Queen of Apostles Church

This Sunday the church celebrates the Holy Trinity.

We celebrate, that is, we are happy about who God is. And who is God? God is one substance yet three divine persons: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

If this does not make complete sense to you please know that it doesn’t make complete sense to me either and that It will not make one hundred percent sense to any of us at least while we live here on earth. It is a mystery. Yet this does not mean that God is beyond any sort of comprehension. He does make sense and we can love him even if we cannot figure him out completely. I ask those of you who love someone: does that person make complete sense to you? Can you give me an exhaustive, perfectly comprehensive definition of who that person is and the intricacies of his or her being? My guess is that the answer is No. Now, does that make you love that person any less? No, right? Likewise, with God. We might not be able to know it all about him but we know some, enough to be able to love him and worship him.

We can say that we know God because he made himself known to us. From the beginning of times it pleased God to reveal himself in multiple forms and ways. In the first reading from the Exodus, for example, God passed before Mosses and cried out: “the Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” We might not know it all about God but this we know that He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithful.

Hopefully, we also want to get to know God better. Think, for example of that someone you really care about and that you want to get to know better. One way to do this is by “putting ourselves in his or her shoes.” We want to visit where this person lives, do the things he or she does, eat the things they like and even meet their family. Likewise, with God. One way to get to know God better is by putting ourselves in his shoes and doing the things he does which is: being merciful, gracious, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithful. We all have the capacity for it since we have been created by him in his image and likeness; it just takes caring about him in the same way that we care about those we love and want to know a lot about.

Today our country looks in dismay and completely appalled at the crime committed against George Floyd. We must peacefully cry for and demand Social Justice and Respect for every human life and the mystery of the Trinity shows us the pattern to do this. The invitation for this Sunday is, therefore, to embody the mystery of Who God is by “putting ourselves in his shoes” and being merciful, gracious, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithful. Saint Paul makes us the same invitation when he says: “encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.” May God give us the grace to do the things he does, to love one another as he loves us.