Proverbs 8:22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15
Lent, then Palm Sunday; Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day. Then Alleluia “without ceasing” - then the Ascension, then Pentecost. And now, as if to sum it all up, the Feast of the Holy Trinity.
Let me begin with the man Jesus. Who is he? Even the most primitive Christian faith confesses that, because of Jesus, everything has radically changed. Through Jesus, we believe, we have forgiveness of our sins, and the grace of justification, and a new access to God in confidence and love, for in Jesus we have adoption as sons (or children) of God. And St. Paul cries: if you are sons, then also heirs (Rm 8:17; Gal 4:7): just waiting for the glorious inheritance that is to be revealed for us in eternal glory.
But how can the man Jesus accomplish all that for us? Especially, how can his death on the cross have such huge consequences for us, and for all humanity in all of history? And there have been stories of others coming back from death. So how is it that we say, we believe, that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead affects the whole cosmos? How can one man’s coming back to life represent the definitive overthrow of all evil, and all corruption? how can it inaugurate the radical renewal of all things: of all time and all space?
We have no problem, obviously, in asserting that Jesus was the promised Messiah of Israel: identified as Prophet, Priest and King. We see very clearly that he had power and authority over nature, and over demons; that he spoke with unique authority - indeed with the authority of God. We see too that Jesus commissioned his disciples to convert the whole world by proclaiming the good news we have in him. We see also - to our astonishment - that Jesus was humble, gentle, poor; utterly good in fact; indeed the most attractive man who ever lived; and that he freely allowed evil to engulf him, in abandonment and terrible suffering and a shameful death.
I want to suggest that unless we confess the divinity of Jesus; unless we say that he is God’s only-begotten Son, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, then none of this makes sense. But once we accept what the Church teaches about who Jesus is, then everything falls into place; everything becomes perfectly coherent. I also suggest that we find the divinity of Jesus taught or implied or presumed throughout the New Testament. It’s there in St. Matthew and St. Mark and St. Luke, and in Acts, and throughout the letters of Paul and Peter and the rest; it’s there in the Apocalypse. If it’s not there, none of these writings make any sense. Of course above all it’s there most plainly in St. John. In St. John’s Prologue we read that the Word who was with God, and who was God, through whom all things were made - this Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
In the early 4th century there arose a heretic called Arius. Arius was a Catholic Priest: a very clever intellectual; a reputable scholar of the Bible and of philosophy. Of course also Arius was supercilious and arrogant, but he had many friends in high places, so he became extremely influential. Arius suggested that the Word or Wisdom of God who took flesh in Jesus was not actually himself God. For sure this Word who became Jesus was sent from heaven by God: but he himself was at one time created by God. “There was”, said Arius, “when he was not.” So Arius flatly denied the Trinity.
One of Arius’ proof texts was the passage from Proverbs we heard in our first reading today. Our new ESV translation follows the Hebrew, which says, speaking of Divine Wisdom: “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work”. But the Greek Old Testament, which all the early Church Fathers followed, reads: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work”. QED! said Arius.
Not so! said the orthodox Fathers of the Church. Obviously God did not create his own eternal Wisdom, as if once he had no Wisdom! So what is referred to here must be the Incarnate Lord. St. Paul writes of him to the Colossians: “through him and for him are all things, and in him all things hold together” (cf. Col 1:16,17). So we say: this man, Jesus, who as Incarnate Wisdom was made by God, and was crucified by men: he is God the Son made flesh for us. And that means: our Gospel is maximally Good News! In Jesus we have a maximal manifestation of divine goodness; a maximal display of divine generosity; a maximal revelation of divine love. Also this means we have in Jesus maximal salvation, for in him we are raised up to the level of God himself. And as St. Paul also suggests - in Jesus crucified we have also a maximal display of divine Wisdom (cf. I Cor 1:24 etc.)
Accepting all this, we turn to ponder the identity of the Holy Spirit. Who or what is he? How could he communicate divine power to the Apostles - and so to the Catholic Church - at Pentecost? How could he be the love of God poured into our hearts, as St. Paul wrote to the Romans (5:5)? How could he lead us to the complete truth (Jn 16:13), as our Lord said in today’s Gospel? That is, the Holy Spirit will lead us to the truth of God, and the truth of who Jesus is, and the truth of what Jesus has done; also to the truth of the eternal destiny that awaits us. Again, I would suggest that the only conclusion that makes sense of all we read in scripture about the Holy Spirit is that he too is God: the third Person of the Holy Trinity. In the Holy Spirit God is with us and in us. In the Holy Spirit we bear the life of Christ. In the Holy Spirit we can be in union with Jesus; we can enter into or bear within us his own mind and heart. In the Holy Spirit we are able to pray: to glorify God, to glorify Jesus, to cry out to God, through, with and in Jesus, using his own cry: “Abba, Father!” (Rm 8:15; Gal 4:6).
So today we give thanks to God for manifesting or revealing himself, his own inner life to us, through Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. Today and every day we boldly declare that God is both One and Three, and as such we give him glory. God is three divine Persons, neither separated nor confused, in one indivisible and perfectly simple divine substance. And in this divine mystery, deeper and richer far than we could ever fully comprehend, we glimpse that God is love, God is life, God is light. We glimpse also - so astonishingly! - that God invites all of us to participate in the endless fullness of his own ineffable bliss.