Homily

On this first Sunday after Pentecost the Church celebrates the feast of the Most Holy Trinity. This is not a random connection that binds the Church, which is taking its first steps on the day of Pentecost, to the mystery of the Trinity. After receiving the Holy Sprit, the disciples leave the Upper Room, where they were “for fear,” and start communicating the Gospel and baptizing the first people who converted to the faith. They were obeying what Jesus ordered them to do before leaving: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). On the day of Pentecost, the confusion of the languages and the division of human beings, symbolized by Babel (Gen 11:1-9), were defeated by the Gospel preaching, which, without destroying the differences of languages, gathered the peoples of the earth into one family of God.
On the feast of the Trinity, God tears down the veil that covers his mystery, breaks the silence on his life (the Greek word “mysterion” means actually “to be silent”) and he makes us understand the truth of a world that is made in his likeness. Every page of Scripture underlines the impossibility of knowing God’s mystery. He lives in an insurmountable light, that “no one shall see and live.” God himself breaks the silence – as only He could – to reveal himself to men and women within history “by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm,” as indicated in today’s reading from the first of the three solemn speeches by Moses in Deuteronomy. The Letter to the Hebrews adds: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb 1:1-2). And on the day of Pentecost, from heaven the Lord God poured the Holy Spirit on the disciples so that, as Jesus said, the Spirit might lead then to all the truth.
The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, that today we contemplate in the Trinity, are the root, the fountain and the support of the Church born on the day of Pentecost, a sign of unity for all of humanity. The Church does not grow from the ground—that is, it is not the result of the confluence of interests of the people who form it, it is not the fruit of commitment or of the drive of generous hearts, it is not the sum of many individuals who decide to be together, it is not the association of people of good will who want to realize a noble goal. The Church comes from on high, from heaven, from God. More precisely, from a God who is a “communion” of three people. They—as we try to babble some words—love each other so much that they are singularly one thing. From this communion of love the Church is born and towards that communion it walks, pulling along the entire creation. The Trinity is the origin and end of the Church as it is the origin and end of creation itself.
For this reason, the Church is above all else a mystery; it is a mystery to contemplate, welcome, respect, cherish and love. And, it is a mystery of communion. Only from this perspective can we understand the Church as a community, as a structured body. Therefore, those who listen to the Gospel with their heart are not only welcomed into an organized community, but above all are gathered up into the very mystery of the Trinity, in communion with God. We live in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. This is a great and inestimable gift, but one which also comes with responsibility. The Church that is born on Pentecost is not neutral; she has at the heart of her constitution a vocation: to be at the service of unity and communion. While the world in which we live seems bewitched by the egoism of individuals, groups and nations that do not know how (and often do not want) to look beyond their own specific situation, beyond the so-called national interests, the Church of Pentecost, born of the Trinity, has the task of mending the lacerated flesh of the world and knitting back together the communion among peoples. The Spirit, infused in the community of believers, gives it a new energy, as Paul writes in the Letter to the Romans: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption” (Rom 8:15). And Jesus, before sending off the apostles, tells them, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20).
The strength that the Lord gives his children heals humanity’s flesh, wounded by injustice, greed, oppression and war, and generates the energy to get up and walk towards communion. This has been God’s plan since the beginning. There is, indeed, a correspondence between God’s creative process and his internal life. What God said is not without meaning: “It is not good for man to be alone.” Man—initially, it meant both man and woman—was not created in the image of a solitary God, but of a God of love. Each individual person, as well as the entirety of humanity, will not and could not be themselves outside of this communion. Only within this communion will they be able to save themselves. For this reason, and rightfully so, the Second Vatican Council reminds all believers that God did not want to save individuals separately, but by gathering all of them together in one holy people. Born from the communion to which it is also destined, the Church finds herself engaged in living history, at the beginning of this millennium, as the leaven of communion and love. This is a lofty and urgent task that truly renders our internal quarrels and misunderstandings petty and culpable. The great patriarch Athenagoras was right in saying that a globalized g world without the impetus of the unity of Christian churches would be dangerous, for a globalization without a Christian spirit risks being without soul. Unfortunately proofs of this are not lacking. The feast of the Holy Trinity is an urgent invitation to Christians to walk more decisively towards their visible unity so that they may be a leaven of communion among peoples.