[00:00:05] Hello, my name is Sally Moriarty-Flask. Welcome to: From His Word to Our Hearts, my weekly Bible Study podcast. Together we will explore the readings to be proclaimed at the Catholic Mass on Sunday, May 31, 2026, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.
[00:00:23] This week's episode is entitled: Grace, Love, Fellowship, and in these readings, we confront one of the central mysteries of the Christian faith - the Trinity.
As we journey through the readings this week, consider the following:
The Holy Trinity is one God, made up of three separate persons: Father, Son, and Spirit, all sharing one divine substance while remaining distinct from one another; each is entirely God, but all three exist in intimate relation to each other. We are invited to experience this stunning mystery through the grace of Jesus, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit. But will we accept or reject that invitation?
[00:01:19] So let's begin in prayer:
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Heavenly Father, we praise you and we thank you for making known to the human race the confounding and wondrous mystery that is your existence as the Most Holy Trinity. May we acknowledge the eternal glory of each person of the Trinity and adore the perfection of your divine and essential unity. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:01:57] Now that we've opened our hearts in prayer, let's listen to what God is telling us in the Scriptures.
[00:02:02] Our Gospel this week is from John 3: 16-18.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
The Church celebrates two Solemnities each year as we enter back into the season of Ordinary Time after the Feast of Pentecost. This week is the first of those two - the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, which has been observed since the 14th century and is celebrated by all denominations of Western Christianity, not only Catholic Christians, but Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Methodists.
[00:03:16] Interestingly enough, Eastern Christian tradition (son Eastern Catholics as well as Eastern Orthodox and Lutherans) do not observe a separate feast celebrating the Trinity, but instead call the Feast of Pentecost: Trinity Sunday. The other Solemnity that is observed as we re-enter Ordinary Time is the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ - also known by the Latin name of Corpus Christi, and we will observe that Solemnity with next week. Although we are in Cycle A, which means we should be hearing from the Gospel of Matthew this year, we will hear from the Gospel of John.
[00:04:00] In fact, we hear from John in both Cycles A and C, but we actually hear from Matthew in cycle B… which may seem a bit strange, but no one ever said the Church's choices in compiling the Lectionary are always perfectly logical! The citation for part of this passage is often seen on signs at major sporting events: John 3:16, but that is actually part of a larger dialogue between Jesus and a Pharisee named Nicodemus who visits Jesus - we are told - at night.
[00:04:42] The words we hear in this passage are John's reflection on what Jesus taught Nicodemus about eternal life, although some scholars have suggested that these may have actually been Jesus’ own words.
[00:05:02] Either way, let's dive into this week's Gospel…
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,”
[00:05:14] The love of God is beyond measure and beyond our human comprehension… and it is that love that brought all of creation into being. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that: “God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness” and Saint Thomas Aquinas (13th century priest, theologian, philosopher, Doctor of the Church, actually one of the greatest Catholic theologians of all time) said: “Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand” - in other words - GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD, right? God so loved the world that he brought us (human beings), all of creation, into being in the first place and then gave us his only begotten Son, Jesus, to set everything right that we messed up!
“that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
[00:06:27] The gift of salvation that God offers through Jesus IS eternal life… it is an intimate participation in the divine life of the Trinity. It is a gift that promises we will be with Jesus because of his salvific actions… and it is a gift that will last for all eternity. Those two phrases, together, comprise that Scripture quote that is so often seen on signs at major sporting events!
[00:07:06] So many times people think John 3:16 stops at: “For God so loved the world” - it doesn't… it's the entirety of that sentence.
“For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”
[00:07:25] Jesus himself will tell the crowds that - using slightly different words - during the Bread of Life Discourse in Chapter 6, when he says: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day.”
[00:07:48] In that sentence, Jesus is saying that we are first given the gift of faith by God (faith in the Father and faith in the Son), which means that it is then up to us. We must consent to and cooperate with God's plan for us. God will not and does not save us without our consent and our cooperation!
[00:08:18] That's what free will is all about - we can reject God, we can turn our backs on him, we can refuse to cooperate with him - that's all within our control… that is all up to us. But if we do accept the gift of faith, and if we do cooperate with God's plan, Jesus will offer us the gift of salvation.
