Trinity Sunday 2017
“Go baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teach them to observe all that I have commanded you…”
What do you make of the doctrine of the Trinity that we celebrate today?
The Trinity! The inner life of God! The Greatest Mystery of our Faith! Simply put it conveys to mind the impossible: To say 1+1+1=1 is not logical but only the heart filled with faith and Love can accept this.
Today we celebrate the particular nature of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God we believe in as ONE in three equal persons. We recognize the Trinity as we begin the Mass: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.”) And the priest’s prayer at the end of the Gloria ends with the phrase “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.”
Jesus, the Son of God, has revealed to us the Blessed Trinity and through Him we share in the life of the Farther and the Holy Spirit. When we begin to walk with Jesus, we allow ourselves to be drawn into the life of love, of the Triune God and we discover the mystery that is ourselves, and, indeed, the mystery of one another! The communion of the divine Father and Son in the Spirit is the fullness of life, the richness of life, something beyond anything that we can imagine. The whole history of salvation has been to show us the inner life of God and to share that life with us. The revelation of the Trinity is one of the greatest proofs of God’s love for us. We do not reveal ourselves to those we do not love. And we reveal ourselves in proportion to our love.
In the Trinity, God revealed his very nature, his most intimate life. And he did this gradually and progressively according to our capacity and need. Searching the scriptures the Old Testament Israel is invited to embrace the One true God. “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” (Deut. 6:4) And “Know that the Lord is God it is he who made us we are his people the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100)
In the New Testament, all three persons of the Trinity are found in five of the key scenes in the Gospel: the Annunciation, the Baptism of Jesus, the Last Supper, at Calvary, and at the Ascension. The Trinity is the origin of our lives. It is true that creation is attributed to the Father, redemption to the Son and sanctification to the Holy Spirit. But the truth of the matter is that the Trinity as a team is the cause of our redemptive life.
What is the implication of this doctrine of the Holy Trinity for us all? It means that our happiness and joy in life depends on the depth of our relationship with each other. The Trinity is the model for our lives. We are made in the image of God. By contemplating the Trinity we learn a lot about ourselves and about the way we should live. The Trinity is a community of persons. There are no isolated, self-sufficient, individuals. There are three equal Persons living together in community. Each Person needs the other two Persons to be God. We need each other to be truly human. We are social beings. We are mutually interdependent.
This is evident in the beginning of life and at the end of life. The newborn infant left to itself dies and the very old person left to himself dies. And in between the entrance and the exit we are still dependent one on another. This community of persons is a community of Love. The essence of the Trinity is a personal relationship of love between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Love should also be characteristic of the Christian community. We are rooted and grounded in love. We all have a need to love and be loved. Love is my origin, my mission and my destiny.
By love we are known to be Christ’s disciples: “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35) “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you so you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)
In the Trinity there is not uniformity but unity in diversity. Each Person is unique and all share in the divine nature in perfect unity. Each one of us is unique but we share a common origin, common nature and a common destiny. The Christian community begins with the acceptance of this unity in diversity. It is this diversity that gives glory to God, the difference we are, the different gifts we have are meant for that unity for the glory of God. The Trinity is the destiny of our lives and all that we have. The concept of God as Trinity therefore reveals to us the key to true happiness, which is the love of God manifested in our love for others, a love that is in imitation of the Blessed Trinity, a love that is mutually giving, caring, and empowering.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. (Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.)