The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
Today we celebrate God as the Most Holy Trinity. Our readings invite us to reflect on what it means when we say that God is holy. What significance does this word hold for us? If I’m being honest, most of the time I just sort of breeze past the word holy when it’s used to describe something. I don’t think about what it actually means.
To be holy means to be set apart. That’s how holiness was first defined for me, many years ago. With this definition, we could think that God and all His stuff is holy, so it goes over there, set up on some sort of divine shelf, not to be touched. And then everything else, all the messiness and brokenness, is unholy and bad. And the two categories don’t mix. God is over there being holy, set apart and distant. He’s separated from all the unholy stuff.
But that is not what our readings today show us.
If there’s one thing these Scripture passages make abundantly clear, it’s that the Holy Trinity does not sit distant from our brokenness. God comes down to speak with Moses and reveals His Divine name. This is after the Israelites have broken God’s commandments. Moses asks God to dwell in the midst of a wicked and stiff-necked people. And God does. He gives His people access to Him. He comes close.
We hear about how God looks into the depths of creation and of our hearts. He loves us. He gives us His heart, His Son. God comes into the world, not to cast us off from Him in condemnation, but to draw us to Him, to save us.
So based on God’s own example, maybe a better way to think of holiness is that it is divinity, the stuff of God, entering into a space and transforming it. God is goodness, life, light, wisdom, truth, and perfection Itself. And when God enters into spaces filled with evil, death, darkness, confusion, lies, or brokenness—God’s presence is able to transform that place into a space where His divine life is present. This is what it means to be holy.
And this is our call. We are made in the image of the Holy Trinity, made to be filled with all the fullness of God. We were made to receive God, to be brought into communion with Him and transformed by His presence. Then we are sent out, to bring the holiness of God within us to all the “unholy” places—to the places in the world crying out for God.
Alyssa Trutter is blessed to be journeying through life with the Lord. She is a consecrated lay woman and has served in ministry for almost 20 years. She loves being outside, baking, laughing, writing, adventuring, and having heartfelt conversations with friends and family.