[00:08:48] “He who believes in him is not condemned;”
Jesus himself will also say that in Chapter 5, when he is teaching in the temple: “whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation,” which means that anyone who believes in Jesus will not be excluded from the kingdom.
“he who does not believe is condemned already,”
[00:09:19] Jesus will also declare that outright, in chapter 16 of Mark's Gospel, when he appears to the disciples after the Resurrection. Then Jesus goes on…
“because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Again, the choice is up to us - but every person must either accept or reject Jesus, every person must choose between the light of the world and spiritual darkness… there is no middle ground, there is no other choice, there is no other option!
[00:10:03] And make no mistake, any choice NOT to accept Jesus IS a choice to reject him… intentionally or not, actively choosing to reject Jesus or not. We need to understand if we do not accept him, that is the same as rejecting him. To reject Jesus is to reject the light of faith, it is a choice for spiritual darkness and eternal separation from God. John tells us that God so loved the world that he sent his own essence, his beloved Son, his own image, into the world so that sinful humanity might be drawn back into union with him - union that was disrupted by the original sin of Adam and Eve, and union that continues to be disrupted by our own ongoing sin - our own bad choices.
[00:11:14] But one thing we all have to keep in mind is that God never gives up on us - we give up on him.
[00:11:25] God continually invites us into the stunning mystery that is the Trinity - in fact, the Catechism tells us that in the end, every one of God's creatures is destined to enter into the perfect unity that is the Blessed Trinity. So, what will we choose? Are we going to accept or reject the invitation that leads us to such an amazing destiny?
[00:11:58] That takes us to our First Reading, which is from Exodus 34: 4b-6, 8-9.
“[Moses] rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. And the LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy and faithfulness.’ Moses made haste to bow his head toward the earth, and worshiped. And he said, ‘If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, let the LORD, I beg you, go in the midst of us, although it is a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.’”
[00:13:03] If we remember what transpired earlier in Exodus, after the Israelites arrived at Mount Sinai, we recall that they initially pledged their fidelity to God, but when Moses was delayed on the top of Mount Sinai, they betrayed God for a Golden Calf - an idol of their own choosing - that they, in turn, forced Moses’ brother Aaron to create.
[00:13:35] When God sent Moses down from the top of the mountain and Moses witnessed for himself the infidelity of the people, he destroyed the first set of stone tablets in his anger. This passage takes place AFTER that incident with the Golden Calf and AFTER the first set of stone tablets were destroyed.
[00:14:05] So let's explore how Moses obtained a second set of tablets of the law…
“[Moses] rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone.”
Again, these are the stone tablets, let's call them version 2. Remember, Moses destroyed that first set, which Exodus tells us, contained the writings of God's own hand, inscribed on both sides of both tablets.
[00:14:42] God himself presented the first set of tablets to Moses and Scripture tells us they were entirely divine in origin; the second set was fashioned by Moses at God's command. And because he broke the first set and handcrafted the second, it is now nearly impossible to separate the identity of the person of Moses from the creation of that second set of stone tablets.
[00:15:17] There are a number of things that we just identify immediately when we think of Moses… one of them is the burning bush, another is the parting of the Red Sea, and finally, the stone tablets of the law.
[00:15:32] “And the LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there,”
Clouds, remember, are intended to both conceal and reveal God to us. They conceal his countenance but reveal his glory… they provided a means, before Jesus' Incarnation, whereby mankind could interact with God and still survive the experience. Because remember, in Exodus 33, God told Moses that no one could see his face and live.
“and proclaimed the name of the Lord.”
God does use clouds to communicate with his creatures… God led his people out of Egypt as a pillar of cloud, he spoke to Moses from the concealment of a cloud atop Mount Sinai, he spoke from a cloud at Jesus' Baptism and again at the Transfiguration.
