Trinity Sunday

How well do you know the Trinity? Do you know the Trinity as well as you
know your family? Do you know the Trinity as well as you know your close
friends?

How do we want people to know us? We want people to know our likes and
dislikes. We want people to have familiar conversations with us. God wants the
same with us.

God told Jeremias (1:4-5): "And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:
Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou
camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the
nations." God knew us before we were ever even thought of. He has known of our
coming from the time of creation. God thought of us and has created us for a special
purpose.

Why don't we spend much time with God? Father Francis has answered this
question: "21st century Catholics find it difficult to spend much time alone with God.
The spirit of of restlessness has got into most of us, and we are in a perpetual state of
busyness. The trouble is not with our temperament or our culture. We just don't have
our priorities right - that's all."

God wants us to have a similar relationship with the three persons of the
Trinity as we have with those close to us. He wants us to get to know each other.
We know God speaks to us in many ways. God wants us to speak to Him as well,
expressing everything we are thinking and feeling. You may ask why we need to
discuss this with God, doesn't He know everything? He certainly does, but this
discussion is more for us, than for Him. We do not realize where we are spiritually,
if we do not discuss our whole life with God. He cannot work in us, if we do not
realize where we are at. When we are considering this and applying Scripture and
the teachings of the Saints to our lives, the light bulb comes on and we realize where
we should be. We need to be honest with God about everything good, bad or
indifferent. We should tell Him everything and hold nothing back. Let us look at
some examples.

In the 18th chapter of III Kings Elias triumphed over the priests of Baal. In the
next chapter we read: "[2] And Jezabel sent a messenger to Elias, saying: Such and
such things may the gods do to me, and add still more, if by this hour tomorrow I
make not thy life as the life of one of them. [3] Then Elias was afraid, and rising up
he went whithersoever he had a mind: and he came to Bersabee of Juda, and left his
servant there, [4] And he went forward, one day's journey into the desert. And when
he was there, and sat under a juniper tree, he requested for his soul that he might die,
and said: It is enough for me, Lord, take away my soul: for I am no better than my
fathers. [5] And he cast himself down, and slept in the shadow of the juniper tree:
and behold an angel of the Lord touched him, and said to him: Arise and eat." We
have all had those times we want to sit under a juniper tree and let God take us. God
came to Elias and after He sent an angel to feed Elias twice, God sent him on his
next mission.

In the last chapter of Jonas we read: "[1] And Jonas was exceedingly troubled,
and was angry: [2] And he prayed to the Lord, and said: I beseech thee, O Lord, is
not this what I said, when I was yet in my own country? therefore I went before to
flee into Tharsis: for I know that thou art a gracious and merciful God, patient, and
of much compassion, and easy to forgive evil. [3] And now, O Lord, I beseech thee
take my life from me: for it is better for me to die than to live." It is good to read the
whole book of Jonas to get the rest of the story.
"Which when Simon Peter saw, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying: Depart
from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." [Luke 5:8] Aren't we all sinners, and we
need to come before God and let Him know we know this.

St. Teresa of Ávila had an unfortunate happenstance. Sometimes it is said that
she fell off a horse into the mud; sometimes it’s a carriage accident and mud;
sometimes there’s no mud at all and it’s an insight she received in prayer. Whatever
the circumstances, she heard Jesus say to her, “This is how I treat my friends,” to
which she replied, “If this is how You treat your friends, it is no wonder You have so
few!” "For whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth: and as a father in the son he
pleaseth himself." [Proverbs 3:12]

Saint Alphonsus gives us the following eternal maxim:

"We ought to live on this earth as if there were nothing in existence but God and ourselves."

Our relationship with God is the most important relationship in our lives. All we are and have comes from God.

Saint Alphonsus gives us several other Fundamental Spiritual Maxims. Don't
worry I will leave you with a list of them, because we should think on these often,
which is what Saint Alphonsus recommends. We need to keep these in mind, when
we come to spend time with God.

One of them is:

"Sin is the only evil which we ought to hate."

Saint John Eudes says: "I say, furthermore, that, according to all theologians, the extinction of
every natural being is not so great an evil as a venial sin. So he who commits a venial sin works an evil greater than the destruction of the whole world;
consequently God might justly destroy the whole world in punishment for a venial
sin." One venial sin is a worse evil than the destruction of the world. Do we think
like this?

Another is this:

"All Worldly Goods Will Have An End."

We will all have our last bowl of ice cream, some day. My shoes will one day fall apart. Everything on earth passes away, which is what I call the first rule of science, entropy, which
basically says everything falls apart. Jesus said: "Heaven and earth shall pass" (Matthew 24:35)

Another maxim is this:

"We Are Not Our Own."

This body is not my property. I belong to God as all of us do. He created us, therefore He has rights over us, which gives us a responsibility to Him, because every right bring a responsibility
on someone. Saint Paul reminds us: "Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not
your own?" (I Corinthians 6:19)

Here is one we need to keep in mind:

"We Own Nothing."

Job said: "And said: Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord." (Job 1:21) What we own is actually given into our hands by God in order to do His holy will. God gives us material things as tools to do His holy will. Ultimately, He can take everything away as He did with Job. Saint Augustine says that we cannot know how attached we are to worldly things, until they are taken away.

"God's Will Is Best,"...

Which Saint Alphonsus stretches out to: "The most insignificant action, performed for God’s sake, is more profitable than the conversion of the whole world, effected from any other motive than the love of God." Let us also add this: "Whatever God Wills Is Good." This may be a hard concept, but Scripture will help us understand. "For whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth: and as a father in the son he pleaseth himself." [Proverbs 3:12]

Last fall I had a car accident on the way to trade my truck for a car. When everything got
finished, I got far more for the truck, than I had traded it for. Of course, many things
happen that we will not understand until we get to heaven.

But how is such a small thing more valuable than a big thing? The reason is
the motive. We need to be in the Will of God. God has a plan, a perfect plan, and
we should not go outside of it. Several Saints wrote on the necessity of preaching
properly. There are some preachers who preach flowery sermons with no
substance. They tickle the ears, but do not reach the heart. We leave with nothing to
take home, and cannot remember a words that was said. The motive of these
preachers is praise, not sanctification. "For this is the will of God, your
sanctification; ..." [1 Thessalonians 4:3] We should do everything for the love of God.

The final fundamental spiritual maxim we need to consider is:

"It is necessary to do what at the hour of death we would wish to have done."

Let us say we find out that death is around the corner. Looking back on our life, what would we have wished we would have done differently.

Am I doing this for the love of God or not? And we can play bean bag baseball or
bingo for the love of God. We can go to happy hour or just visit with our neighbors
for the love of God.

When we love God as we should, we will also love of neighbor in the right
way. In fact several of the Fathers of the Church say that our love of God can be
measured by our love of neighbor. If we do not love our neighbor, then we don't
truly love God no matter what we say. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than
words.

With what we are considering today, all of us have a lot to talk to God about.
Do I have all of the attitudes discussed in these fundamental spiritual maxims? Do I
realize just how important it is to be in God's will all of the time? Do I have a
personal relationship with Almighty God?