The Great ‘Before’ Of God – Trinity Sunday – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; June 15, 2025

“The New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.” (CCC 129, citing St. Augustine) That means that while the mystery of the Holy Trinity is only revealed openly in the New Testament, it is already hidden in the Old Testament. That means that from the first lines of Scripture, with the words, In the beginning God created heaven and earth, the God referred to is the Holy Trinity, because the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are one and the same God. (cf. CCC 121,123)

Today’s 1^st reading, which refers both to the opening of Genesis and the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, is an important Old Testament passage in which the mystery of the Holy Trinity is hidden.

The opening of Genesis, In the beginning God created heaven and earth, and the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, are both straightforward and matter of fact in their simple presentation of the most sublime and most fundamental and most important truths. They are simple and matter of fact, but their doctrine exceeds our mind as heaven exceeds earth. Do not be afraid if God overwhelms your mind; first of all, if you can grasp it with your mind, it is not God. Rather, when our mind “meets God”, as it were, it will be overwhelmed by his greatness. The proper response is “adoration”: “I bow my mind before you.”

Today’s poetic text from the Book of Proverbs points our wondering gaze towards that “excess”, towards that divine transcendence. We should be clear about poetry: poetic does not mean “vague,” rather the greatest power of poetry is precisely in the way in which very concrete imagery is used to direct our mind (and our heart) to a reality that exceeds the power of words and images.

So today’s passage speaks to us in detail of what the first words of Genesis encapsulated in heaven and earth; it speaks to us of the depths, the fountains and springs of water, the mountains and the hills, the earth and the fields, and even the clods of dirt in the fields; it speaks to us of the sky and the sea, all that the first chapter of Genesis enumerates, matter of factly, as having been created by God. But, where Genesis moves from God to creation and the unfolding of creation in time, Proverbs goes the other way by means of one single powerful word: “before”.

Think of everything just described, everything with which we are familiar, and add that one word “before”! There was a “before” in which all these things, things that we so readily take for granted, did not exist; they did not exist, but God did exist. What was before creation was simply God. That word “before” opens up for us a vista of inconceivable greatness.

Consider the words of the prophet Isaiah: Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the isles like dust … All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted as less than nothing and emptiness. To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? (Is 40:15,17-18)

Regarding this great God, Israel received the great commandment, inculcated day and night: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. (Dt 6:4)

Once we grasp that this passage from Proverbs is pointing us to that limitless “before” of God, then we will find ourselves faced with, were it possible, something even more amazing. “Wisdom” personified, who is speaking, belongs to that “before” of God and yet is somehow distinct from and related to the Lord, who possessed me, the beginning of his ways. In the unity of the one Lord there is a duality of relation, a relation arising from generation. In this “before of God” wisdom was “poured out” and “brought forth.” It is the language of “birth,” of “generation” in God of “wisdom”. In the great before there is the Lord and his begotten wisdom.

The next powerful word is “when”: When the Lord established the heavens, I was there. Already. The wisdom that was with the Lord before creation is present to him “when” he creates, his master craftsman to whom he looks. So the words turn back to that relationship within God: I was his delight day by day.

This is the one Lord, who made heaven and earth, begetter and begotten, delighting in each other. We might say, begetter and begotten from whom proceeds this mutual delight.

Well if we just had the Old Testament to go on, we might think, “No, it can’t be. Beautiful poetry, but just a poetic personification perhaps, of one attribute of the one God, his wisdom.”

“The Old Testament is unveiled in the New.” Then we come to the opening words of St. John’s Gospel and the mystery is unveiled. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. Through him all things were made. (Jn 1:1-3) In place of wisdom, we have the “Word”, the Word that was with God in the beginning, that word “with” expressing the duality of relationship, but of the same Word it is clearly said, the Word was God. As wisdom was the master craftsman in the creation of the universe, John says of the Word, Through him all things were made. As for the begetting, if we read further, we come upon this expression, the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father. (Jn 1:18) There is the begetting and, in that word, “bosom,” we can see also that “delight” of love.

The Father is the source, the Son is wisdom begotten, and the Holy Spirit is their living delight. All this before the creation of the world: One God. All this the One God and One Lord of Israel. One God, three persons; one in substance, distinct in their relations of origin, equal in might and majesty; the Son comes from the Father and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son.

Wonderful and the wonder of what God makes known is already a great thing, but inevitably we have the question, “What does that have to do with us? With me?”

I found delight in the human race. The delight in the Holy Spirit, that the Son, the begotten wisdom of God, has in the Father, he would share with us. And so also St. John, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14) and to those who received him, who believe in his name, he gave the power to become children of God. (Jn 1:12)

The eternal God, the Holy Trinity, created the whole universe that we might eternally share his Trinitarian life. Even when we had sinned, he was not deterred from his purpose, but the Father sent his Son, as man, to atone for our sins on the Cross, reconcile us to himself, and restore us to the life of grace in the Holy Spirit, so that we might yet achieve the purpose for which we were created. Indeed, by sending his Son into the world to redeem us and his Spirit, through the Son, to sanctify us, he has at once both revealed his inner mystery and declared his purpose as never before.

So now, even in the midst of our afflictions, we boast in hope of the glory of God …. Knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given us. The same Holy Spirit who is the mutual and eternal delight of the Father and the Son.