The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Sunday, June 4, 2023

Exodus 34, 4-6; 8–9

Early in the morning Moses went up Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him, taking along the two stone tablets. Having come down in a cloud, the Lord stood with Moses there and proclaimed his name, “Lord.” Thus the Lord passed before him and cried out, “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship. Then he said, “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.”

The worship of God, the Most Holy Trinity is the foremost duty of the Catholic Church.  God as a Trinity of three Persons equal in power and majesty was hinted at throughout the Old Testament but directly revealed by God himself.  Indeed, even before the Son was born of the Virgin Mary, the Angel Gabriel reveals to her that the Son of the Most High would be conceived in her by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.  Before this Son ever began to preach, the Father spoke to him as he came out of the Jordan River following his baptism by John: “You are my Beloved Son.”  This proclamation was accompanied by the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.  Particularly in Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus taught about his equality with the Father, as his Son: “I and the Father are one” (John 10, 30).  He also spoke of the Holy Spirit as his equal, whom he and the Father would send upon the Apostles: “The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name” (John 14, 26).

Although the Church worships the Holy Trinity at each Mass, she worships him with heightened joy on this day, the Sunday after Pentecost, for at Pentecost the Apostles began to reveal to the mystery of the Holy Trinity to the world.  Pope John XXII established this feast in the early 1300’s.  

In the verses just before those used for today’s First Reading, Moses asked God two times to show him his face: “If therefore I have found favor in your sight, show me your face, that I may know you, and may find grace before your eyes” (Exodus 33, 13); and, “Show me your glory” (Exodus 33, 18).  Moses asks for this great favor not out of curiosity but in order to be assured that he has found sufficient favor with God to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land.   The Lord tells him that he may not see his face but that he may see something of his glory.  He will set Moses on a rock, “And when my glory shall pass, I will set you in a hole of the rock, and protect you with my right hand till I pass: And I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back parts: but my face you cannot see” (Exodus 33, 22–23).  The Lord speaks of his transcendence, for he is far greater than our eyes can behold or our minds take in. It is as if a bacterium wanted to see a human being: it is in no way equipped to do so.

“The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.”  He calls out his name twice in order to emphasize it.   Here we must recall that Hebrew names revealed something of the person, possibly the circumstances of his or her conception or birth, or particular characteristics.  The name was not a label, as in the western world, but that person’s identity and meaning.  God’s “name” in Hebrew has its root in the verb to-be and thereby reveals that God is his own existence, his own being.  And yet it is not a name at all, for no one can pronounce it — both because it was forbidden to speak his name, and because it was not written down in such a way that it could be pronounced (that is, without vowels).  We cannot, then, fully comprehend him.

Yet the Son of the Father revealed God as the Father of the Son, the Son as the Son of the Father, and the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father and the Son.  He reveals God as the Holy Trinity in his love for us and his desire for us to know him to the extent that we can here on earth.  The one who loves desires to be known by the one whom he loves.  This knowing is the meaning of intimacy.  One day, in heaven, our eyes will be fully opened to God’s glory.  As St. Paul writes, “We see now through a glass in a dark manner: but then face to face. Now I know in part: but then I shall know even as I am known” (1 Corinthians 13, 12).