First Reading
Moses said to the people: "Put this question, then, to the ages that are
past, that went before you, from the time God created man on earth:
Was there ever a word so majestic, from one end of heaven to the other?
Was anything ever heard? Did ever a people hear the voice of the living
God speaking from the heart of the fire, as you heard it, and remain
alive? Has any god ventured to take to himself one nation from the
midst of another by ordeals, signs, wonders, war with mighty hand and
outstretched arm, by fearsome terrors — all this that the Lord your God
did for you before your eyes in Egypt?
Understand this today, therefore, and take it to heart: The Lord is God
indeed, in heaven above as on earth beneath, he and no other. Keep his
laws and commandments as I give them to you today, so that you and
your children may prosper and live long in the land that the Lord your
God gives you for ever."
Second Reading
Everyone moved by the Spirit is a son of God. The spirit you received is
not the spirit of slaves bringing fear into your lives again; it is the spirit
of children, and it makes us cry out, "Abba, Father!" The Spirit himself
and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God. And if we
are children we are heirs as well: heirs of God and coheirs with Christ,
sharing his sufferings so as to share his glory.
Gospel
The eleven disciples set out for Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had
arranged to meet them. When they saw him they fell down before him,
though some hesitated. Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, "All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore,
make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the
commands I gave you. And know that I am with you always; yes, to the
end of time."
Meditation
All liturgical celebration, indeed all Christian prayer, is Trinitarian: to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The liturgical celebration of the Holy Trinity as an "idea feast" finds its origins in the Carolingian Church of the eight and ninth centuries. A votive Mass of the Holy Trinity proved so popular that it began to replace Sunday celebrations. In 920 the bishop of Liège composed a full Mass and Office to be celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost. The feast was established for the entire Roman church in 1334. The smallest functional unity of human life is not the individual. Every man and woman, no matter how deformed in spirit or body, exists because he or she was born of the coming together of two human beings. No infant survives without acts of touching and feeding which are acts of human relationship. If we exist at all, we exist as the product of some form of human community. We profess that we have been created in God's image. Our self-image is so clearly and relentlessly one of life in community that we can not help but see in the scriptures suggestions and revelations of God's own life as life for and with the other. Though we will never come to know God as God knows himself, every sign of God's action in our world leads us to him as a God in interaction. Creation itself is God's self-expression, the extension of his love to that which is other than himself. God's ongoing dialogue with creation reaches its climax in Jesus who is God-among- us. This Jesus is taken up into the fullness of the Father's glory and the fullness of their love is poured forth upon us in the gift of the Spirit. Though we falter before the complexity of centuries of theology seeking to understand the unfathomable depths of God, we resolutely form the shape of our faith by praying day after day to the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. As we mark our bodies with the cross we utter the name of Father, Son and Spirit. So we enter into life with God through baptism. We shall enter into the fullness of that divine community through the gate of death.
