Mass made by Pope St. Paul VI, every Catholic begins the Mass with words, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The pope made this change because he wanted Catholics to be more mindful of our Trinity centered faith. He wanted us to think about the Trinity beyond a vague memory of the story St. Patrick using a Shamrock to talk about the Trinity to the people of Ireland telling them just as three leaves make one clover plant, so, too, there are three persons in one God.
Pope Paul explained, “While the Trinity is an incomprehensible mystery, it can be expressed somewhat simply: God loves us. God saves us. God brings us life. God the Father is God over us, the Creator and who is beyond human understanding. God the Son is God with us, through Jesus Christ who entered our human history. God the Holy Spirit is God in us, the living force of God in our lives and in the world. The Holy Spirit inspires us, brings us to a new life, and gives us strength in times of difficulty. The Trinity reveals that God is a community of love within the Divine being.” A Trinity of Love!
While the Trinity is not mentioned in the Old Testaments and Judaism considers the idea of three persons in One God to be incomprehensible and incompatible with strict Jewish monotheism, some Christian commentators discern a hint of the Holy Spirit in the personification of Wisdom we just heard from the Book of Proverbs. “Thus says the Wisdom of God: "When the Lord established the heavens I was there, when He marked out the vault over the face of the deep; when He made firm the skies above, when He fixed fast the foundations of the earth; when He set for the sea its limit, then was I beside Him as His craftsman.”
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On this Father’s Day when we pray for fathers, grandfathers, and all those, living and dead, who have served as fathers in our families, we are reminded that St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, taught that a helpful way to think about the Blessed Trinity is to look at our human families. Just as a human family is one family, so the Trinity is one God. In a family, the father is not the mother, and the mother is not the father; the parents are not the child, and the child is not the parents. Three distinct persons constitute ONE family. So, in the Trinity, three distinct Persons constitute One God. Augustine tells us this is only an analogy. He knew then as now that many fathers are extraordinary men of loving concern for and devotion to their families. Unfortunately, some are not.
Augustine taught that thinking and praying about the Trinity can deeply influence the way fathers love and care for their wives and children and the way family members love and care for one another. If we believe that God is a communion of three equal divine persons and that through baptism, we are all called to live as images of the triune God, then we realize we are all called to reflect the life of the trinity, however imperfectly in our human relationships. The same God who exists in the divine communion of the Trinity, made us to need others, to be in communion with one another. Genesis 2:18 tells us God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
Nowhere is this more evident than in marriage and in the family. In the Trinity, the love between the Father and the Son is so strong that it is eternally manifested in the Holy Spirit. In the sacrament of marriage, the love between a husband and a wife is revealed in a special way when they have a son or daughter, who comes from both of them – each parent being equally necessary for the generation of new life. A human father, mother, and their child clearly are not the perfection of God. But Augustine suggests the example gives us a partial insight into the mystery of the Trinity. But Augustine also taught that those who are not married and do not have children also reflect the Trinity in their loving, lifegiving relationships. A loving communion of human persons, with a love that is free, faithful, total, and fruitful, can be an icon of the inner life of love in the Trinity.
In recent years some Catholics, influenced by feminist thinking, have argued that Jesus Great Commission to His disciples in Matthew, 28:18-20, “Go baptize all nations in of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” should be changed to “in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier” to avoid referring to God with the masculine words used by Jesus. However, the Church has rejected this change because this nonbiblical phrase does not express the communal love relationships within the Trinity.
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Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, I pray that the Trinity is real for you and your family on this Father’s Day and not a mere abstraction. I pray that you experience the Trinity as the foundation for Christian hope. May the Trinity remind you that God’s abiding love which sustains the vast, expanding universe, and which dwells within each of us, is a reconciling love with the power to reconcile all people to communion with God.
For those who are open to its power, the Living Gift of Divine Love in the Trinity can reconcile waring nations, reconcile angry political opponents, and reconcile quarreling family members, through Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
I now invite each of you to greet the person next to you with the trinitarian greeting of St. Paul to the Christians living in Corinth:
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with you always.”
Praised be Jesus Christ. Both now and forever. AMEN.