A Homily for Trinity Sunday

+ The first time one assists at the choral celebration of the Divine Office the sight of a group of people rising and then bowing profoundly for the Gloria Patri at the end of each psalm, as well as at other times, is striking. Contemporary Western culture does not behave thus. It is highly unusual, foreign even. It is out of the ordinary and seems to come from another era.
 
Indeed, it does. In the sixth century St Benedict insisted in his Rule that “all rise from their seats in honour and reverence to the Holy Trinity” at the Gloria Patri of the last responsory of each nocturn at matins (ch. 9). Precisely when the profound bow came to augment this display of honour and reverence is not clear, but given the ancient practices of reverencing authority with bows and prostrations, it may reasonably be assumed to be of ancient origin.
 
Certainly, modern, Western, self-sufficient man does not bow profoundly before anyone or anything. In our day even the customary signs of respect for Royalty (when they are around) seem peculiar: we are too egalitarian to bow our heads or to curtsy, etc. And here we come to the crux of the matter: in our world, “I” bow to no one. Monks and others bending their backs in unison whilst chanting Gloria Patri are decidedly odd. Or they are perfectly normal—that is, if God is.
 
For if God is, the supreme “I” of our contemporary culture is in fact His creature. If God is, I owe my existence to Him, and in justice I owe Him my worship. If God is, He deserves at least that we bow ourselves profoundly before His majesty—in body and in spirit and in thought, word and deed.
 
It is appropriate to ponder this a little on this feast of the Most Holy Trinity—God’s own feast, as it were!
 
Yes, God is. He revealed Himself to His people in history, He sent His Son to redeem us and He sent the Holy Spirit to enlighten and strengthen us as we strive to live according to His commandments as His witnesses in this world.
 
Our adoration of Him is the most natural and normal response to this reality, as the riches of the Church’s Sacred Liturgy, developed and enriched out of this disposition of love and worship over the centuries and handed on in tradition down to our day, testify. Those who seek to edit or abbreviate this tradition, or who even posture so as to forbid it, show a profound misunderstanding of human psychology: if God is, we naturally worship Him as optimally as is possible.
 
Liturgical shortcuts and simplifications leave us cheated as creatures of God. Forms of worship or liturgy that focus on ourselves rather than on God move us ever further along the path of that narcissism which leads to nothing other than the worship of ourselves as God. In this respect the furore that erupted when Cardinals Ratzinger and Sarah respectively proposed that it is entirely appropriate to celebrate the modern liturgy ad orientem can be clearly understood: their opponents had long since forgotten (or perhaps had never realised) that “the Liturgy is not about us, but about God.” (Cardinal Ratzinger)
 
“There are more important things to be worried about,” modern man will cry—busy as he may be with good works. Well, no. There are not. For first things must come first. Other things, even very important ones, come later. If God is, worship of Him—the right worship of Him—comes first, as the first three of the ten commandments make clear.
 
If we put the worship of God first, if we monks truly adore the Blessed Trinity, at each Gloria Patri, if our liturgical worship is as generous and beautiful as is possible in our circumstances, the rest will follow naturally. We shall be fired and sustained in works of charity and “make disciples of all nations”, each according to our specific vocation. We shall not fear to teach others to observe all that Christ commanded, even when this radically contradicts the world (or those in the Church who water down her teaching) and comes at a significant cost.
 
May this feast of the Most Blessed Trinity recall us to our fundamental duty of the worship of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit—the most perfect expression of which we offer at this altar in this Holy Mass—and may that worship never cease to purify and sustain us in our vocation to be witnesses to the whole truth of Christ in word and action. +