FR. DAN MACALINAO
(Homily given by Paulist priest, Fr. Dan, at Old St. Mary’s, Chicago, where he is the Associate Pastor, Sunday, June 15, 2025.)
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
We invoke the Trinity constantly: We say it at the beginning of Mass, before meals, at the waters of baptism, and again when we commend a loved one back to God. It’s likely the first prayer we learned as children.
But how often do we really think about the Trinity? It’s such a familiar gesture that we often forget what we’re saying.
But today, the Church invites us to pause – not just to recite these words, but to enter more deeply into the mystery they hold: that God isn’t solitary, but communion. Not a distant force, but a living relationship of love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We may not grasp it fully with our minds, but we can recognize its truth in our hearts.
In our longing for love, communion, and meaning, we glimpse the shape of God’s life. The Trinity isn’t just a belief about God; it is how God has chosen to be known to us.
It is a love story – One that longs for us to be caught in it.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus opens a window into that divine life: “The Spirit will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine.” The Father gives everything to the Son. The Son gives everything to the Spirit. And the Spirit gives everything to us.
There is no hoarding in God. No rivalry. No fear. Only complete giving, receiving, and trust. What we celebrate then today isn’t only who God is in God’s self, but who God is for us.
To say that God is Trinity is to say that love is not something God does – Love is who God is. The Trinity is the shape of that love: A relationship that delights in giving, receiving, and revealing. And we are invited to live within it. That has profound implications for us.
If we are made in the image of the Triune God, And drawn into the life of that love, then we are made for a kind of relationship That invites us constantly to give and to receive, To be changed by love, and to change others through it – A relationship that echoes the divine communion.
So what kind of relationships are we living? Some come easily – Family and friends we love without hesitation. But others are harder- relationships marked by distance or resentment. People we avoid. Wounds we’ve never addressed. Neighbors and strangers we’ve never truly seen.
To reflect on the Trinity isn’t simply to meditate on a distant doctrine – but to allow the very life of God to question our own.
If God is perfect communion – an eternal relationship of self-giving love, then what does that say about the way we live in relationship? Not just with each other, but with all that God has made.
Pope Francis reminds us in Laudato Si’ that because the divine Persons are subsistent relations, the world, created in God’s image, is a web of relationships. Everything is connected. And holiness is lived out in how deeply we enter into relationship: with the earth, with the poor, with future generations, with the forgotten and the fragile.
To believe in the Trinity is to believe in a God who draws all things into communion – that includes the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil that brings forth life – the relationships we share in our common home. Nothing stands apart from the life of God.
The Trinity is a mystery – but not one meant to confuse us. It is a mystery meant to capture our hearts again and again, until we find ourselves living not outside it, but within it.
The invitation is not to master the mystery, but to let the mystery master us.
The Eucharist we gather around today is not just a ritual act – It is our participation in the very life of God. We receive what Christ has given, what the Spirit makes present, and what the Father has shared from all eternity.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Let us allow ourselves to be drawn once more into the mystery of God – Who is not isolation, but communion. Not power alone, but relationship. Not an abstraction, but the very love story that longs to catch us.