Trinity Sunday – May 31, 2026 – Sr. Mary Ann Barnhorn, SNDdeN
John 3: 16-18
It’s all about relationships, we are quick to say. A lilt in our voice conveys the message that all is well. A more somber tone implies “not so much”. Actually, it is the quality of relationships that makes the difference. We all long for quality in all of our relationships. That is to say, we want to be in connection with one another rather than in isolation. That should come as no surprise because we ae made in the image and likeness of God and the doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that our God is a relational God. That is to say God is not solitude but rather perfect communion of love – love given and love received – Dynamic communion, the eternal exchange of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, into which we are invited.
We have been on a journey during this liturgical year to grow in an understanding of who God is. In Advent we met the God of our fathers who inhabits light inaccessible. During the Christmas season we embraced the total humanity of this God of ours. In His public life we experienced Jesus, the teacher who walked the hills and valleys of Israel to teach us that our God is a loving God who cares for His chosen ones as a good shepherd cares for his sheep. In Lent, Holy Week and Easter we encountered the Christ who lived our life and died our death to make us one with Him in His paschal mystery, assuring us we are never alone. And in Pentecost we received the warmth and fire that makes God God, as our very own warmth and fire.
Today’s feast of the Most Holy Trinity pulls us out of the isolation we all dread to enclose us in the circle of the Trinitarian activity of love. Love given and loved received. The message of Trinity Sunday is less a call to do this or that but rather an invitation to be part of the closeness of God, Father, Son and Spirit to each other. The totality of gift to each other becomes ours if we open our heart to receive it. And, when it comes to love, isn’t that what we want? Fortunately for each of us, our Triune God is an all-loving God, drawing us from isolation into the unity at the heart of Trinitarian love.
Moving to a big picture understanding of this Trinitarian love, Heid Russell, a theologian from Loyola in Chicago, in speaking of the Trinity, whose feast we celebrate today, stresses wholeness and universality, suggesting that sin and suffering fragment humanity (think of the world situation today) while the Trinity works toward healing and integration with God – Father, Son and Spirit. Drawing on insights from evolutionary thought Russell stresses that all reality is dynamically constructed and moving toward fuller communion. The Christian life, therefore, is participation in God’s ongoing work of unifying life. The church is called to be a sacrament of this Trinitarian wholeness by fostering inclusion, with all of creation, from Pope Leo to the tiniest blade of grass.
Returning to the issue of quality of relationship we ask ourselves: What is the quality of my relationship with the Trinitarian persons, longing to bring me into their circle of life and love. I find three major characteristics that determine relational intimacy:
1) Self revelation. Or,in today’s casual style: What is going on with you, really?
2) Ruthless honesty. Borrowing from the Velveteen rabbit – Are you really real?
3) integrity of Life direction. Where are you headed or what is your secret dream?
The key here is reciprocal. One-sided self revelation does not build an intimate, communal relationship. God, in every page of Scripture tells us who He is by answering those three questions geared to bringing us into the closeness of community of relationship we call the Trinity.
So, looking at today’s feast as an invitation to the most intimate of all unions, in which God’s goodness invites us to the closest conceivable union of loving persons, we are left to respond in multiple ways to GOD’s invitation to closeness or not.,“existing in connection with others rather than in isolation.”
John 3: 16-18
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Meet Sister Mary Ann Barnhorn, SNDdeN
