“The Spirit Has You Believe: 'He that hath seen Me hath seen The Father'”
Saint John 3: 1-15
The Feast of The Holy Trinity: 12 June Anno Domini 2022
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
The Trinity is. This is The Faith. This is your faith. There is no other.
You’re not a stone or a rock. An object does not confess with the tongue. Though, to be sure, creation, all of creation, does testify to The Trinity as its creator. But, you…you speak.
The Holy Mass began as it does every Lord’s Day: “In The Name of The Father and of The + Son and of The Holy Ghost.” The Trinity is invoked, called upon, prayed to, and hallowed. In the confession of sins (corporate), The Holy Ghost drew you “near…with a true heart,” to confess unto God, “[y]our Father, beseeching Him in The Name of [y]our Lord Jesus Christ.” Trinitarian confession. And then you were absolved by a Spirit ordained “servant of The Word” and “in the stead and by the command” of Jesus to have all your sins absolved “in The Name of The Father and of The + Son and of The Holy Ghost.”
The Service of The Word then started with this morning’s appointed Introit (short excerpt from Psalm 8) and its New Testament “baptism” conclusion: “Glory be to The Father and to The + Son and to The Holy Ghost.” When you then sang the Kyrie (the prayer to God of Blind Bartimaeus and every single Saint from Adam to you), the thrice fold cry “have Mercy” was explicitly Trinitarian!
The Gloria in Excelsis which followed… “we Praise Thee; we Bless Thee; we Worship Thee” (3); and of course, its conclusion: “Thou only, O Christ, with The Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God The Father.”
After the Salutation the pastor prayed on all of your behalf the historic Trinity Sunday Collect. In this prayer “Almighty and Everlasting God” was intreated to give Grace to you, His servants, that you might acknowledge the glory of The Eternal Trinity and to Worship the Unity. This short prayer to Christ Jesus was terminated “…Who livest and reignest with The Father and The Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.”
You heard THREE lections (sections from Holy Scripture). Esaias’ revelatory doxology worship of The Trinity: “Holy, Holy, Holy” chanted by three-winged Seraphs. The companion angelic choristers were also acknowledged, re-chanted, by the pastor in the Gradual right before St. Paul’s letter to the Romans: “…O Lord…Who dwellest between the Cherubim.”
Your inability to understand, grasp, or comprehend the mystery of God’s true Trinitarian Nature: 3 Persons one Substance/Essence was Gospelled by Saint Paul: “the depth of the riches…of the knowledge of God; how unsearchable; who hath known The mind of The Lord; FOR OF HIM, and + THROUGH HIM, and TO HIM are all things, to Whom be Glory forever.”
Week after week all these Trinitarian references saturate your Sunday Mass, your weekly devotions and prayer lives, and all of existence (yes, more so on Trinity Sunday).
And the joy of confessing with your lips what your hearts and minds believe in the words of The Athanasian Creed is also angelic and life-giving.
On any given Sunday one should count how many times God has us mention, speak, and sing, His Three-Fold Unified Being. Because that’s what it means to be a Christian! Not diagraming and philosophizing and pontificating on the mystery of The Trinity, but by Worshiping The Tri-Une God of our Salvation. After this homily, also, note how many Trinitarian declarations are Gospelled to you and by you in the remainder of this service—all the way to the three-fold Aaronic Benediction.
You are not an Arian. You confess with Athanasius and the Fathers at Nicaea that Jesus is God. But you couldn’t without The Holy Spirit giving you The Faith: “no man can say that Jesus is The Lord, but by The Holy Ghost” [1 Cor. 12.3b]. The same Spirit that Jesus told His Disciples that The Father would send!
So this morning we do not make heretical, and frankly quite lame, analogies found in nature or in old pseudo-“Lutheran” VBS and Sunday School materials, comparisons in a feeble attempt to “describe” The Trinity to our children or our child-like adults who don’t read their Bibles. We don’t even point to Saint Augustine’s supposed diagram of Who is Who and Who isn’t Who.
You do what Saint Nicodemus did. You visit Jesus. You’ve done so this morning by The Power of The Holy Ghost and you will soon sing your Trinitarian doxology after your Pastor, on your behalf, prays The Our Father. Nicodemus already believed faithfully in The One God of Abraham and Moses and Esaias, and John The Baptist. Jesus tells Nicodemus about God the Holy Ghost. And Jesus looks into the very face of The Only-Begotten Son, The 2nd Person of The Trinity—the same Lord and God Whom Nicodemus will faithfully take down from the blood drenched, gore stained, death smell cross on Good Friday.
And as Nicodemus, in person and in time, saw His God nailed and hanging on the tree of Calvary, he was brought back to The Lord’s Words, by The Holy Ghost: “and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” [Jn. 3.14-15].
When you see Jesus, when one saw The Lord with the eyes in 30 A.D.; when you “see” Jesus in The Word in 2022 A.D., you like Saint Philip have seen The Father.
In place of the Word “Trinity” substitute the word Love. Saint John, by The Spirit, writes “God is Love.” There can be no love without a lover, a beloved, and the love between them. Jesus states in the 10th chapter of John’s Gospel: “My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again” [Jn. 10. 17]. There is no love without movement, action, reciprocal affection—“laying down of life.” Love is Christ Jesus in doing. No static, immobile, trapped-in-amber fossilized rock or stationery and solitary brick/monad/unitarian emotion or feeling. No! But rather a sacrificing, Body giving, Blood Shedding, Father honoring, Paschal Mystery. The Cross, The Christ, is testament to The Trinity.
Jesus the perfect obedient Son keeping His Father’s will and commands for all of you. You believing this and living this, THIS very day, by The Power of The Holy Ghost.
Jesus The perfect obedient Son suffering and dying for you sins. You believing this with Saint Nicodemus and Saint John by the power of The Holy Ghost. And you all with Saint Paul confess: “Jesus Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins”
In Whose Name?
In the only God’s Name!
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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