[00:16:44] Here we are told that God proclaims his own name - the name that the Jewish people still do not speak out of reverence and respect. That is what is meant when Scripture spells out the name LORD in all capital letters. So, whenever you read Lord in the Bible and it's all in capital letters - that is a representation of the name of God… it is a reverent way of indicating the Tetragrammaton: YHWH.
[00:17:18] “The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy and faithfulness.’”
That text has a two-fold purpose - it both proclaims God's name (that Tetragrammaton) and reveals his character.
[00:17:45] “Moses made haste to bow his head toward the earth, and worshiped.”
Prostrating ourselves before the glory of God and worshiping him… those are the only appropriate responses to an encounter with God.
“And [Moses] said, ‘If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, let the Lord, I beg you, go in the midst of us, although it is a stiff-necked people;’”
And by the way, if you look at the text, when Moses speaks to God, he does not use the Tetragrammaton - the text is not Lord in all capital letters, it is written as we would normally write the word: Lord. And what this indicates is another way of addressing God without using his actual name - the name that he gave Moses initially out of the burning bush.
[00:18:52] And really, God himself was the first to point out to Moses that the people - the Israelites - were stubborn… which he did several times in Exodus. But with these words, Moses is essentially reminding God that he knew his people were difficult to begin with, but he chose them anyway.
[00:19:23] And since he's already committed to them, would he please continue to lead them to the Promised Land, as he initially promised he would do? This is a perfect example of Moses’ role as an intermediary between God and his people, this is a perfect example of Moses interceding for the Israelites with God. Then Moses goes on…
“and pardon our iniquity and our sin,”
In other words, despite all their mistakes, despite the grave sin they have committed, particularly in creating and worshiping a false idol, and despite their infidelity, Moses still intercedes with God for the people, asking God to…
“take us for your inheritance.”
[00:20:26] In Exodus 19, God chose the Israelites to be his treasured possession among all the peoples. Then in Exodus 20, God promised to come to the people and bless them. Moses here is simply reminding God of those promises and asking him to remain faithful to his people even when they do not remain perfectly faithful to him.
Now, we don't hear anything more about the two stone tablets in this passage, but we will hear that Moses actually carved the law into that second set of stone tablets. Regardless of whose hand inscribed the law of God into those two stone tablets, those tablets reassure the Israelites that God is still committed to them, that he remains with them.
[00:21:29] In fact, that second set of tablets stands as proof, if you will, that the relationship between God and his people relies more on God's desire to be with humanity than it does on man's fidelity to God.
[00:21:49] And we have to still be very grateful for that… we still distance ourselves from God through sin and God, in his great mercy, still loves us and still wants to be with us for all eternity.
[00:22:12] And just as Moses was invited to encounter the stunning mystery of God on Mount Sinai, we too are invited to experience the love of the Father, the grace of Jesus, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, whether or not we are actually worthy of it.
[00:22:39] Thankfully, that invitation is issued out of the immensity of God's love, but it is still up to us. So, will we accept or reject God's invitation?
[00:22:54] That takes us to our Responsorial Psalm, which is actually not a Psalm this week at all. It is a canticle from the Book of Daniel, and the refrain is:
“O Lord, [you] are to be praised and highly exalted for ever.”
And here are the verses:
“Blessed are you, O Lord, God of our fathers, and to be praised and highly exalted for ever; And blessed is your glorious, holy name and to be highly praised and highly exalted for ever.”
“Blessed are you in the temple of your holy glory and to be extolled and highly glorified for ever.”
“Blessed are you upon the throne of your kingdom and to be extolled and highly exalted for ever.”
“Blessed are you, who sit upon the cherubim and look upon the deeps, and to be praised and highly exalted for ever.”
This passage from Daniel, found in Chapter 3, is a Song of Praise to God, and it is just a small part of the Song of the Three Young Men. Their story, which is recorded in the entirety of Chapter 3 of the Book of Daniel, is quite lengthy, so I don't want to go into it in too much depth here.
[00:24:10] Suffice it to say that the three young men, who were among the Jewish exiles in Babylon, angered the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, who had them thrown into a fiery furnace - a furnace, by the way, which the king had ordered to be superheated, resulting in such heat that the soldiers who threw the three young men into the furnace were themselves actually destroyed by the heat.
