Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’re sitting down with an older relative, and they start recounting what such and such thing was like when they were a kid. “Back in my day, we had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to get to school.” Or maybe it’s something a little less exaggerated and more of a concrete observation about a new technology. “When I was a kid and we had to do a research project for school, we actually had to go sit down in a building called a library (maybe you’ve seen one in an old movie), and we’d have to try to find a book that had the kind of information we were looking for.” Maybe you think to yourself, “Hmm that’s really interesting to learn something about the past, but I’m so glad that doesn’t apply to me since I have access to modern technology! I have all the information I could ever want right here on my phone, and if it weren’t considered cheating, I could just submit a nice AI-written paper!”
Sure, technology continues to evolve and can make life easier for us, but sometimes because life might look a lot different from when our parents, grandparents, or great-great-great grandparents were growing up, we can make the mistake of thinking that all that has come before us isn’t relevant to our lives today. But their lives and their stories are part of our story! And if it weren’t for your great-grandfather Milton meeting your great-grandmother Gladys when she helped him catch his old-timey newspaper that blew away in the wind while waiting for the train, you wouldn’t be here reading this on your new-fangled pocket computer.
In the First Reading this weekend, Moses says to the people, “Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created man upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before?” and then he goes on to recount how the Lord brought them (as a people) forth from slavery in Egypt with signs and wonders, and he exhorts them to give their hearts to God and follow his commandments that they and their children would prosper. A lot of the people Moses is talking to are the now-grown children of those who themselves came out of Egypt, and he’s making the point that even though they weren’t there to see these things happen themselves, this is the story that has shaped them as a people and by which God has entered into this covenant relationship with them in giving them the law. So, what should their response be to this retelling/reminding? Moses is calling them to go all-in, just as those who had walked dry-shod through the Red Sea were called to do. They didn’t get a discount for a hand-me-down or second-hand covenant.
Fast forward to the Gospel for Sunday, and Jesus as He’s about to ascend into Heaven 40 days after the Resurrection. He gives the eleven the Great Commission; “…Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Just as Moses spoke to the people in Deuteronomy (which means the 2nd giving of the law), and told them they have the same call as did their fathers before them, Jesus speaks to us today and gives us the same call He gave the apostles, the same Great Commission.
Does it really have a bearing on our lives today, a call that Jesus gave 2,000 years ago? You better believe it. But wasn’t it different for the apostles since they had been with Jesus in person, and since they received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost after this Great Commission? Nope. Jesus is still present with us in the Sacramental Life, and we receive the same Holy Spirit the apostles did, to equip us as we go out and try to bring many people to know Jesus in a deeper way. Jesus even says in the next line, “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
So, ask now of the days of old. Reflect on Salvation History, and your place in it! God is calling you to be a saint. To take your place in a long line of people who have placed God on the throne of their lives (however imperfectly at times), and who have allowed His grace to make up for any lacking. Fix in your heart that the LORD is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.
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