Most people hear “Holy Trinity” and think “mystery”—a concept that feels abstract and complex to explain. But for Dianne Bergant, C.S.A., the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C, is an opportunity to ground doctrine in daily life. She invites us to consider it instead as “the relationship that human beings have to the Creator.”
“God always works through creation,” she says. “God doesn't do anything alone.” The Spirit, too, “does not go alone” but “works through us.” So rather than ask where the Spirit is at work in the world, she suggests we ask instead: “Where do we bring the Spirit to be involved?”
Drawing on the wisdom of creation in Proverbs, the redemptive mission of Christ in Romans and the dynamic movement of the Spirit in John’s Gospel, she preaches the Trinity as a call to participation in the divine relationship itself. “If we pray for the coming of the reign of God, we are the ones who bring it about,” she says. “We are the ones who bring forth the power of the Spirit in the world in which we live.”
Dianne’s preaching, like her scholarship, is shaped by attentiveness to context and relationship. A Sister of St. Agnes and renowned Old Testament scholar, she taught Scripture and exegesis for over 40 years at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. “God works with us. God works in us. God works through us,” she says. “That’s about all we can say about the Trinity—and yet it says everything about what life is.”
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Though a seasoned teacher and writer—an author many times over, including of lectionary-based preaching resources such as Preaching the New Lectionary, The Word for Every Season andLiving the Word—Dianne has also served the wider church through scholarship and dialogue, including as president of the Catholic Biblical Association and as a member of the Chicago Catholic-Jewish Scholars Dialogue for nearly three decades. “There is a monk in me,” she says. She doesn’t write out her homilies but prepares by pacing and speaking the readings aloud. “I think about it. I talk it through in my head,” she explains. “I’ve done an awful lot of writing, so it’s not that I don’t know how. But preaching is a very different kind of delivery.”
Dianne has taught thousands of students in her career—laypeople, theologians, priests, bishops, even cardinals. But not many living professors can say they taught a future pope. Then, he was a quiet young man preparing for the priesthood in her exegesis class. Now, he is known to the world as Pope Leo XIV.
“Well, that was 45 years ago,” she recalls. “I remember him as being a quiet young man. Serious, but not so serious that he did not enjoy living. He was not in any way withdrawn—but he was quiet.”
What helps her remember him so clearly? “When I taught in grade school, I always kept the class pictures,” she says. “When I taught at CTU, I always kept their grades.”
“I have kept a record of every grade. So when I say he was a good student, I have evidence.”
Scripture Readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C
First Reading: Pr 8:22-31
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Second Reading: Rom 5:1-5
Gospel: Jn 16:12-15
You can find the full text of the readings here.
A Reflection for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C, by Sr. Diane Bergant, C.S.A.
As you look at the readings, we can discover, as I’ve said, that God literally serves us. First of all, when we speak about the reading from Proverbs, and where Proverbs describes the beauty of nature of which we are a part, we do not live on earth—we are earth, living. We are earth who reflects upon itself. We are the universe’s conscience, in a certain sense. So we are immersed in this because we are part of it.
And we find that in the reading of Proverbs, the focus is on creation. And there are so many questions that we have now, with new cosmology and the new sciences that are just opening up new insights into creation. And then, the question that’s raised in our minds, or perhaps should be raised in our minds, is why? Why did God even do it? Not that we will have an answer, but asking the question will help us to realize how important it is, how privileged we are, and also how responsible we are.
We hold that in balance: The privilege of being that part of the natural world, that part of creation, that wisdom, is very much involved, in that we have the responsibility for carrying it. So we have responsibility and the great privilege of being a part of it, and also carrying it.
Creation is where everything begins. We get over into Paul’s letter to the Romans, and we discover what is frequently referred to as new creation—our baptism, our being saved from ourselves. We don’t have to worry about being saved from bad weather or saved from the power of nature. What we have to worry about is being saved from ourselves, in a very real sense, of our pettiness, of our anger. And Jesus, by the way, has lived not simply the way he died, but the way he lived, which caused his death. People wanna know, why? Why didn’t they listen to what he had to say? In a certain sense, the answer is very easy: because he interpreted the tradition in a different way.
Don’t think we don’t do that. We have different political points of view about what is going on in the country and in the world, and violence is frequently our response. It’s very dangerous to have a different point of view, at some times, in history, whether that be in religion, in the church, in the synagogue or in the government. We face that now: I read something just today that there are some sisters in India who have been arrested because they’re accused of promoting conversion. Now, that’s in their own country. Sisters don’t face that, now, in this country, but there have been times, and who knows if there will be times in the future, whether it be priests, or sisters, or brothers or whatever. Lay people are punished for having a different point of view—we know that. We shouldn’t be surprised.
Jesus is giving a different point of view, and he’s put to death because he’s dangerous because of his point of view. And so, it’s not just the way he died. It’s the way he lived that brought on his death. And why did he do that? And again, the answer is the same answer in a certain sense about why there was creation. And we are part of the creation, not just why there was creation, but we’re part of it. So we find that in Paul’s letter to the Romans, “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand,” which is the grace of being part of the reign of God. So we are created, and in a certain sense, we are recreated, we are created anew, and we are all created anew.
