June 15, 2025 | Liturgical Year C
Readings for The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
- Proverbs 8:22-31
- Psalm 8:4-9
- Romans 5:1-5
- John 16:12-15
A Chip Off the Old Trinitarian Block
I was graced with an invitation to the ordination of two missionary priests at Maryknoll, New York, last weekend, and was reminded once again of how Trinitarian the Church is! A Kenyan and a Singaporean man will be sent as Maryknoll Fathers to Taiwan, just as many other Catholic orders and societies of consecrated and lay life send their missioners from their home countries to host countries around the world.
Today’s celebration of God as the Holy Trinity of Divine Persons reminds us of how our Church, community of faith, reflects the nature of God in its own missionary essence. That is, we adore and strive to live in harmony with the Speaker, the Message and the Breath that is one God, bringing out these features in our own existence as disciple-missioners of Jesus Christ.
We are, in other words, apples that do not fall far from the tree. This Church of ours bears, in a sense, a resemblance to what God looks like, for those who are searching—also called the sacramental nature of the Church, making present what we symbolize as a missioned community.
The Second Vatican Council’s document on mission, Ad gentes divinitus, restored to our Church a new appreciation of our Trinitarian nature, so that a new model of Church as necessarily focused on Christ’s mission led all local and national Churches to strive to send out their own members to all corners of their host societies and ethnicities, and beyond!
Parish councils, catechetical formation programs, youth groups, schools, colleges and every feature of the Church recovered the priority of mission for their very existence, and began to consider as the first item on their agendas the mission of Christ today, our raison d’être.
May our God our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier continue to send our Church on mission, leading us by their glorious nature and example!
Notes on the Sunday Readings
First Reading, Proverbs 8:22-31 – The inspired writer speaks of Wisdom as a person, something unique in the First Covenant (Old Testament). The figure is later applied to Jesus who, as the Incarnate Word of God, mediates between God and this world (see 1 Corinthians 1:24).
Responsorial Psalm, Psalm 8:5-9— A psalm written for individual rather than group recitation (“When I behold, …), presenting the human family as the ruler of Creation. Our dominion includes a sense of caring for, cultivating and respecting this gift, but not destroying, polluting or exhausting what ultimately belongs to God.
Second Reading, Romans 5:1-5 — Paul lists some of the present benefits of Christ’s death for us, like justification (the liberating acquittal of a positive judgement), and peace with God—not like the uneasy ‘cessation of hostility’ that passes for peace today, but actually a foretaste of the fullness of salvation!
Gospel, John 16:12-15 — This part of the ‘farewell discourses’ of Jesus at the Last Supper reiterates the role of the Spirit in leading the disciples to understand Jesus and his message, but without implying that anything new will be added to Jesus’ revealing word.
Notes and commentary by Fr. Bob Mosher, a member of the Missionary Society of Saint Columban.