One of the most memorable experiences of my time as chaplain to college students happened about seven years ago — in one of the most rugged, forgotten corners of Appalachia, Kentucky. Ten students from Montclair State University, along with our campus minister, packed into vans during spring break to work with the Christian Appalachian Project, rebuilding homes for some of the poorest families in the country. It was anything but glamorous. We rose at 5:00 AM for Mass, then spent long days traveling to work sites, hauling lumber, swinging hammers, and installing windows.  At night we slept on cots in two giant rooms packed with fifty other volunteers. Every evening we gathered to share the highs, the lows, and the “God moments” of the day.

Thank you for taking the time to read this homily for THE SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY -MAY 31, 2026 – Your support means a great deal to me, and I’m deeply grateful for the many who share these messages with their friends, families and social media followers. If you’ve found meaning in these words, I’d be grateful if you’d share them with others who might benefit.

And for those who prefer listening, you can find the audio version on SoundCloud HERE or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes HERE. Your comments, messages, and the way you’ve embraced these homilies continue to inspire me.   Sincerely in Christ -Father Jim

On the third or fourth night, one of the young women — who had been unusually quiet all week — finally spoke up. She looked around the room and said:  “I keep asking myself… why am I happier here than I am back at school? We’re sleeping on cots. Everything is uncomfortable. We have no Wi-Fi. And yet… I feel more at peace here than I do in my normal life.”

The room got quiet. Because every single person there knew exactly what she meant.

That moment has stayed with me for seven years, because she touched something true and deep about the human heart. We spend so much of our lives chasing comfort, entertainment, success, and distraction — convinced that if we just had a little more, we’d finally be happy. And yet, strangely, some of the moments when we feel most alive are the moments when all of that gets stripped away.

Why?

Because the human heart was not made for comfort. It was made for communion. It was made for relationship. It was made by God and for God. And that is exactly what the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity reveals to us today.

I know that for a lot of people, the moment they hear “the Holy Trinity,” something in them starts to check out. The thought is usually something like: it’s a mystery, we can’t figure it out, so why bother? And honestly – that’s fair. It is a mystery. The Church has never pretended otherwise. But a mystery isn’t a dead end. It’s a doorway. And just because we can’t get to the bottom of it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t walk through it.

So let’s try.

Three Persons, one God. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Father. And yet there are not three gods — there is one God, co-equal, co-eternal, and distinct. If that makes your head spin a little, that’s okay. It’s supposed to. This is not a math problem waiting to be solved. It is a mystery we are invited to enter into.

Here’s the thing – we didn’t just come up with this.  We couldn’t have. No philosopher sat down and reasoned his way to the Trinity. It was revealed to us. First in shadows and hints throughout the Old Testament, and then fully and explicitly by Jesus Himself — who spoke of His Father, promised the Holy Spirit, and told us to baptize in the name of all three. This is the central mystery of our faith. Everything else in Christianity flows from it.

And at the center of that mystery is not chaos… not confusion… not loneliness… not emptiness. At the center of reality is love — the Father eternally loving the Son, the Son eternally receiving and returning that love, and the Holy Spirit as the personal bond of that love between them. Not a force. Not a feeling. A Person. Fully God, proceeding eternally from the Father and the Son as the very breath of their communion.

So yes, that can make our head spin a bit.  But the essential thing to remember is that God is not isolation. God is relationship. God is love. And because we are made in His image, our hearts will always remain restless until they rest in Him.

We hear this in today’s Gospel: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” God did not create us reluctantly, and He did not abandon us in our sin. Out of pure, extravagant love, the Father sends the Son to save us. That is the heart of the Trinity — not a theological puzzle, but a revelation of who God actually is.

And we see that same God already revealing Himself in our first reading from Exodus – not at the burning bush, but in a moment perhaps even more intimate. Moses has ascended the mountain a second time, tablets in hand, having just witnessed Israel’s catastrophic sin with the golden calf. He has pleaded for his people. And now, alone on the mountain, he asks God to reveal Himself.

And God does.

He passes before Moses and proclaims His own name — His own identity: “The Lord, the Lord, a God gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love and fidelity.” This is no abstract deity. This is a God who defines Himself in relational terms — grace, mercy, love, faithfulness. Long before the Incarnation, long before the upper room, God was already disclosing His inner life: that He is, at His very core, a God of love who reaches toward His people.

Moses’ response is immediate. He bows to the ground and worships. That is the only reasonable response to encountering the living God.

And I think that is one of the great struggles of modern life. We are constantly distracted, constantly scrolling, constantly filling the silence with noise. We can move through entire days — even entire years — without ever really stopping to ask: Where is God right now? What is He saying? But the revelation of the Trinity is that God is not distant. He is already here. The Father who created you. The Son who redeemed you. The Holy Spirit who dwells within you.

That last truth deserves to be said slowly, because it is staggering.

The Holy Spirit is not a distant force. He is not merely the “vibe” of a good retreat or the warmth of a faith community. The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Blessed Trinity — fully God, co-equal with the Father and the Son — and He has taken up residence in the soul of every baptized Christian. St. Paul is not speaking poetically when he says that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. He means it literally.

Which means that the young woman sitting on that cot in Appalachia — asking why she felt more at peace in discomfort than in comfort — was not just having a nice human moment. She was, without fully knowing it, becoming more aware of a divine Guest who had been dwelling within her since her Baptism. Strip away the distractions, and suddenly it becomes easier to hear what was always there.

St. Paul captures the fullness of this in today’s second reading: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” That is not a polite closing. That is the entire Christian life. To live in the grace of Christ. To rest in the love of the Father. To share in the communion of the Holy Spirit — the divine Person who binds us to one another and draws us ever deeper into the very life of God. Not merely to follow rules. Not merely to be good people. But to be drawn into the inner life of the Trinity itself.

And that brings us to this altar.

This is where it all becomes concrete. Every Mass begins and ends in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit — not as a formality we rush through, but as a declaration of whose presence we have actually entered. The Eucharist is the gift of the Son, offered to the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit. What sounds like theology on paper becomes, here, something you can hold in your hands.

Think about Moses. The ground he stood on became holy because God was there. That’s it. That’s the whole reason. Not because of anything special about the dirt or the mountain — but because God showed up.

This ground is holy for the same reason. This altar. This nave. This exact spot where you are standing right now. Not because of the architecture, not because of the music — but because the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are here. Really. Truly. Personally.

And in a few moments, you will receive the Son — Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity — into your own body. The same Holy Spirit who has been dwelling in you since your Baptism will stir within you. And the Father will look upon you with the same love with which He has loved the Son from before the beginning of time.

That is what Trinity Sunday is really about. Not a doctrine to be memorized. A life to be lived. A love to be received.

So do what Moses did. Bow down. Open your hands. And let the God who is already here — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — do what He has always longed to do: draw you deeper into Himself.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.