by Fr. Jose “Joesum” Sumampong, Jr.
May 30, 2021
Holy Trinity Sunday (B)
Deut 4: 32-34, 39-40 / Psalm 33: 4-6, 9, 18-20, 22 /
Romans 8: 14-17 / Matthew 28: 16-20
IN WHOSE NAME WE HAVE BEEN BAPTIZED?
Word: To celebrate the Most Holy Trinity, the Church proclaims to us the last five verses of the gospel according to St. Matthew as they contain these word; “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit” (Jn 28:19).
We shall see how, in this conclusion of his gospel, Matthew condensed as it were his entire gospel. These sentences are very deeply theological, they are like a “profession of faith”.
The eleven were in Galilee. On the mountain where Jesus had ordered them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted (Jn 28:19). The very Church which adores its Lord in worship, remains a Church of sinners. Like ours, the faith of the first Apostles remains mixed with doubts and ambiguity. Ours is a “pilgrim faith”, a faith “on the way”. The Church that welcomes Jesus is always a Church made of “men of little faith” (Mt 14:31), already truncated by the defection of one of its members. Of the twelve who had been called there remain only eleven.
Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Jn 28:18-20). What a sovereign majesty in these words of the risen Jesus!
After a hidden life of the poor and insignificant carpenter from Nazareth, now the truth bursts out. It is apparently the last page of a narrative, the last episode of a human life—but it is the beginning of the great adventure in all ages, unexplainable according to the usual norms of history.
One scriptural scholar has written: “We note how the epiteth “all” is repeated for times, which makes it sounds very solemn. Four times the totality and universality of the Work of Jesus is stressed: This is the totality of God’s own Action, becoming incarnate in the totality of the universe, to transform the totality of man’s activity, the totality of duration and time! We should, in this context, read once again Teilhard de Chardin. Here is a text of his ‘Physically, Christ is the one who fills and fulfils: not a single element in the world, at no instant in time, is moved, moves or can ever be moved outside the influence of His directing impulse. Space and Duration are full of Him… Physically also. Christ is the one who consumes, since the fullness of the world will be achieved only in the final synthesis when a supreme Consciousness will appear over the total and supremely organized complexity… Onto Him are all lines of the world converging, and in Him are they knotted together… He alone gives it coherence to the entire edifice of Matter and Spirit.’”
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Order: From theology we learn that the Father is “father” only because, renouncing himself totally, he passes entirely into his Son. The Son is “son” only because, renouncing himself, he is entirely “gift of self” to his Father. The Spirit is nothing if he is not mutual Love of the Father and the Son.
The great Plant of God which Jesus entrusts to his Apostle and to his Church, consists in plunging mankind into the love relationship that binds perfectly the Father, Son and the Spirit. The sign of baptism, which is identically the sign of the Cross, is “one’s life for the others”. We are baptized “in the name of Love”.
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Realities 1. I was eating a piece of watermelon some time ago and was struck by its beauty. I took some of the seeds and dried them and weighed them. I found that it would require 500 of those seeds to weigh a pound. Then I applied mathematics to that 40 pound melon. One of those seeds, put into the ground, takes off its coat and goes to work … It gathers from somewhere 200,000 times its weight, and forcing the raw material through a tiny stem, constructs a watermelon. (William Jennings Bryan, Mystery)
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Realities: 2. A bright young lad was travelling by bus through a large city and upon passing a church tipped his hat in reverence. Observing this, a rather highbrow passenger at his side remarked in a rather condescending way, “Oh I see, you go to church. What do you learn there anyway’!” “I’ve learned the chief mysteries of religion.” “Mysteries’! Don’t you know, my boy, that we must never believe what we don’t understand? At any rate, that’s my principle.” “Then” replied the lad, ”will you tell me why your little finger moves when you stir it?” “It moves because I will it, and because the life that is in me makes it move.” “But just why does it move?” “Because I will it.” “Your ears won’t close when you will it, how’s that?” At that the conversation ended …. (Bruno Hagspeil, Mysteries)
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Realities: 3. A young atheist stopped at the farm of a Dutchman whose language was faulty but whose reasoning was faultless. The youth boasted, “I will never believe anything I do not understand.” “Is that so?” replied the farmer. “WeIl, you should take one example. There, you see that field? My pasture. My horse eats grass; it comes up all hair over his back. My sheep eats grass; it comes all wool. My geese eat grass; it comes all over them feathers. You understand that, do you?” (Tonne, Mystery)
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Realities: 4.Every now and then you will come across partly educated people who will loftily proclaim that they never believe anything that they cannot understand. Let’s see if that is true. Let’s ask these wise men and women a few questions… What causes sleep? What is life and what causes it? What causes cancer? What is this thing we call luck and how does it work? What is death? What is thought? By their own admission, if our wise men cannot answer these questions, then don’t believe that sleep or cancer or thought or life exist. Actually, the most learned scientists in the world have no answers to some of those questions, and yet they have no trouble believing in them. In our everyday lives, we accept very many things on faith. That means, we take someone else’s word for something. We believe the newspaper, the radio and TV. We take on faith what teachers tell us. There is nothing stupid nor foolish about this. (Frank Mihalik, Mysteries and Faith)
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Realities: 5. This Trinitarian image of God is present to us from the very inception of our Christian life. We were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Baptism is a continuing reality in our lives through which we are called to share their divine life of love even now on earth though Grace, in the obscurity of faith, and after death in the eternal light of heaven… And our community Eucharistic celebrations begin with a greeting such as: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all”. In brief, our whole Christian life is marked by the Trinity. (Catechism for Filipino Catholics, no. 268).
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Direction: O Lord my God, I believe in you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. . . . Insofar as I can, insofar as you have given me the power, I have sought you. I became weary and I labored. O Lord my God, my sole hope, help me to believe and never to cease seeking you. Grant that I may always and ardently seek out your countenance. Give me the strength to seek you, for you help me to find you and you have more and more given me the hope of finding you. Here I am before you with my firmness and my infirmity. Preserve the first and heal the second. Here I am before you with my strength and my ignorance. Where you have opened the door to me, welcome me at the entrance; where you have closed the door to me, open to my cry; enable me to remember you, to understand you, and to love you. (Prayer to Seek God Continually, St. Augustine of Hippo)