THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Her Doctrine and Morals Trinity Sunday 19 June 2011

The Sunday Sermon

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Dear Friends,

Jesus has given the disciples His guarantee to remain with them all days – even to the consummation of the world. As we celebrate this feast of the Most Holy Trinity we are reminded of many things concerning God. We know that He is three Persons in One God, and as St. Paul tells us that God’s judgments are incomprehensible for us and His ways are unsearchable by us. More than this, let us consider His omnipresence.

We cannot ever escape the presence of God. Some have said that God’s presence is like the air all around us. Even more so than this we find God’s presence inside us as well as all around us. God is with us at all times.

For the virtuous person this is a very consoling thought that God is a witness to all that he does, to all that he says and thinks. To the wicked individual it is a very frightening thing to recall that God is a witness to all his crimes and schemes.

Beyond this we must realize that God’s presence is necessary for our very existence. We have been taught that if God were to ever cease thinking of us then we would cease to be. We exist in God constantly. We live not only in His presence, but by and for Him also.

When we sin we must realize that not only have we forgotten God and His presence, but we have forced Him in a way to participate at least by His permissive will in our evil. God is not just a silent witness to our evil thoughts, words and actions, but He is in a sense forced to cooperate with our evil actions because of His existence in the creatures which we abuse.

All that God has made is good, holy and pleasing to Him. Men have been given the capacity to take these things and use them against God. Men have taken good things and used them for evil purposes. Because, God is present in all these things, men in their sins are directly attacking God and abusing Him. The abuse is not just against His creation, but it is oposed to Him because we find Him in His creation.

This understanding of God’s gifts to us has often led men to mistake His creatures for Him and then place the creature in the place of God. Idolatry is a mistaken or perverted understanding of reality.

All the world around us is sacred and holy in the sense that it has come forth from the hand of God and these things are contained in God, but these things are not God. In their beauty and suitability for their purpose we see a reflection of God’s perfections. We see God in His work, but we must realize that it is His work and is not Him even though He always remains with His work.

We too are His work – we are His creation. He lives in us in an even more intimate manner than He does in the rest of His creation. We therefore are even more sacred and holy than the rest of creation. We are still not God but we are higher than the rest of the material world. This material world was made only for us. Just as we must respect and not abuse the material world because it is God’s gift and He is present in it, so we must have a greater sense of the respect and sacredness of our own bodies and those of our fellow men. We are not just material objects to be studied and manipulated on a purely material plane. We have immortal souls and we are temples of the Holy Ghost.

Our bodies are not our own, our children are not our own. Children are more than a mass of cells or a mass of tissue. They are God’s creation, and are His temples; they are sacred and deserve the respect, dignity, and honor as such at all stages of life. We are not free to drag the sacred down to the level of the profane. We are not free to consider men on the same level as other animals. We are not free to manipulate them for our own designs and pleasures.

As we contemplate the mystery of God and the Trinity, let us not fail to contemplate His life and presence in and through us. Let us repent for having ever offended Him. Let us beg His mercy upon all those who have abused Him when they have abused their own bodies or the bodies of others. We are members of Christ -- living members. “Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” (Mat. 28, 20)