St Augustin worked on a book about the Trinity for nearly 30 years. One day when he was walking on the beach and meditated on that great mystery he saw a little boy running to the water and back. When the Saint got closer he noticed that boy was using a shell to carry water from the ocean to pour it into a hole in the sand. ‘What are you doing?’ asked Augustin. ‘I am going to pour the entire ocean into this hole’ replied the boy.  ‘It is impossible my child – answered the bishop – the sea is too great to fit into this small hole.’ ‘You are right. - answered the boy -  It would be easier to draw all the water out of the sea and fit it into this hole than what you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence.’
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Fellow believers in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit! Only a messenger from heaven could dare to call St Augustin a man with a small intelligence. The volumes Augustine wrote could make you think that he did nothing else but wrote day and night. However he was a bishop too, a busy bishop who dedicated a lot of time to shepherding the people entrusted to his care.
            Another Christian thinker while reflecting on the story made an observation that the child could tell Augustin that while it was impossible to transfer all the water from the ocean into a small hole, Augustin could still go for a swim in the ocean.
            On this Sunday when the Church directs our focus to the Most Blessed Trinity we are not doing a course how to understand the Trinity. We would be like that little boy trying to move the ocean, but because of our baptism we remind ourselves that because of our baptism we can participate in the life Father, Son and Holy Spirit share. Remember the words of Jesus from today’s Gospel: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ Baptism means immersion, even if most of us have been baptised by having water poured on our heads. Baptism is an immersion in the life of the Trinity.
            The Baptism powerfully incorporates us into our origins. The Book of Deuteronomy spoke of ‘the time God created man on earth’ and from the Book of Genesis we treasure the belief that the first people were created ‘in the image of God.’ Because our origins are in the vision and action of God, whom we profess today as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in our DNA we have our profound sensitivity to the beauty. Personally I define beauty as something so captivating that you forget to take a photo of it. However apart of so many beautiful things in this world there is something which captivates us even more: having relationships. Just think how popular love stories, friendship stories or family stories are. Why do Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and many other platforms enjoy such a success? Because, deep in us, there is a Divine DNA, which inspires us to reach out to others, to search for good relationships. We do not come from a lonely god. We come from ‘God who is love’ as St John the Apostle put it. Even before anything was created so that God could love it, God was love because he has been the Trinity.
            Do you want to strengthen your faith in the Trinity? Contemplate the love of a husband and a wife which expresses itself in giving life to their children. Contemplate strong friendships where people help each other to mature and to become the person they did not think they could become. Contemplate the grief of a husband, or a wife, or child, or a mother, or a father, or a friend etc. upon losing a loved one. All those emotions tell us that we come from God who is a loving relationship and he loves it.

            In the Book of Exodus there is an account of a mysterious event when Moses climbed a mountain to meet God while the whole of the congregation of Israel was gathered at the bottom of the mountain. As Moses’ time with God prolonged people got impatient and instead of waiting and longing for the word of God they made themselves an image of God. They all donated golden jewellery they had to be melted and formed into an image of God. The wanted to have among themselves something that could ensure them, that they were not religious orphans, that they had their God among them.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles presented us with a mysterious event too, the event which resembled the moment from the Exodus. In both events we see the powerful presence of God manifested by wind and fire. When Moses finished speaking to God he came down with the two stone tablets covered with ten words known today as Ten Commandments. God gave to his people the word of life, the message to be lived for their own temporary and eternal happiness and for bearing witness to pagan nations. However that Covenant written on the stone tablets was broken by people.
