THE MOST HOLY TRINITY 2026

FR LOUIS SCURTI APPLIES HIS MARRIAGE AND FAMILY EDUCATION TO THE HOLY TRINITY, VALIDATING US

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe in him has already been condemned because he has not believed in the name of the Son of God. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the great mysteries of our faith is not spoken of as we name it in the scriptures. The Holy Trinity. We wait until after we celebrate Easter, we celebrate Pentecost. We celebrate the whole period of the ascension and the holy glorification of Jesus. But now at the end of the season, we pause, and the church encourages us to take a second look at what we just did in the last few months. Honoring God. Big word. Big word. In the twelve-step program, they call God the higher power, not using the word God, but they use the idea of this higher power as something to be grasped at and to be struggled with. God as the higher power needn't be referred to that here in our church as we pray. We call God who God is. The nameless one, the one who was in dialogue with Moses. The one Moses said, I want to see your face, and God said, you can't do that. But I'll pass by you. I will send my spirit with you. And Moses says, Can you come down and stay with our people? Because they really need you. And God promises, Yes, I will come with you. Eventually he says, Well, what is your name? The nameless one. The God without a name. Eventually they call him, refer to God. Pardon me, there's no him in God. They refer to God as Yahweh, is, being, the person who is, life itself. And they try to grasp, these are the Israelites, try to grasp how do we tell people about who we believe in? Because all the other societies, the other Middle Eastern tribes, they have their own gods, and their gods have names, and their gods have genders. I'm not going to name any of them right now, it would be not appropriate. But the people of Israel worship God, Yahweh, the nameless one. For us, God has revealed his divinity in three very unique persons. The Creator, the Word. We open up the book of Genesis and we can hear the Word. In the beginning, God said, in the beginning, God did. So as we look at our history, our anthropological history in Scripture, in our scriptural history, we realize that God is the creator. Everything that is, we attribute to God's creation. In the fullness of time, through the prophets, God promised someone very special. You might say a spokesperson. And eventually, in the course of time, Mary receives the annunciation that she will bear a child in the course of Hebrew history. And she will name that child Jesus because he will be the Son of the Most High. So now we have God, and we have the Son Jesus being revealed as the word of God in the flesh, carried to us on earth through Mary. But it's through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Now who's this? The angel says to Mary, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the child to be born will be called the Son of God. So God comes to us as word, speaking to us, and the greatest word that he could speak to us is Jesus. The person who is we call second in the Blessed Trinity, as far as the enunciation goes, as far as the proclamation goes, because the second person is equal to the first person, equal to the Father. And the second person is revealed in John's gospel as the Word. So John goes to the beginning of Genesis, picks out what God is doing, his word creates. And then when John tries to capture the miracle of Jesus, whom he knew, he says, in the beginning was the word. And the word was with God, and the word was God. So John tries to clarify this mystery of who Jesus is. And he identifies him as God with God. People, we have to scratch our heads and say, okay, now what? How do we get to understand that? God has an answer there too. In the fullness of time, and we celebrated as a community, the historical Pentecost last Sunday, but in the fullness of time, God sends his own spirit to us. Now, we can't do that. We can't send our spirit to each other. We can send words, we can send kisses, we can send Instagrams, we can send all sorts of messages. But because God is the creator, God's word, Jesus, becomes a real person. And for us to understand Jesus, God sends his understanding, his insight. He sends his own spirit. No, I think any of us would love to be able to send our spirit to a beloved, a relative, a dear friend, if he or she is at a distance. And we'd love to be there with the person we love. God figured that out before we ever came on the scene. And he sends his son to be there, to be with us. His son in the flesh, just like you and I are in the flesh, just like we want to be next to the person we love, the father sends the person he loves, his son, to be with us in the flesh. And to understand that, the father seals it, seals that package, you might say, with a kiss. Of course, we want to kiss the person we love, person we might be a geographic distance from. We try it. Technology has given us so many ways to reach someone on the other side of the world. We have all the technology we want, and we