Weekly HOMILY for June 7, 2009: Relationships and the Trinity

Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, Cycle B
Our Lady of Grace
June 7, 2009

Relationships and the Trinity
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


In Relationship

Let’s think for a minute about our human experience, our experience of ourselves as persons.

If we look back to the time of our birth, we can see that infants are made to be cared for. They are born in a very special relationship of love.

Their very survival as infants depends on a relationship. They cannot think for themselves and take care of themselves, and they depend on their mother or father to do this for them.

So right from the beginning, our human experience is both shared and relational. We are – for all our days – caught up in personal relationship.

In fact, we can say that none of us really exists on our own. The essence, the heart, of a human being is to be in relation to the other. True? (Yes.)


Our Best: When Relational

Think now for a moment of what you would say are your best moments in life. Another way to ask that is when are you most yourself?

I believe that the bottom line of everyone’s really best moments always involve being in relationship.

Isn’t this true? When my mother or father hugged me, it was a best moment. When your spouse says, “I love you” – a best moment. When your teacher or boss affirms you – a best moment.

When friendship is tangible and strong – a best moment. When someone is there for you at the visitation in the funeral home – another best moment.


Our Worst: Not Relational

And conversely, what are our worst moments? When are the moments in your life that you are least yourself?

I believe it is when we are out of relationship: feeling isolated, alienated, abandoned or alone. Point of clarification: to be in solitude is different from all of these. To be in solitude is to be in intimate union with God, so you’re not really alone.

This is why solitary confinement is the most severe penalty in prison. It is why divorce is such a painful experience for everyone – husband, wife, and children.

What is the worst pain then? The worst pain if to be out of relationship.


Relationship: The Trinity

The point of all this is that we human beings do not merely exist as animals do.

We exist, we live, in relationship. Relationship is what makes us what we are and now of course we have to ask the really big question: Why?

Why is this so? Today’s celebration of the Holy Trinity gives us the answer.

The Scripture first tells us that we are made in the image and likeness of God. Then the Trinity reveals that God is above anything else, in God’s very core, relational.

It should come as no surprise that to say God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is to say that God is relationship. So, no wonder that we, who are made in God’s image and likeness, are also essentially relational.

God is about relationship and we are about relationship. No wonder that Jesus’ last words to his disciples, right in today’s Gospel, are relational: “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”


Trinity: Four Truths

I suggest then that today’s celebration of the Trinity lifts up four wonderful truths that we can know and feel in our very bones.

First: It sheds light on who we are. We are persons with an undeniable, inescapable drive to be in relationship and we are happiest when we are.

Second: The Trinity shows the primacy of love. If God is relationship, it is a love relationship, and no surprise that poets and songwriters all over the planet keep exploring the wonder of love.

Third: Today’s celebration reminds us that we are baptized “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” – as we heard in the Gospel. Our spiritual identity is cast as persons who are caught up in the relationship of God himself.

And because of this, the Fourth and last truth is that the Trinity gives us hope. A question in the Old Baltimore Catechism said, “Why did God make us?”

And the answer was: “To know, love, and serve him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next.”

So, the final, long-term purpose of human existence is to be with, to be in relationship with God who made us in God’s image – that is the hope we celebrate today.