And despite the flames and the heat in that superheated furnace, the three young men walked about within the furnace, unharmed and untouched by the fire because they were accompanied by an angel of God. So, they sang a song glorifying and blessing God for his goodness to them. It is part of that song that serves as our Responsorial Psalm this week.
[00:25:13] That takes us to our Second Reading, which is from 2 Corinthians 13: 11b-14.
“[Brothers and sisters, rejoice.] Mend your ways, heed my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
If those sentences sound like a sign off of sorts, it's because they are. That passage comes at the very end of 2 Corinthians, and we have to understand that 2 Corinthians is a very different letter than 1 Corinthians.
By the time this letter is written, Paul is estranged from the Corinthian community - an estrangement that was the result of direct attacks upon Paul, which not only called into question his own personal integrity, but also his teaching and his preaching.
[00:26:37] Those attacks were perpetrated by individuals who had infiltrated the community and misrepresented themselves in as being messengers of Christ, but who were in truth nothing more than false apostles who preached a different and inauthentic message, leading the Corinthians away from the good news of Jesus preached by Paul.
This letter is a deeply personal and very emotional appeal by Paul to the people of Corinth. It gives us a glimpse of Paul's affection for the Corinthian community, his unwavering dedication to them that - in turn - result in his own feelings of abandonment and betrayal. Paul invested a tremendous amount of time and effort into creating a unified community of believers in Corinth, but that unity has been shattered. And Paul is reminding the Corinthians that it is up to each individual to choose who they will be and what they will believe.
[00:28:02] Will the Corinthians be legitimate followers of Jesus? Will they serve others selflessly? Will they live the good news of Jesus uncompromisingly?
Or will they allow themselves to be turned away from the truth and rely on lies and deceit?
[00:28:25] Earlier in this letter, in Chapter 11, Paul warns the Corinthians that: “even Satan masquerades as an angel of light.”
[00:28:36] And in the greater context of all of our readings, in the greater context of this Solemnity, Paul is presenting us with the very same choice.
[00:28:50] Will we listen to those in this world who preach and teach a message that differs from everything that Jesus says? Will we listen to those who cherry pick out of Jesus’ teachings and ignore their totality? Or will we choose to be authentic followers of all of the truth that Jesus himself preached? So, let's explore - in depth - how Paul concludes his Second Letter to the Corinthians…
[00:29:30] “[Brothers and sisters, rejoice.]”
[00:29:33] We have to understand how strange it sounds here for Paul to say rejoice. He just got done reminding the Corinthians of all the hardships he endured to spread the good news of Jesus - from imprisonment and torture, to danger, deprivation, and shipwrecks - and now he says, rejoice. Why? How?
[00:29:58] Paul tells them for the sake of Christ! Then Paul offers the Corinthians a series of instructions beginning with…
“Mend your ways,”
By that he means stop listening to the message of false apostles and remember Paul's authentic preaching and teaching, which will help them conform themselves to Christ.
[00:30:27] “heed my appeal,”
Paul's appeal has always rested squarely on authenticity. He has been reminding the Corinthians that true Apostles demonstrate their authenticity through suffering, service, and weakness… not the fake credentials and fictitious experience that has been presented to them by these false apostles.
[00:30:57] “agree with one another,”
[00:31:00] Make no mistake, Paul doesn't mean that everyone should hold the same opinion about everything. That would be impossible!
[00:31:09] Every person is an individual, every person has different thoughts and feelings and experiences, so every person develops their own opinions. And that is how it should be! That is how God created us.
[00:31:23] What Paul does mean is that Christians should always agree on matters of faith. In Baptism, all Christians are reconciled with God and united to Christ. And Paul says - act like it! He is saying the same thing to us!
[00:31:47] And notice that every one of Paul's exhortations are in the present tense… meaning that he doesn't want the Corinthians to adopt isolated actions that address specific concerns. He expects them to adopt continuous improvements.