walk around it with it in our hands so often. But God's message is stronger than that. Technology may have given a bow to the Trinity in that sense. But if I want to talk to God, all I have to do is go inside myself, and this applies to every one of us, and respond to the third person of the Blessed Trinity, the Spirit of God. You can't grab that, you can't put that in a note. The Spirit of God, we commemorated it on Pentecost Sunday, the power of God. So when we begin Mass and we celebrate in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we're expressing what we understand, but we would not have been able to do that without the third person of the Blessed Trinity. And each one is a person unique with his own message, the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God, the intelligence of God, the comprehension of God. The Logos, Jesus, is the Word, and we're able to grasp the Word because of our faith in the Holy Spirit. Recently I read an article on validation. As a family therapist, I try to keep up with all writings that have to do with the family and the application of those writings. And the author, Lunaghan, spoke about validation. And what she said is when we have children and we validate them. Now, we don't validate their moods, we don't validate their outbursts, we don't validate their tantrums. That's not validation, that's regardless cooperation. Validation is when the child looks up to the parent and he accomplishes something. Doesn't matter what. The smallest toy, the biggest puzzle. And the parent acknowledges that. Wow, that's really nice. You did a good job. But if the kid misses one piece of that puzzle, the validating parent doesn't say, ah, you know, you almost got it. No, the validating parent says, good try. Let's do it again. Let me help you. Let me give you some assistance. The validating parent gives that sense of belonging to that child, not his sense of not accomplishment. He gives the validating parent gives her child love, knowledge, information, and security. The one who is, quote, the weak parent negotiates with the kid throwing a tantrum in the middle of the store. That's a weak parent. That's not validation. That's giving in to evil. I'm not saying the child is evil, but in our discussion, we can look at that as evil. Something contrary to the will of God, something contrary to society, contrary to the common good. We cannot validate. And when we do validate that, we are validating evil. God does not send us evil. God encourages us to validate what is good, what is right for the common good, for ourselves, for our families. To know ourselves, to know my strengths and my characteristics, to go into a relationship with that security and sense of self. This is not narcissism, but security in knowing that I am validated by God. And I've been taught that validation most probably through my family. They don't pick out the mistakes, they honor the accomplishments. And with the mistakes, they put out a hand to help along the way. All my work, all my money, and you screwed it up. No, that's not the validating parent. The validating parent says, okay, let's get down and figure out how it went wrong. How your bicycle did not work correctly, how the puzzle did not get put back correctly, how you messed up with that friend. The validating parent gives us strength, gives us integrity. God is our validating parent. God comes to us in flesh. Jesus. Jesus wore a diaper. That's kind of messy. Jesus was born into a stable, kind of smelly. Jesus was crucified on the cross naked, kind of disgusting. But the Father validated his actions because he sacrificed himself for us to go first, to give us the example. And finally, Jesus validates the Father. Isn't that what we want to say to every one of our parents? I trust you so much that on my last breath I'm yours. Because of time and circumstances, we often don't get that example. We don't get that ability to co-validate our parents who gave us what they gave us. So we as human beings have to reconcile that and to look into ourselves and those who guide us in this life and see what we can remove of the negativity in our lives, the dysfunction, push it aside, and then look at ourselves as children of God and children of these parents who were not perfect, but we are children of a perfect Father in heaven. And we are able to understand that Father through logos, the word that he sent us in Jesus. And then when the Holy Spirit comes on the scene and is with us now and in all of our sacraments, the Holy Spirit gives us an aha moment, a way to understand I'm not a mess. Maybe I have lost some direction, but I'm not a failure. I may have made a mistake, but I'm not a failure because I'm a child of God, and God doesn't make mistakes. We as Roman Catholics, I think, should be grateful to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for what God has given us and how to understand ourselves, our church, and the world. Be grateful to God as today we acknowledge God in almost an impossible way as three persons in one. Not three gods, three persons in one. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.