The Most Holy Trinity, Sunday, 16th June

John 16:12–15

Jesus said, 'I still have many things to
say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he
will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will
speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to
come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to
you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take
what is mine and declare it to you.'"

Commentary

During his discourse at the Last Supper,
Christ had promised his disciples that he would send them the Holy Spirit – the
Paraclete – to strengthen and console them and recall to their minds the truths
he had taught them. In today’s gospel, he repeats the promise and tells them
the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and that the truths he
will reveal to them will be those which the Gather and the Son want revealed.

In these verses from St. John and the
second reading of today – St. Paul’s letter to the Romans -- we have a clear
statement of the faith of the infant Church in the doctrine of the Blessed
Trinity that Christ himself, who was the second Person of the Blessed Trinity
become man for our salvation. As regards tis basic dogma of our faith then,
that there are three Persons in the One God, there is no room for doubt, we
have it on the authority of Christ who is God. If we cannot understand how this
can be, we need not be surprised because our human minds are very limited and
they depend on our human senses for their images of things.

We Christians should have no difficulty in
admitting the existence of the Blessed Trinitym and today as we honour the
three divine Persons, our central thought should concentrate on gratitude to
each of the three; the loving Father who planned not our creation but our
elevation to adopted sonship/daughtership; the all-obedient loving Son, who
carried out the Father’s plan, sharing with us our humanity so that we could
share in the divinity; the Holy Spirit, fruit of the love of Father and Son,
who has come to dwell in the Church and in each individual member, in order to
fill our hearts with a true love of God.

We know we are unworthy of this divine
generosity. The greatest saints that ever lived on earth were un worthy of such
divine interest. That should not and must not stop us from availing of this
divine generosity. We can show our gratitude in one way only, that is by
appreciating our privilege and by striving to show our appreciation of it in
our daily lives.

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit know all
our human weaknesses, they knew them before they arranged to make us sharers in
their own eternal happiness. They know also that it is those of us who try and
try again to rise above our human weaknesses, who will finally share their
heaven with them.

This possibility is open to all. The
Blessed Trinity will exclude nobody from heaven. What we know of their plans
for man’s sanctification makes such a thought impossible. If one fail the fault
will lie completely and entirely with themselves, they did not do the little
that was asked of them.

May God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
grant us the strength to overcome our human weaknesses and live and die in
their love so that we may share their eternal kingdom with them. Amen.