This month I’ve been asked to contribute Sunday homilies to the Homiletic and Pastoral Review. You can find the rest of the month’s homilies there as well. Here’s this week’s contribution:
Homily for Trinity Sunday (C)
There’s an old saying, which probably goes back to Socrates, that the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. This observation on what it means to be truly wise is not meant to discourage learning or study or reflection. When used in a Christian context it’s not meant to suggest, for example, that our faith should be reduced to a couple of folksy slogans. Nor does it mean that when reflecting on the doctrine which we remember today—the Most Holy Trinity—that we should take an anti-intellectual approach—it’s a mystery, just have faith, don’t ask any questions.
The Trinity is a mystery, but today’s readings suggest the attitude we should have toward “mystery” in the context of our faith. Calling the Trinity a mystery means that we will never get to the end of understanding it, but that should not make us want to throw up our hands and give up. Instead, it should make us want to know more. There’s a great history podcast that I listen to, and, after each episode, I often want to go online and start buying books about the subject to discover more. Usually, I have to restrain that impulse because the books start to pile up and I don’t have time to read them!
When we talk about the mysteries of our faith, that’s the dynamic we’re suggesting: not that we don’t want any questions, but that there will always be more to say and our capacity to learn is limited. Jesus suggests as much in the Gospel when he ways, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” Those words tell us something important about God. Jesus talks about knowing the Father by seeing the Son and living in the Spirit of truth. If you tried to diagram what that meant, you might end up with a triangle and lots of arrows going back and forth between the angles. Perhaps that’s not a bad start because one thing that we can take from the invitation of Jesus to know him and know his Father and know the Holy Spirit is that he is inviting us into a relationship that will change us. It’s a relationship that, in a way, is always moving.
Pope Benedict XVI expressed the relationship with God at the heart of Christianity when he wrote, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (Deus Caritas Est, 1). When St. Paul talks about faith in the Letter to the Romans, he has this same dynamic in mind. Faith means not only believing something, but believing in someone. Believing in someone means a relationship of trust. Following someone you trust means change and growth. The really deep relationships in our lives change who we are. They change the way we think—how we know—and our capacity to love.
At the heart of the Christian faith is the belief that when we say “God” we are talking about just such a relationship, a never-ending exchange of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And when we say “Christian” we are talking about someone who has accepted the invitation to plunge into that relationship, into a mystery that doesn’t end, into an ocean of love without limit in which there is always more to discover.
Readings: Proverbs 8:22-31; Rom 5:1-5; John 16:12-15
June 15, 2025
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 