Trinity Sunday - God with us.

Some 11 years ago I took a six week retreat with the Camoldolese Monks at Big Sur. Part of my spiritual exercise was a daily walk in which I asked either the Father, Son or Holy Spirit to walk with me. My sense most often, and it surprised me, it was the Father who came; sometimes the Holy Spirit; the Son almost never. I would engage the Father, have conversations; and one time I had the impression the Father was laughing at me (for good reason). I really think my understanding of God was changed through those experiences.

Throughout Religious Education as a kid and teen, we are taught of God. This is a good thing, because it provides a foundation. Seminary also teaches seminarians of God, theology. We take lots of classes and most seminaries will include what is called the Summa by St. Thomas Aquinas. A TOME of Thomas’ in which he logically and systematically explains God and the Catholic Faith. It is a good thing.

Of course there are many more theologians that we studied, and their works on the proofs of God, the nature of God, the reason of God. These are all good, and I mostly enjoyed them. This will also happen in Catholic Universities. The challenge though is to not only rely on the esoteric-academic of God and the theological aspects, but to grasp what that all means in the reality of the world. The Challenge is to know God.

God, the wholeness of God is to be experienced personally, in the context of our lives. In fact, all that academic material began with people’s experiences of God; as handed down to us from Sacred Scripture.

Consider what we heard in the First Reading, Moses reminding the people how God encountered them, speaking amid fire; raising up a bunch of slaves and freeing them; all for the purpose that the people would come to know God and share God with all others. Their experiences became the foundation of Scripture, the Old Testament. God’s revelation to humanity through the Jewish People. The Old Testament becomes their story of their relationship with God, and God’s continued revelation to them.

Jesus fulfills the revelation and reveals just how much God loves us, how much God will forgive us; and of course that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a Trinity.

Trinity, a divine community, energetic, embracing, full of love beyond all telling, and this divine community beckons to us, invites us, desires us to belong and become one with them.

God invites us to experience God; and as Jesus and Scripture reveals, God is in those moments in which we forgive one another, in which we heal one another; in which we welcome others; and in those same moments in which we are forgiven, healed and welcomed. God personally is present in each of those moments.

God remains present to us at all times, if only we would open our minds and hearts to this. As we open our minds and hearts to this, we will be changed.

We will experience and know God who has no desire to punish or inflict pain; only a God, the God, who desires to heal and lift us up. We will experience and know God who seeks to build unity and community; and will move us to that, sometimes even as we hesitate and resist!

And maybe through those experiences, we will desire to open our minds more, strengthen a foundation and turn to our theology, and that is a good thing. Because God will work through those too, to grow us and transform us.

And, the more we participate in this, the more we are enveloped into that divine life; and when that final moment comes and the veil thins and fades away, we will wholly be taken in, and loved beyond our capacity to even imagine, or even describe.