Bishop Glen John Provost
Bishop of Lake Charles
Homily for the Feast of the Holy Trinity
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
"Receive us as your own." Exodus 34:9
The first reading describes a profound moment in the life of the Hebrew People. They were in the midst of the exodus at Sinai. They had offended God by worshipping a golden calf. God's wrath is aroused, but Moses intercedes for the Chosen People. God then listens to His servant Moses. God even speaks to Moses "face to face" (Exodus 33:11). This intimacy of God with Moses will overflow into God's presence with His People.
God is to be united with His People. For this Moses prays. "If I find favor with you, O Lord, do come along in our company. This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins, and receive us as your own" (Exodus 34:9). The Jews never forgot this oneness. "Receive us as your own", Moses had prayed. God answered Moses' prayer. The People became God's People. They belonged to Him, and He belonged to them. The sacred Covenant was to be renewed, and at the heart of the Covenant was the realization that God dwelt in the midst of His People. "Receive us as your own."
In our Holy Father's most recent visit to the United States, he stressed that religion is not a private affair. When religion is relegated only to what we do on Sunday, then religion "looses its soul." "Christian faith is essentially ecclesial." What did he mean?
From the beginning, God called a People to be His own. That People of God, united with God at the time of Exodus, is fulfilled in the Church, who is the new People of God. Just as Moses was God's chosen instrument to reveal His presence to the Jews at Sinai, Jesus reveals God's true nature to us in the Trinity. The night before He died, Jesus revealed to His apostles, "When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me. And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning" (John 15:26-27). Then, Jesus prays to the Father, asking that the intimate union of the Trinity might be shared with His followers. He prays, "...that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me" (John 17:21). The credibility of Jesus, whether or not the world believes in Him, will depend upon the unity of those who believe in Him. This is what it means to believe in Him.
It is to this unity that the Body of Christ is called. It is a Trinitarian unity, a unity so intimate that it is inseparable. To believe in Jesus has consequences. Faith thrusts us into a unity that begs our response. When I believe, I must act. Otherwise, faith remains just a matter of words. In light of this dynamic faith, the words of today's Gospel make sense. "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" (John 3:16). And where is the truth of that statement lived? Jesus answers that question a few verses later, in the same discourse in fact. "Whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God" (John 3:21). When I believe "in Him", I act "in Him."
Then I profess my faith in Jesus Christ, I am united to Him. However, my unity with Him is not my unity alone. It is a unity within a People He has called to be His own. The prayer of Moses is fulfilled. "Receive us as your own." We have become part of Christ, you and I. Together we make up the Body of Christ, the Church. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, "Christian faith is essentially ecclesial." It is so because the faith I profess is the faith we profess, and that active faith unites us to Christ in His Body. "Now you are Christ's body," St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, "and individually parts of it" (I Corinthians 12:27). This "...people God has designated in the church" to manifest many gifts (I Corinthians 12:28). "God has so constructed the body ... so that there may be no division in the body" (I Corinthians 12:24-25). And that unity works towards the goal of uniting us with God.
In this sense of unity, we are invited to the life of the Trinity. We share in the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is why the great spiritual writers of our Catholic tradition describe the Christian life of grace as the indwelling of the Trinity. The Trinity lives in us, and we live in the Trinity. God receives us as His own.