In one of his documents—Pope Francis wrote the document “Evangelii Gaudium”—he says, by virtue of baptism, we are all missionary disciples. By virtue of baptism, we are disciples, which means we follow Jesus. We are missionary disciples, which means that we follow Jesus by proclaiming the goodness of God. So we don’t just follow Jesus in our head with our rosaries. It’s the way we are missionaries, the way we interact with the people with whom we work, the way we interact and serve and care for the people in our lives who need us to help them. It could be somebody in our family who needs us terribly, or if we are parents, our children who need us.
So what we have then is that Jesus is our redeemer. Yes, that’s language that was probably more in keeping with another age, because what we redeem is Green Stamps, you know, or we cash in milk bottles (We did when I was a kid, alright?) We don’t use the word redemption in ordinary language, but what we were saying, instead, redemption means a friend of yours is in jail, and you go and bail ‘em out. That’s what redemption is. So we know what that means, that we paid the price, that it belongs to somebody else. So that’s what we have in a certain sense in the second reading.
And then we go into the Gospel. Jesus is telling his disciples, not just the apostles, so this is the broader group of followers.—this is the followers and the average person. So all of us are called to do what Jesus says here, calling, praying for the coming of the Spirit. The Spirit is the dynamic power of God, active in the world, or waiting to be active in the world. It’s a very, you know, homey kind of metaphor, but think of the water system in a house. It’s there with power in the water, but you gotta turn on the faucet for it to come out. That’s how God participates in our lives. That’s how God accomplishes.
I can’t remember who it was, but I remember a theologian said, “God never does anything alone.” Once there is creation, God always works through creation. God doesn’t do anything alone. Now, what does that mean? And that’s where I think, you know, the water system. We have to turn it on. Now, where did the water come from? Of course, it comes from us, but it also comes from God. So the power of God, we are immersed in the power of God in a way similar to how, in a house, you have water all over in the house, but it’s held together with a system, until we open up the system. Think of that as the power of God. Think of that as the energy of the Spirit. Pray that the Spirit will come. Well, perhaps we should pray that we open ourselves to the Spirit and enable the Spirit to come in that way.
So those are the readings that we have today. That’s the meaning of some of these readings or some of the meaning of the readings. The question is, what does any of that have to do with us? Well, I’ve already taken a look at the whole question of the goodness of creation. Does that not call us to many things? Call us to ecological responsibility? Call us to sharing? And we looked at our redemption, and as I said, it really is a redemption saving us from ourselves, from our pettiness, from our unwillingness to forgive the faults of others, from our greed. And sometimes we hide behind it.
And so much of what goes on in the societies of which we are part, whether that be the church or the government, we benefit from decisions that cause other people to suffer. Right? And in a certain sense, we do nothing because we think we can do nothing, but we can stand for truth. We can stand for the right thing as Jesus did. Jesus didn’t run away when he knew that what he was saying was probably not going to be popular. And there was evidence that it wasn’t popular. And at that time, in history, under Roman occupation and under Roman oppression, particularly at the time of festivals, when many people flocked to Jerusalem for the feasts, the Jews had to keep peace. The Jewish leaders had to keep peace, because if they didn’t, then the Romans would come down and make sure that there would be peace. That’s the situation of Jesus. And he stood up for it. He stood up for truth. And that’s called in the world today, over and over and over again.
And the third reading tells us, if we pray for the coming of the reign of God, we are the ones who bring it about. You and I are the ones, by the way we live. We are the ones who bring forth the power of the Spirit in the world in which we live, as God is for all. And God chose the Jews to let everybody else in the world know that God is the God of all and a loving God. God chose the Jews and the ultimate Jew, Jesus, is the one who then sent his disciples out to accomplish what God wanted in the first place. And that is using Christian language, the establishment of the reign of God, that we live in peace and harmony in the world.
Now, one might think that’s a strange message for the feast of the Holy Trinity. But again, remember, we don’t know what goes on within the Trinity. It’s what goes on through the Trinity. And it is ad extra outside ad intra. And ad extra, outside the relationship that we have with God, whether that be as creature, whether that be as member of church, whether that whatever it is, it’s all a relationship that we have with God. Somehow or other, God works with us. God works in us. God works through us. That’s about all we can say about the Trinity.
But that’s pretty much everything there is to say about what life is all about, about what meaning is all about. And again, I wanted to underscore the great privilege that is ours to be participating in that. And the great responsibility that we have to allow ourselves to be chosen by God and to have God work through us for, to use contemporary language, you know, for the building up of the reign of God, you know, to use the language that still is church language for the salvation of humankind. They’re just metaphors to basically say the same thing.
So on Sunday, when you hear the readings, think about these things, think about how God interacts with us. Think about how, in just these three different ways, God is serving us. We are creatures of God, interestingly enough, who are wired to want this. It is strange that we live as if we don’t want it. And that’s what sin is, to deny what we were made to want. This is the challenge that we have as we look at these readings.
