"Be in Communion with the Triune God":Bishop Paul's Homily on the Sunday of the Most Holy Trinity

Abu Dhabi.

Readings of the Day: Deut 4:32-34.39-40; Rom 8:14-17; Mt 28:16-20

Below is the full text of the homily of Bishop Paul Hinder on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.

We just made the sign of the cross on the forehead, the mouth, and the chest at the beginning of the gospel. It is the sign I learned as a small child (at that time we did not use the larger one). It was consciously my first meeting with the Most Holy Trinity which had happened already in baptism. As a child, I did not really understand the deep meaning, but I learned with the help of my mother to live in union with God. Before leaving the house, my mother always took the holy water and marked me by the sign of the cross with the words: “In the name of the Father…” The same did my father when I left our home for a longer time. Thus my parents always commended me into the hands of the triune God.
Each of us was baptized “in the name of the Father …”. It is the beginning of a love story. Not we have chosen God, but God has chosen us in his fatherly love: “You are my son, my daughter, the beloved.” God the Father wants to share the inner-divine relationship between Father and Son in the Holy Spirit with us. Remember the word in John’s gospel: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (Jn 1:18). Without the Son who has become flesh in Jesus Christ, we would not know about.

It is the Father, who sends the Son. It is the Son, who speaks on behalf of the Father, as we learn in the gospel of John. When the apostle Philip asked Jesus: “Lord, show us the Father” he got the answer: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works” (Jn 14:9-10). There is a deep unity between Father and Son in the Holy Spirit, shared with all those who listen in faith to the Son who is the Word of the Father. Jesus speaks about this sharing with us in John’s gospel: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you” (Jn 14:26). Just before this, Jesus told to his disciples: “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (Jn 14:23).

The relationship of love in and with God passes its test in our relationship with others. Jesus, just in the following chapter 15 of John’s gospel, makes it clear: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love … This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:9.12). In other words, the love of God and within God brims over when we love one another as Jesus did. It is possible because as Saint Paul wrote to the Romans “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).

Let us get back to the sign of the cross as we use to do it at the beginning of the Gospel reading. It helps us to deepen our relationship with the Most Holy Trinity. When we sign ourselves with the Cross on the forehead, the mouth, and the chest we can discover the deep symbolic and refresh our relationship with God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in its bodily expression.

-        The forehead (or head) is the centre of the intellect and of understanding. It indicates the creative activity of God the Father who “made heaven and earth” and “has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places … (and) destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:3.5) as we read in the letter to the Ephesians.

-        The mouth symbolizes the word, the proclamation of the good news, the incarnate WORD, Jesus, the Son of God. At the beginning of the letter to the Hebrews, we read: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds” (He 1:1-2).

-        The chest (the heart) symbolizes the centre of respiration and of the capacity of loving as well as of tenderness. The Holy Spirit is the respiration of God, the tenderness, the fire, the passion, the love of the Father. Without the lungs and the heart working, we shall die. Without the Holy Spirit, “the giver of life”, we shall suffocate – spiritually and physically. He makes us breathe and love.

Dear brothers and sisters, keep in mind the deep meaning of the sign of the cross when we prepare ourselves to listen to the gospel during the Mass. It puts us in communion with God the triune and with those who with us listen to the word of God and are equally accepted as his adopted sons and daughters. Never forget that since our baptism we are sealed forever as his children and that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”