Trinity Sunday

 

At the southeast corner of the church, above the present confessionals, above where the baptismal font was originally located, is a copy of Giovanni Bellini’s painting The Baptism of Christ (photo), portraying Jesus’ Baptism by John, God the Father officially identified Jesus as his Son, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him, making it a visible representation of the Holy Trinity.

This week will mark the 1700^th anniversary of the end of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, which gave us the Nicene Creed, which summarizes what we, as Church, believe about God, whose Trinitarian inner life, who God is in his very self, has been revealed in God’s external activities as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

From the day we were each baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the lives of all of us, both individually and as a Church community – have been defined, formed, and shaped by the awesome mystery of who God is, God’s inner relationships as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that define the Triune God’s outward relationship with us and so in turn ours with God.

 

As Christians we do not speak of God or pray to God in some undifferentiated way which any monotheistic person might do. The doctrine of the Trinity expresses our uniquely Christian insight into the inner life of God – where the Son is the image of the Father, the Father’s likeness and outward expression, who perfectly reflects his Father, while the Holy Spirit in turn expresses and reveal the mutual love of Father and Son. Saint Augustine famously described the inner relationship within the Trinity as the lover the loved on, and love itself [De Trinitate VIII, 10]. At the same time, the Trinity also expresses something fundamental about how God acts outside himself. Who God is in himself is how God acts; and so how God acts reveals who God is.

 

It is, of course, the Son, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom we have a uniquely new relationship with God.  Not created apart from God, the Son comes forth from the Father as One who completely shares in and reflects the being of the One from whom he comes. Without abandoning his divine nature, he has united himself with us in a uniquely new act of creation. 

 

As we just heard Saint Paul proclaim, through him we have peace with God and have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand. Risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father, the same Son has sent us the Holy Spirit, who unites us with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit whom we just heard Jesus describe as the Spirit of truth, who will guide us to all truth.

 

This Holy Spirit, who has been sent upon his Church, which is the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, is inseparable from the Father and the Son, in both the inner life of the Trinity and his gift of love for the world. The Holy Spirit’s presence in us enables us to experience the presence and action of God in our lives not as an abstraction but as a real relationship.

 

The Holy Spirit unites us with one another in the Body of Christ, the Church, a relationship that truly has the potential to transform the world. 

 

Homily for Trinity Sunday, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, June 15, 2025.