Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, May 31 Homily
May 31, 2026
Last week, we marked the conclusion of the great Easter season with the Solemnity of Pentecost. We celebrated the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Paraclete. As Christians, we don’t just worship God as if He were a monolithic reality. Rather, the one true God we love and adore has revealed Himself as a Trinity of three Divine Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No other religion professes this foundational belief of Christianity – that the one God is a community of persons. But this isn’t a mere Christian novelty either. It actually must be the case for God to be God. Let me explain.
By His very nature, God is love. But love doesn’t just happen in the abstract or as a solitary reality. None of us can just love, period. There must be a subject of our love. We have to love another person. And so it is with God, who is not just the origin of love, but is Love itself. The Father, as the source of the Godhead is the eternal Lover, who loves His Beloved Son eternally, who is eternally begotten by Him. And this Love exchanged and flowing between them is so life-giving that God the Holy Spirit Himself proceeds forth. You see, there is necessarily a unity of divine love as the essential nature of the Blessed Trinity. It’s God’s very nature to be three in one.
However, as Christians, you and I are created in God’s image and likeness, and through baptism have been made children of God the Father in Christ. That literally means that Jesus has made us sons and daughters of His Father, so that the Father loves us in the Holy Spirit as if we were His Beloved Son. That’s why it’s the Holy Spirit who brings to life our relationship with God. Without the Holy Spirit, we would be like a body without a soul – which is a corpse, lifeless. The Christian life is all about living out this dynamic, loving relationship, as we are caught up into the very lov-ing of the Holy Trinity, which will reach it’s perfect fulfillment in the Kingdom of Heaven.
There are two foundational truths here that I want to focus on today. If God as a Trinity is One, and He is Love itself, then to say that we are created in God’s image and likeness means that unity and charity, must be essential to our very nature as Christians, just as they are essential to God’s nature, in which love (or charity) is the bond of unity in the Blessed Trinity.
Unity is very important for us as people. It’s what provides a bond and allows there to be relationship between people. As Church, this is necessarily true as well. Think about our collective experience of Mass. From the common responses and gestures, to the unison of singing, to a shared belief in the one Christian faith, we celebrate this unity, even as we gather as a diverse body of irrepeatably unique persons, from different places, cultures, and backgrounds. Without the unity of faith to transcend those differences, communal worship would just be a collection of individuals.
Now, in case you haven’t noticed, our culture at large right now does diversity better than ever. But we’re really struggling with the whole unity thing – as Americans, as families, even within the Church. And in fact, an epidemic of loneliness has previously been declared. Our history of individualism in this country is very strong. And while it has served us to form a prosperous nation, it is taking a toll. We are so divided. And without a common source of unity, there will be greater disintegration. It used to be that for the vast majority, Christian belief and praxis were the source of that unity in the one true God. However, as I’ve been sharing, those identifying as belonging to a house of worship and actively practicing their faith in this great nation is at an all time low.
But we are all created in God’s image and likeness. And so therefore, there is this inherent desire in the heart of every person for unity, love, and peace. But as society moves away from God, so it seeks to create its own definitions and way of life. As a prime example, as begin this month of June, there will be on display such a diversity of views out there on what love really is, and people are so confused. I know this because I talk to so many different people across the spectrum of life.
Love of course has many degrees and expressions. It has emotional qualities of tenderness, connection, and caring for another. But for love to be mature, it must seek, above all, the essential good of another person. Certainly, God Himself, as Love shows us this, as Jesus Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, in the sacrifice of the cross, took the punishment of our sins, and triumphing over the grave, enabled the restoration of our relationship with His Father in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, God seeks our eternal good above all. And so He gives us His Church to teach us what love really is. He’s not some authoritarian figure in heaven giving us arbitrary rules and laws through His Church. He’s a loving Father, who knows what is truly best for His children. And through the Church He wants to teach us how to live our lives in conformity with Him. As the very words of God put it in 1 John, “For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments (5:3).” So because God is love, He commands us to obedience to His Church’s teachings out of love.
And God teaches through His Church that although there are many degrees and expressions of love, sexual love is to be lived only in the context of a sacramental marriage between one man and one woman. And although a popular slogan today declares that love is love, unless it is rooted in God who is love – and the teachings of the Body of Christ, the Church – it not only falls short, but even deceives as to what the true nature of love is all about.
Love, like any human desire, has to be ordered as God designed it for it to be fruitful. For example, the natural desire of hunger. God designed it, so that when we eat, food nourishes our bodies for life. However, if we eat and then throw that food up, it’s not having its natural end – and we’re not ordering eating in such a way that it leads to growth. So, it is with love. When love between a couple is mostly based on the emotional connection of whatever they feel, and is separated from the unitive aspect of the complementarity of the sexes and the procreation of children, it is inherently not in order. And whether that’s between members of the same or opposite sex, it will lead to a frustration in various ways and separation from God because of not being obedient to His ordering of human sexuality. It is pride to think that we know better than God.
My friends, God is the author of all that is, including us as humans. God, who is love, created us. Love is such a powerful force. At the same time, it is such a fragile force, one that the evil one wants to exploit because of our innate desire for love. Our role as children of the Father is to bring all of our natural desires, which are good but wounded, into union with God’s will. This unity of our wills with His is the only way for our ultimate flourishing and growth as individuals, as families, and as a society. God bless you.