June 7^th 2020. Trinity Sunday

GOSPEL: John 3:16-18

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Don Fabio’s homily follows the Gospel

GOSPEL: John 3:16-18

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . On this feast of the Trinity, it is a great opportunity to correct our image of God! The first reading proclaims, as Pope Francis often reminds us, that God’s name is “Mercy”. How often we think of God as a moralist, someone who is cold, someone who uses power arbitrarily to control and punish! A whole generation of people have left the Church because they were tired of being scolded by God, or because they were bored by this petty and mean-spirited God. And then we wonder why there are so few vocations to the priesthood and religious life! But these images of God are defective! The problem began in the Garden of Eden when Eve began to form a flawed idea of God. She stopped believing that God was loving and truthful. If we have a wrong name on God in our soul, then the consequences are enormous. To ruin humanity, it is sufficient to ruin our image of God. This is what the serpent did in Eden. In the Gospel passage this Sunday, we get a startling glimpse into the REAL life of God, the corrective to the false perspective of the serpent. It should be a wake-up call for all of us. God loves us so much that he sacrificed his Son for us. We discover that God is not a cold creator who uses his power arbitrarily. He is a loving and providential Father. His Son empties himself for us, even when we crucify him. And the Holy Spirit is speaking in our hearts, giving us the intuition that God is loving and merciful. Once this intuition takes hold in our hearts, then we begin to have the desire to live the life of fullness, the life that is lived by the children of God.

God’s name is “Mercy”. A name is not just abstract information about someone. In the Bible, a  name is linked to the deepest identity of a person. When we discover God’s name, as Moses did, our lives can be transformed.

In the first reading for this feast of the Holy Trinity, the name of the Lord is proclaimed. We discover, upon reading it, that God’s name is “Mercy”. The famous that we read on Sunday from John’s Gospel gives us a startling glimpse into the very life of God:  a life of unrestrained love that does everything to save us. In order to be saved, however, it is essential that we believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. But how important is this name? To us, a name seems only a word that acts as a sort of code for recognizing something. But in the Bible, it is quite different: the name reveals the secret identity of someone, their deepest truth. Knowing the name of a person means having experience of him. In a certain sense it means having an authentic contact with his reality. Knowing the name of God is not simply possessing more information: those who know the name of God have a radical change of existence. The great example of this is Moses. At the burning bush, he receives the revelation of the Name and his whole life is changed by it. Why is this? Because knowing the name of God means having truly understood Who He is. And this is something decisive.

In Genesis, Eve begins to believe in a wrong image of God, a god who is not loving and providential. Once the name of God is ruined in our hearts, then we too are ruined. Many people leave the Church because they have the wrong image of God. They consider him a moralist, not a loving Father.

In the story of the fall of Genesis 3, the denigration of the image of God begins in the heart of Eve. She falls into error when she is tempted to think that God is deceitful and bad. To destroy humanity, it is enough to ruin the image of God in his heart; that is, to put a false name on God in his soul. If God is not Father, then what is he? If he is not tenderness, what remains? If God does not love me unconditionally, then I am alone, after all. I must earn the right to exist and survive on my own strength. This leads to an insecure existence derived from an image of God alien to love. In the last part of the last century, an entire generation left the Church because God had been presented to them for a long time as a moralist. This led to a process of de-Christianization. People did not want to stay with a god so unpleasant, so petty. This process is ongoing still. We turn God into a moralist, and use him to scold our young people. Is it any surprise that they flee the Church having being scolded and bored?  And then we wonder why there are so few vocations!

On this feast of the Trinity, let us look at who God really is! He is a loving Father. He is providential. He is not cold. He does not use power arbitrarily. He sent his Son who loves us and gives his life for us. The Holy Spirit enables us to see the loving and fatherly nature of God.

For this reason it is worth celebrating the feast of the Most Holy Trinity: to correct our image of God. Like the disciples on the day of the Resurrection, we need to fix our gaze on the One who was pierced, and rejoice in who He is. We need the Liturgy, the inspiring tradition of the Church and the Word of God to make the name of God shine once again in our hearts. We need to remember that God is Father. He does not use his power in an arbitrary way. He is providential. He does not create in a cold and chemical way, but generates life because he loves life. None of us is a mistake. We need to look at our dear Lord Jesus Christ as he really is: a loving Spouse who gives everything for us, who loves us even when we crucify him. When we see the Father and the Son in this positive light; when we appreciate that they are utterly for us; that is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It is He who gives us this true intuition of who God is. Once we have this intuition, then we begin to have the desire to live a life of fullness, the life that is lived by the children of God.