Daily Gospel Reflection

Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.

June 4, 2023

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Jn 3:16-18
Listen to the Audio Version

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

Reflection

John B. Allen ’86
Share a Comment

Growing up, my brothers and I used to watch baseball in the afternoons. It was the early nineteen seventies. There was this guy who held up a sign in Shea Stadium, and the sign said something remarkably weird to me at the time—John 3:16.

I immediately thought of myself. John is my name, and my birthday is the sixteenth, although of October, not March. But it always caught my eye.

Who was that guy, and what was he doing? What was that strange message? As a kid, I didn’t really care enough to figure it out. Years later, I realized the guy was pointing to today’s gospel.

Saint Jerome said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” The Bible wasn’t an established currency where and when I came from in New City, New York. Not in my parts, anyway. There was even something strange about talking about the Bible or Jesus.

I remember an old friend of my sister who came to visit many years after the last time we had seen her. When asked the anodyne question of how she was doing, she said, “Well, I’ve come to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” At the time, we all looked at her as if she had three heads.

God loves the world a whole lot—infinitely. I know that now, and we can be sure, in the name of Jesus, that God will continue to do so forever more.

Prayer

Dear Lord, Through the Holy Spirit, we are invited into the love of God the Father and the Son so that we may be one as the Trinity is one. On this Solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity, we ask to be drawn ever closer to the heart of this relational reality. Open our hearts, calm our minds, and envelope us in your presence. Amen.

Saint of the Day

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

That God is Triune has been the clear teaching of the Church since the fourth century, when we began reciting the creed at Mass every week. We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

This reality is a mystery to us, which is not to say that we can know nothing of it. It is a mystery in the sense that it is always beyond us—we cannot come to the end of knowing it.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a way for us to articulate God’s inner life. To say that “Trinity” is a name for God is to say that God’s very essence and being is communion and relationship. Made in God’s image, we, too, are created for relationship. This belief sets the foundation for all we experience and believe as humans.

“God relates to us in three distinct ways of being present to our history: as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit; as Creator, as Redeemer, and as Sanctifier,” explains Father Richard McBrien in his encyclopedic work, Catholicism. “The triune God who created us, who sustains us, who will judge us, and who will give us eternal life is not infinitely removed from us, but is absolutely close to us, communicated in the flesh and present in our hearts, our consciousness, and our history as the source of enlightenment and community” (330).

An ancient schematic describes the relationships between the persons of the Trinity well, and it is depicted in stone on the outer wall of the chapel of Howard Hall on campus. Written in Latin, it states that the Father is not the Spirit, which is not the Son. (Pater non-est Spiritus Santus non-est Filius.) At the same time each of those persons is God (“est Deus”). Three persons, distinct from each other, each fully God, yet preserving the one-ness of God.

On this feast of the Holy Trinity, let us grow in our union with God as creator, redeemer, and sanctifier!