The Holy Spirit who came upon the community of the followers of Jesus fulfilled the promise God made through Prophet Jeremiah: ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.’ The followers of Jesus were given the Holy Spirit which made them carry within them the fire of God. The same Prophet Jeremiah had a foretaste of that when he revealed a long time prior to the events written in the New Testament: “If I say: ‘I will not mention God, or speak anymore in his name,’ there is in my heart as if it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.’ That was what happened after the descent of the Holy Spirit. The followers of Christ walked out of the Upper Room and allowed the abundance filling their hearts to pour out. The people in the streets said: ‘We hear them preaching in our own language about the marvels of God.’ The followers of the Lord first were filled with the marvels of God, and then it erupted like a volcano. The marvels of God manifested in the Upper Room did not stop there but when the followers of the Lord went out to the streets of Jerusalem there was a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit when people listening to them were moved to the core of their being. By whom? By the Holy Spirit who filled the disciples.
As we meditate on the unfolding events of the first Pentecost we are inspired to pray with the whole Church: ‘Fill now once more the hearts of believers, our hearts, with the divine grace that was at work when the Gospel was first proclaimed.’ When the Word of God, Jesus’ Good News is proclaimed and explained in our midst it is our Pentecost. This New Pentecost we experience in our own community aims at moulding us into the Body of Christ. Remember how the People of Israel melted their gold in fire and moulded a golden image of God. On the Day of Pentecost God himself took not gold, but the people who followed his Only Begotten Son and by immersing them in the fire of the Holy Spirit moulded them into the image of his Son. They became the Body of Christ, not a group of religious individuals. That was the answer to Jesus’ own prayer from the Last Supper when our Blessed Lord prayed to his Father: ‘Holy Father, may they all be one. May they be one in us, as you are in me and I in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.’
            My Dear Fellow believers! The Holy Spirit whom we worship today creates our community out of so many different people. He makes followers of Christ one as a result of a fervent prayer of Jesus. The Holy Spirit whom we worship today sustains and nurtures our community so that in the midst of this Australian society we can bear a communal witness to God. So that people seeing our unity and love can also see in us the image of God. God not made of some metal, as the Israelites attempted to make him, but God whose flesh and bone we are.

            If you were brought up in Australia probably you don’t hear often: ‘Where do you come from?’ When I open my mouth those who don’t know me ask: ‘Where do you come from?’ A number of times I answered them: ‘I come from God.’ You should have seen their look. It was precious.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The Ascension of the Lord began when Jesus Christ was conceived in the womb of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. Thus his whole life was ascending to the Father. His 34-year- ascending (it includes his life in the womb of his Mother) was also about bringing people into a realisation of their origin and their destination. During the Last Supper our Blessed Lord said to his Apostles: ‘I came from the Father and have come into the world and now I am leaving the world to go the Father.’ When I say: ‘I come from God’ I do not claim to be like Jesus. However it is because of Jesus Christ I hold onto the belief that the account of creation from the Book of Genesis announcing that: ‘God created man in the image of himself’ is the story of my beginning, my genesis. It is because of Jesus Christ I hold onto the belief that my genesis is in the loving God. It is also because of Jesus I hold onto the belief that at the end of my life there is the God who out of love created me.
            We read in today’s Gospel that after Jesus was taken up into heaven the disciples: ‘Going out, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word by the signs that accompanied it.’ I would like to read to you something written by three saints which can give us some light into this responsibility of preaching the word.
The first saint I would like to quote is Ignatius of Antioch, a bishop who was born a few years after the events written in the Gospel took place. He was also a disciple of St John the Apostle. He was also the first person to write down how we call ourselves today: Catholic Church. So Ignatius wrote: ‘There is living water in me, water that murmurs and says within me: Come to the Father.’
            The second saint is Teresa of Avila who said: ‘I want to see God and, in order to see him, I must die.’
            The third saint is St Therese of Lisieux who when dying of tuberculosis said: ‘I am not dying; I am entering life.’
            In the life of these saints, like in the life of other saints, known and unknown, we hear the preaching of the Good News which is not about arguing with people whether God exists or doesn’t, rather it is about revealing in certain situations how we live our faith. This preaching is about verbalising our faith by words but also by actions.
