When after two years in Australia I went back to my home country of Poland for my holidays many times I was asked: ‘What is Australia like?’ The reason I was asked this question was because among my relatives and friends I was the only person who had been to Australia.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! This Sunday we observe the Solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity. This is the essence of our faith. To be a Christian one must believe that God is the Trinity of Persons: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Not three gods, but one God in three persons. How do we know this? Because Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, has revealed this to us. He said: ‘The Father and I are one.’ For saying this people of his time wanted to stone him because they realised that he was making himself equal with God. Jesus stood his ground. He didn’t retract his words because he was telling the truth. He was telling what he had seen and lived, he who ‘was born of the Father before all ages’ as we profess in our Creed every Sunday. Jesus didn’t make it up. The mystery of God as the Blessed Trinity is the revelation which he has offered to the Church as ‘the only begotten Son of God, God from God, light from light, true God from true God begotten not made consubstantial with the Father.’
In today’s Gospel taken from the Last Supper Jesus reassured his Apostles, and the believers throughout the millennia to come, that ‘Everything the Father has is mine.’ He didn’t mean any properties, possessions etc. but that he and the Father are God. Not two gods but one God. Furthermore he revealed that the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, ‘will glorify me since all he tells you will be taken from what is mine.’ What is Jesus’ is the Father’s too. We profess it in our Creed too when we say that the Holy Spirit: ‘proceeds from the Father and the Son’ that the Holy Spirit ’with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.’
My Dear fellow believers! Christianity is not like a shop where we go to get some things we need like health, peace, comfort, happy relationships, safety etc and we don’t bother who the shop attendant or shop attendants are. For us Christians to come to know God is the best thing we can have. Jesus while praying to his Father at the Last Supper allowed his Apostles to hear what the secret of the eternal life is: ‘to know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’
In our seminary chapel we have an icon of the Trinity, which is a copy of the icon made by Andrei Rublev. The Three Divine Persons are presented as three angels sitting at the table with one place still vacant. Every day as I pray there I am reminded that this place is for us. That the mystery of Trinity is difficult not because our mind may struggle to comprehend it but because we may look at our God as a shop attendant to give us what we want rather than the God whom we want to know more clearly, love more dearly and follow more nearly, day by day.
I would like to finish this homily with one insight which I believe can help all of us to worship the Blessed Trinity.
The insight is to renew the way we make the sign of the cross. A priest was once saying that what he still treasured were the lessons his mother gave him about the sign of the cross: ‘Touch your forehead not your nose, touch your heart not the buttons on your jacket, touch your shoulders not your sleeves. Say each word distinctly with love and respect.’ If you struggle to say a proper prayer in the morning and at night I would encourage you to make a beautiful sign of the cross remembering that by blessing yourself you immerse yourself in the life of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus, who is God like? God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! This Sunday we observe the Solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity. This is the essence of our faith. To be a Christian one must believe that God is the Trinity of Persons: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Not three gods, but one God in three persons. How do we know this? Because Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, has revealed this to us. He said: ‘The Father and I are one.’ For saying this people of his time wanted to stone him because they realised that he was making himself equal with God. Jesus stood his ground. He didn’t retract his words because he was telling the truth. He was telling what he had seen and lived, he who ‘was born of the Father before all ages’ as we profess in our Creed every Sunday. Jesus didn’t make it up. The mystery of God as the Blessed Trinity is the revelation which he has offered to the Church as ‘the only begotten Son of God, God from God, light from light, true God from true God begotten not made consubstantial with the Father.’
In today’s Gospel taken from the Last Supper Jesus reassured his Apostles, and the believers throughout the millennia to come, that ‘Everything the Father has is mine.’ He didn’t mean any properties, possessions etc. but that he and the Father are God. Not two gods but one God. Furthermore he revealed that the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, ‘will glorify me since all he tells you will be taken from what is mine.’ What is Jesus’ is the Father’s too. We profess it in our Creed too when we say that the Holy Spirit: ‘proceeds from the Father and the Son’ that the Holy Spirit ’with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.’
My Dear fellow believers! Christianity is not like a shop where we go to get some things we need like health, peace, comfort, happy relationships, safety etc and we don’t bother who the shop attendant or shop attendants are. For us Christians to come to know God is the best thing we can have. Jesus while praying to his Father at the Last Supper allowed his Apostles to hear what the secret of the eternal life is: ‘to know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’
In our seminary chapel we have an icon of the Trinity, which is a copy of the icon made by Andrei Rublev. The Three Divine Persons are presented as three angels sitting at the table with one place still vacant. Every day as I pray there I am reminded that this place is for us. That the mystery of Trinity is difficult not because our mind may struggle to comprehend it but because we may look at our God as a shop attendant to give us what we want rather than the God whom we want to know more clearly, love more dearly and follow more nearly, day by day.
I would like to finish this homily with one insight which I believe can help all of us to worship the Blessed Trinity.
The insight is to renew the way we make the sign of the cross. A priest was once saying that what he still treasured were the lessons his mother gave him about the sign of the cross: ‘Touch your forehead not your nose, touch your heart not the buttons on your jacket, touch your shoulders not your sleeves. Say each word distinctly with love and respect.’ If you struggle to say a proper prayer in the morning and at night I would encourage you to make a beautiful sign of the cross remembering that by blessing yourself you immerse yourself in the life of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus, who is God like? God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
RSS Feed
