Homily for Trinity Sunday
June 12, 2022
Prov 8: 22-31
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph Residence, New
Rochelle
St. Joseph
Church, New Rochelle, N.Y.
“I
was beside him as his craftsman … and I found delight in the human race” (Prov
8: 30-31).
In our 1st reading, Wisdom is personified, speaking as God’s collaborator in the creation of the universe.
According
to our Christian understanding of God, Divine Wisdom is indeed personified in
the 2d Person of the Holy Trinity, in God the Son. St. Paul calls Christ “the power of God and
the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24). The
greatest church in Christendom in the Middle Ages was Hagia Sophia, “Holy
Wisdom,” the cathedral of Constantinople, consecrated to Christ the Wisdom of
God.
The
reading from Proverbs tells us that Wisdom—God the Son in our Christian
interpretation—joins the Father in creating an orderly universe, a “wise”
universe. It’s interesting that Divine
Wisdom calls herself—in Proverbs Wisdom is feminine, but that shouldn’t stop us
from linking her with the Son of God, for Christ encompasses all of humanity—Wisdom
calls herself a “craftsman.” A craftsman
is what Jesus became as a human being.
He was a craftsman and the legal son of a craftsman—or, as we usually
put it in English, a carpenter, the son of a carpenter. The Wisdom of God shaped the universe, and
the human race within that universe; the Wisdom of God also crafted our
redemption after we tried by our sins to ruin what God had created. The Son of God re-created the universe, made
us, as St. Paul says, “a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15).
You’re
no doubt more used to connecting wisdom with the Holy Spirit than with God the
Son. Long ago, when preparing for
Confirmation, we learned that wisdom is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And when we pray for wisdom, more likely we
turn to the Holy Spirit than to Jesus.
The
Holy Spirit is the connector, the bonder, the unifier, the super glue. He’s the bond of union between the Father and
the Son. He comes from the Father and
the Son to us to join us to them. “The
love of God has been poured into our hearts thru the Holy Spirit that has been
given to us” (Rom 5:5). So the Divine
Wisdom and Divine Love flow from the Father and the Son to us thru the Spirit.
What
is wisdom? Nothing to do with being a
“wise guy,” of course. At Christmas we
refer to the “wise men.” Who were
they? Men who sought Christ! Wisdom consists in seeking God, or seeking
all that God is: truth, goodness,
virtue. As the Bible says, “Fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps 110:10; cf. Prov 1:7; 9:10; Job 28:28). “Fear” in this context means reverence. It’s wise to revere God. This kind of wisdom, the kind that looks for
goodness and truth, is the Lord’s “delight day by day,” as our 1st reading
proclaims (Prov 8:30).
The
reading ends with this line: “I found
delight in the human race.” It wasn’t
enuf that Wisdom created the universe.
No—Wisdom wants to be with the best part of creation, with people. As Christians we believe, in fact, that
Divine Wisdom became one of us: “The
Word was made flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14).
God’s
Son “delights in the human race” so much that he became human, conceived in the
womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. He was born of Mary, lived among us for more
than 30 years, and formed very close bonds of friendship with chosen men and
women.
And why did God, in his wisdom, do that? Out of love, out of a desire to have humanity
as his companions and friends forever:
“I found delight in the human race.”
Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity, which is God as
family, to use human terms we can understand.
God wants his family to be expanded.
So he adopts us as his children—chosen and beloved like the apostles—by
making us like his Son Jesus. Jesus
pours out his Holy Spirit upon us, bonding us intimately to himself. We become “sons in the Son,” to use an old
phrase, God’s children because Christ has laid hold of us and clasped us to
himself, so much does he love us and want us as his own.
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