Archbishop of Sydney

His Eminence,
Cardinal George Pell
Cardinal Priest of the Title of S. Maria Domenica Mazzarello

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Home > Our Archbishop > Homilies 2001 > Article	Printable Version

Trinity Sunday

John 16:12-15; Rom 5:1-5; Prov 8:22-31

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
10 June 2001

Because Jesus Christ, Our Lord and God, is the center of our faith, we are tempted think of God as a man. We remember images from our childhood, from some of the great Christian paintings of God the Father, nearly always a big old man with a long beard and long hair. When long hair was the fashion in the seventies, teenage boys used to tell their parents, that Jesus too had long hair! More seriously, we know that Our Lord told us to call God "Abba", what we translate as "Father". But it is still the term young and old children use when talking to their father; therefore "Dad" is probably a more accurate translation.

We know of course that God is spiritual, neither man nor woman, not anything physical or material. Only some weeks back a talkback radio announcer who was interviewing me was surprised to hear God was not a man; or at least that we Christians did not claim God is a man. It is Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, who took on human nature and is true God and true man.

I often like to ask confirmation classes what God is like. What is God made of? I always do this now; because it dawned on me that many youngsters really have no idea of what "Spirit" means. I recall one young 12 year old smirking as he said God was "unreal." I feared he meant it literally! Once upon a time at Mass the response to "The Lord be with you" was and "with your Spirit"! Constant repetition of words provoked us into wondering what a Spirit was. With the young we need to reinforce the conviction of God's existence in other ways.

God is a Spirit. Therefore we have to use material symbols to talk of God, to begin to understand something of God. Tradition has it that St Patrick used the shamrock: one shamrock with three leaves, one God with three persons.

A circle is a traditional symbol of perfection. So we often have circular stained glass windows high up in the Gothic Cathedrals like ours to represent God. Sometimes three interlinking circles are used for the Trinity. At other times the three sides of a triangle are used to represent the Trinitarian God, or the 3 different states of the same reality, water, steam and ice are used to point to the Trinity.

The Scripture readings today, from John's Gospel and the Old Testament book of Proverbs, use other realities. John speaks of the Spirit of Truth, which Jesus promised his disciples to help them understand. While the book of Proverbs speaks of the eternal wisdom who was God, the master craftsman who fixed the heaven's firm, assigned the sea its boundaries, thickened the clouds. Certainly God has intelligence beyond our reckoning and imagining. It is God who devised the principles of physics and chemistry - not to mention the moral truths and principles of the spiritual life - which determine the ways of the world.

But the most important element to understanding God is mentioned in the second reading, the love of God. The first level of religious understanding and practice is that we pray to God when we are in trouble. We never ask for help from those who aren't interested in us, and we ask with greater confidence when we realize that the person we are asking loves us.

This is the first foundation of all Christian understanding and practice. There is one God who loves us. And we know from Jesus that this God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So I tell the youngsters about to be confirmed that the best place to start understanding God is to think of their parent's love for them. Very real, powerful and necessary, and quite invisible. God is Love.

One could say too that the trinity is the supreme example of love, of otherness and intimacy, an eternal interflow of friendship between father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the background to Jesus calling us friends, not servants, much less slaves.

Jesus as the Son of God, is the first other (to the Father) in the universe. Through friendship with Jesus our brother, we enter the tender beauty and affection of the Trinity. It's a dignity and vocation beyond understanding, too wonderful for words.

There is a beautiful Irish prayer to the Trinity,

The Sacred Three
My fortress be
Encircling me
Come and be around
My hearth and my home.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.