Trinity Sunday, Year B-2009

Happy the nation whose God is the Lord, the people chosen as his very own (Ps. 33:12)

Reads Jer. 31:31, 33-34:

The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant

with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. .... But this is

the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those

days, says the Lord. I will place my law within them, and write it

upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

No longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how

to know the Lord. All, from least to greatest, shall know me,

says the Lord.

We are living in these New Testament days. And indeed, the least, no less than the greatest, know the Lord. To the little ones are revealed, in fact, things hidden from the learned and the wise, things handed over to Jesus by his Father, so that the little ones may share in the Son’s knowledge of the Father (Mt. 11:25-27; Lk. 10:21-22). Through the Spirit, God reveals himself to the foolish, the weak, the lowly and despised of the world, those who are not wise by human standards or influential or of noble birth, “what eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9-10; 1:26-30).

Granted, the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters do not have the intellectual sharpness of those who are at the cutting edge of theological reflection. No, the poor believe simply, without dissecting things, as St. Vincent de Paul pointed out. But the Spirit himself bears witness with their spirit that they are God’s children, his heirs, joint heirs with Christ, as they suffer with him, patiently enduring their miseries, and await their glorification with him. Their lowliness makes them especially grateful to God for his gifts and for the many wonderful ways he reveals himself to them that are always worth celebrating (cf. Father Robert P. Maloney, C.M., The Way of Vincent de Paul: A Contemporary Spirituality in the Service of the Poor [Brooklyn, N.Y.: New City Press, 1992], pp. 58-59).

And God, no doubt, must reveal himself to the poor as Trinity—which supposes, first, that “the same ‘mindful mutuality’ that describes the community of God’s inner life also marks the way that God relates beyond Godself, to creatures like us,” and, secondly, that “so it must be for us, too: our desire to live in right relationship with ourselves, with others and with the world that we serve, comes from the one wellspring of longing for communion, which is the deepest desire of God’s own heart” (cf. the summary of a talk given by Sister Regina Bechtle [1]). After all, it is this triune God—the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit—that the poor reflect. “Those who have almost nothing are often the most willing to share the little they have with their sisters and brothers in need. They understand that we are all one family and they act with great freedom because they have everything to share and nothing to lose” (cf. ibid.).

The first of those having everything to share and nothing to lose, the Word made flesh, the rich made poor, offers his own body and blood for us to eat and drink. Indeed, there is no better way of honoring the mysteries the Most Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation, of holding up “the one wellspring of longing for communion,” of proclaiming that the little ones know the Lord, than to celebrate and live the Eucharist (cf. Common Rules of the Congregation of the Mission, X, 3).