Following is the homily given by the Very Rev. Dom Ambrose Wolverton, O.S.B., to the Portsmouth Abbey community on Trinity Sunday in 2007.  

         Today is the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, which the great Cardinal John Henry Newman ranked among the three most important feasts of the Christian year, along with Christmas and Easter, because it tells us about the very life of God himself.  The new Catechism of the Catholic Church says the following:  "The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.  It is the mystery of God in himself.  It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them.  It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the hierarchy of the truths of faith."

          Isn't it paradoxical, then, that anything so fundamental and essential should remain a mystery?  Well, no, because as one spiritual writer once remarked, "In trying to understand God we are like sponges trying to mop up the ocean."  And the same writer went on to say, "I would not cross the street to worship a God who could be explained."  Only God can know himself perfectly.  Any attempt by us to express this knowledge can at best be a mere verbal representation of a stupendously rich reality beyond mortal man's comprehension.  And even some of the doctrines that have been formulated about it over the years sound as much (in one theologian's words) "the product of sheer bafflement as of reverence." 

          To aid our understanding, various symbols have been used like the shamrock, or three interlocking circles, along with various analogues, such as the creative process in which an artist creates a product and then we, in appreciating it, establish rapport with the creator. 

          To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation - "O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth," says this morning's responsorial psalm.  And there are many other Scriptural passages, as in today's first reading from the book of Proverbs, where God is revealed as creator; in the passage from the letter to the Romans, where he is revealed as redeemer; and in the gospel, where he is revealed as Holy Spirit.

          If there is any one word which summarizes, for me, the heart of this great mystery it is the word "home."  For God is the source, sustenance, and goal of our life.  Also, with this feast we have come full circle in the celebration of the mysteries of our redemption which began with the coming of Christ last Advent.  This liturgical cycle has a parallel in history, for "the passion and resurrection of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit are simply the earthly transcription or working out in time and space of the eternal relationships existing in God."  To quote the new catechism again:  "The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - reveals himself to men and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin."

          Home, too, because we were born into our life of grace when our parents and godparents presented us for baptism in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  With that same Trinitarian formula we make the sign of the cross as we begin all the undertakings of our life from meals to meditations.  And at the time of death the last thing the priest will do at graveside is to make the sign of the cross over our body.  The most fitting response we can make to absolutely everything that happens to us in life, good or bad, is to say "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit" - or to say the "Gloria" of the Mass.  For, like home, the triune Godhead is where we are coming from ... where we are going, and while we are on the way it lives within us at the center of our being, where we are most at peace.  Ultimately, it is all that matters.

          Home - family - temple - marriage - in Hebrew, I'm told, they are all the same word: banah.  Pope John Paul II said, "Mary of Nazareth is the first believer of the New Covenant to experience the one God in three Persons, the source of all Life, all Light, all Love."  The new Catechism calls the Christian family "a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit."  Indeed, this faith of the triune God celebrates the faith life, not only of the individual Christian and of the Christian family, but of the entire Christian community, or universal church.  For the Spirit is faithful to Jesus and Jesus is faithful to the Father.  The church's vocation is to be faithful to the Spirit.

          Seen in this way there could not be a liturgical feast more appropriate to an Oblate Day of Recollection.  Graduating classes of our school are often reminded that they will always have a home here.  Even though oblates live and work elsewhere, they remain members of this Benedictine family and continue to share in the works and prayers which are offered here.  We are a family of believers - all of us - members of a living community of faith.  

          More than any other doctrine the Trinity teaches us that it is in the heart of this mystery, more than any other place, that we belong.  It teaches us that true religion is centered, not in man and his needs, but in God and his holy will.  It teaches us that God is someone, not something - that He is a living God who thinks, wills, loves, and acts according to his unique nature - supremely creative and energizing Reality. 

          There is a short, simple prayer ascribed to William of St. Thierry:  "We adore you God the Father, who created us and who gave us life; we worship you Son and Wisdom of the eternal Father who renewed his likeness in us; we bless you Holy Spirit, whom we love and in whom we love and are loved."

          There is also a beautiful poem entitled Doxology by Jessica Powers, who was a Midwestern Carmelite nun of the last century.  It goes:

                           "God fills my being to the brim

                             With floods of His immensity.

                             Whose sea-bed is infinity.

                             The Father's Will is everywhere

                             For chart and chance His precept keep.

                             There are no beaches to His care

                             Nor cliffs to pluck me from His deep.

                             The Son is never far from me

                             For presence is what love compels.

                             Divinely and incarnately

                             He draws me where His mercy dwells.

                             And lo, myself am the abode

                             Of Love, the Third of the Triune,

                             The primal Sweep and Surge of God

                             And my eternal Claimant soon!

                             Praise to the Father and the Son

                             And to Their Spirit!   May I be,

                             O Water, Wave and Tide in One,

                             Thine animate doxology."