Speak Lord: Love in person, love in action

The responsorial psalm for the Mass of Trinity Sunday celebrates the Lord’s righteousness and the hope it contains for us.

Happy the people the Lord has chosen as his own.

For the word of the Lord is faithful
and all his works to be trusted.
The Lord loves justice and right
and fills the earth with his love.
Happy the people the Lord has chosen as his own.

By his word the heavens were made,
by the breath of his mouth all the stars.
He spoke; and it came to be.
He commanded; it sprang into being.
Happy the people the Lord has chosen as his own.

The Lord looks on those who revere him,
on those who hope in his love,
to rescue their souls from death,
to keep them alive in famine.
Happy the people the Lord has chosen as his own.

Our soul is waiting for the Lord.
The Lord is our help and our shield.
May your love be upon us, O Lord,
as we place all our hope in you.
Happy the people the Lord has chosen as his own.

Psalm 32:4-6,9,18-20,22

The psalm celebrates God as Creator, Redeemer, and our hope, our Sustainer. Formal definition of the doctrine of the Trinity, encompassing the Church’s experience of Christ and the Paschal Mystery. It would move the understanding  of God’s being to a unity of persons.

God is one. This is a truth Christians  embrace as firmly as Jews and Muslims. God is one. ‘I believe in One God’, we say or sing  at Mass every Sunday.

And yet this one God is also three, Father, Son and Spirit. Our minds boggle at the attempt to hold these two fundamental truths together. But the Trinity is finally not a doctrine about mathematics or logic, it is a hard won response to God’s self-revelation in the Paschal Mystery.

God speaks. God speaks as love, one love, three ‘persons’ and that love is life for us.

Image of throne of mercy. 15th C Alabaster carving from Nottingham. Victoria and Albert Museum. (c) 2015, Allen Morris.