            Let me finish with a situation which some friends of mine observed. They were having a meal in a restaurant when a couple walked in. The way they had their hair done, the way they were dressed made my friends thinking: ‘Here we go. Our nice outing is over.’ But when the meal was brought to the table of that couple they first joined hands over the table while bowing their heads and then they made the sign of the cross.
            I can say they were good preachers even if they didn’t say a word. In a natural way they showed others what St Paul the Apostle wrote in the Letter to the Corinthians: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’ That couple showed others that it was happening. I think they wouldn’t deny if they were asked: ‘Do you come from God?’
What about you my fellow believers?
Do you believe that you come from God?
Do you believe that you are going to God?
Do you believe that God lives with you and walk among you?
Thanks for telling me that. Tell others that as well. That’s the Good News so many people wait for.

            In 1981 a polish film director, Krzysztof Zanussi, produced a movie about John Paul II From a Far Country. At the beginning we meet Karol Wojtyla as a six-year-old boy who with his father attends the Passion play on Good Friday in a shrine in Poland. The boy appears to be captivated by Jesus carrying the cross and he follows like a shadow the person playing Jesus. After it is all finished his father realises that he cannot see his little boy. He starts a frantic search. He runs to the church hoping his pious son will be there. He keeps asking people for information. Eventually he goes to a pub where the ‘cast’ is having a ‘celebration’ after the Passion play. There he finds his son standing next to ‘Jesus’ and watching him closely. The man who played Jesus is drinking a beer. In fact he must have had a few beers already. Some beer was even split on the table where also lays the crown of thorns soaked with alcohol now. When the little Karol sees his father he asks: ‘Why is Jesus drinking beer?’
            What would be your answer? ‘Because he is not Jesus.’ Simple, isn’t it? But also tragic, isn’t it?
            You may know the book Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The main character, the little prince, at some stage meets a fox with which he wants to play. However the fox explains that first he needs to be tamed. ‘It is an act too often neglected’ said the fox ‘it means to establish ties.’
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! In the Gospel Jesus says: ‘I call you friends because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father.’ How close ties Jesus Christ has established with us! They are so close that we may grow used to them. They are so close that we may not be moved by them anymore.
            The movie From a Far Country captured that tragedy when the mystery of Jesus’ suffering and death presented in the Good Friday Passion play meant everything to the little boy and meant very little to the man who actually played Jesus. It is a wake-up call for us. We are so often and so close to the great mysteries of our Salvation that we may become immune to them. We may even loose a sense of how precious they are. We may become like that OP shop attendant who sold a thousand dollar bike of a visiting customer for 20 dollars.
            St John the Apostle in his letter wrote: ‘This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.’ It is neither about some abstract love nor some nice feeling. John wrote about God.
Some time ago in the CBD I was approached by two young men in white shirts and black ties who wanted to talk to me about God. When they found out that I was a Catholic they focused on one thing which they said the Catholics got totally wrong about God. Do you know what it was? The Trinity. They asked me to show them that the Bible speaks about the Trinity. What I showed them was the passage from the Letter of St John we have just heard: ‘God is love.’
A contemporary Catholic writer Petr Kreeft put it in this way: ‘If God is not a Trinity, God is not love. For love requires three things: a lover, a beloved and a relationship between them. If God were only one person, he could be a lover but not love itself.’
When we say God is the Trinity it is exactly what St John wrote: ‘God is love.’ We don’t simply say that God loves or that God has got love. We profess with trust that ‘God is love.’ We can profess it because we continue looking at the Crucified Lord.
St Augustin observing human relationship wrote: ‘When you see charity (the selfless love), you see the Trinity.’ How much more of the Trinity, we can see in the suffering Son of God. His tormented body, every single wound, tells us about the Love which we profess as the Trinity. Let us often recall the death of the Lord so that our vision may become sharper and sharper. Thus we will recognise that God originated charity in acts of selfless love of people around us and be drawn to act with selfless love too.