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Sunday 30 May (B) (Solemnity) The Holy Trinity. Matthew 28:16-20

In today's reading Jesus confirms that there are three Persons in one God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. We are sent out as evangelisers, as apostles and witnesses of Christ because we are baptised into the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Some protest that they can't get their mind around the Trinity. Thank God, we never will! As St Augustine once said: If you can fathom it – it's not God. Having said that, we can, the essence of faith, the heart of with the help of the Holy Spirit, get our minds into the Trinity and penetrate the mystery, light and wisdom of the Godhead.

Paul encouraged the believers at Ephesus to do just this – perhaps we could adopt the prayer he gave them as our Trinity Sunday prayer: 

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:14-19). “

What a powerful and utterly wonderful prayer! God wants us to enter into the mystery of who he is. The essence of being a Christian is knowing God; when we know God, we want to love and serve others. The Trinity is not a dry, unreachable, ancient dogma – no, on the contrary, it is belief. God wants us to get excited today about the mystery that God is Three-in-One.

In a profound and moving hymn of praise Dionysius the Areopagite wrote:

Trinity! Higher than any being, any divinity, any goodness! Guide of Christians in the wisdom of heaven!

Lead us up beyond unknowing and light, up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic scripture, where the mysteries of God's Word lie simple, absolute and unchangeable in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence. Amid the deepest shadow they pour overwhelming light on what is most manifest. Amid the wholly unsensed and unseen they completely fill our sightless minds with treasures beyond all beauty.

Chris

from Bible Alive

Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40 • Psalm 32(33):4-6, 9, 18-20 • Romans 8:14-17 • Matthew 28:16-20

1 Corinthians 4:6–15 • Psalm 144(145): 17–21 • Luke 6:1–5

Jesus didn’t come to challenge the status quo or upset the apple cart only a little — his wasn’t a slowly, slowly approach. He came to turn the world upside down, to usher in a radically new and different way of thinking. Between Jesus and the Pharisees there was a huge gulf about how they understood the Sabbath. The Pharisees, always eagle-eyed, spotted the disciples of Jesus walking through the grain fields and picking ears of grain. Harmless enough, you would imagine — rather like picking blackberries on a country walk! Yet the Pharisees jumped on this human and harmless activity as breaking the Sabbath and not keeping it holy (set apart).

The commandment to keep the Sabbath holy was a revelation of God’s mercy and liberation. The Sabbath was a day to rejoice in God’s gift of creation. The injunction to refrain from work was a protection ensuring that workers were not forced into slavery by being made to work seven days a week. To rest on the Sabbath is an opportunity to enjoy and celebrate the fruit of our labours and to acknowledge it all as God’s gift. 

The Sabbath reminds us that in the end we are not self-sufficient: we depend Upon God’s loving goodness and mercy; It is God who gives created things their capacity to grow and multiply. We cannot create anything out of nothing! We have been given the ability to harness to our advantage the natural resources which God has given us and on which we depend.

Jesus refers to an incident in the Old Testament when King David entered the temple and took the consecrated bread to feed his men, even though the law reserved it for the priests alone. The showbread was a symbol of the covenant between God and the people of Israel. Left in the presence of God, the bread revealed God’s desire to commune with his people. Normally consumed by the priests each week, on this one occasion it was used by David and his men at a time of need. By speaking of this incident Jesus is revealing the hidden reality that his own presence among his disciples brought to fulfilment what the showbread had symbolized: God communing with his people — making it a time to feast, not fast!

Blessed are thase called to the supper fo the Lamb who feed on the Bread of Life and who live not by the letter but by the Spirit of the law.

Chris