[00:32:07] And that really does encapsulate the Christian life, doesn't it? Being a Christian is not a one and done situation… we don't simply say – “Yep, I believe in Jesus so now I'm saved and I'm going to heaven” - that's not how this works. It would be nice if it did, but it doesn't. We read the Bible… so, do what it says… act like it!
[00:32:31] We read the Gospels - we know what Jesus said to us - so do what he says.
[00:32:37] “live in peace,”
[00:32:40] That admonition, by the way, applies to everyone! Living in peace means working together for the good of all… it means putting the common good above personal preference. Paul says that if the Corinthians can do all of that, then…
“the God of love and peace will be with you.”
Love isn't just a characteristic that God possesses - love is what, and who, God is!
[00:33:17] So, if the Corinthians live as authentic Christians, if they follow the true message of Jesus, then God - who is love - will fill them with his love and peace. Again, the Scriptures are organic and living… tey speak to us today just as surely as they spoke to the Corinthian community in the first century. Paul is saying the same thing to us!
[00:33:47] “Greet one another with a holy kiss.”
[00:33:51] When Paul uses the term “a holy kiss” - he's referring to a common expression of hospitality in ancient times, and he uses that expression over and over again. The easiest way for us to understand that would be if we think of how Europeans typically greet each other by a kiss on each cheek. But what starts as a simple gesture of greeting or hospitality then takes on a deeper meaning within the Christian community because it is grounded in the unity all Christians share as members of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.
[00:34:41] “All the saints greet you.”
[00:34:44] Paul often refers to Christians in general as “the holy ones” or as “the saints” - this too represents a sort of generic closing for Paul, because - essentially - what he means is all of his traveling companions, all of the other Christians to whom he has preached the message of the good news of Jesus. And again, that's rooted in that unity present in the Mystical Body of Christ in the Church.
[00:35:21] “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
[00:35:34] That sentence brings this letter to a close with the clearest Trinitarian passage in all of the New Testament. For that very reason, those words serve as the basis for one of the greetings used at the beginning of the Catholic Mass. The Roman Missal actually lists three different greetings that can be used… this is option 1. The second is: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” and the third is the most straightforward. It is simply: “The Lord be with you.” To each of those greetings, the assembly then responds with the words: “And with your spirit.”
All three persons of the Trinity are mentioned by Paul in that closing sentence and he associates each with an attribute, however, no attribute is exclusive to any one person of the Trinity or another, but every attribute is shared equally by all persons of the Trinity. And if that has further confused the matter, then I apologize but there's only so much we can do to understand the Trinity… the Trinity is a mystery! Unfortunately, that is a word Catholic Christians overuse. We tend to throw it around whenever something is difficult to explain, but we really shouldn't do that either. Because a mystery doesn't just mean something that is difficult to understand or explain.
Personally, I've never been very good at math, so to me, differential equations are beyond my understanding… but they are not a mystery. In fact, my favorite definition of mystery comes from Frank Sheed (20th century attorney, author, and theologian) who wrote that “mystery […] does not mean a truth we cannot know anything about, but a truth we cannot know everything about.”
I know I've used that definition a lot, but that's because it's one of the most accessible definitions out there to anyone who's not a trained theologian.
And thankfully, some people in this world can and do know everything there is to know about differential equations… good for them - someone has to! But no one in this world can or does know everything about the Trinity - and that is exactly how it should be!
Because we are simply invited to experience that mystery - not to know it, but to experience it - through the grace, love, and fellowship that God freely shares with us. It is up to us to accept that invitation and appreciate the experience of God we have here in this life, while at the same time being assured that we will understand and experience even more about that stunning mystery in the next.
[00:39:09] If you would like to reach out to me with questions or comments, send me an email at
[email protected]
Thank you for spending this time with me and until next we meet, may God shower his blessings upon you like a soft and gentle rain, and may he hold you safe and secure in the palm of his hand.
[00:39:32] From His Word to our Hearts is produced by SFS Audio Solutions.
The content of the show was assembled by me, Sally Moriarty-Flask.
Our music was composed by Jimmy Flask and is used with the permission of the composer. All rights reserved.
Information regarding references used in preparing the exegesis for this podcast is available upon request.
Thank you for listening and God Bless.
