Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity – May 30, 2021
We begin the Eucharist with two
statement honoring the Trinity. First, the sign of the cross,
and then the
celebrant says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Spirit be with you.” This last statement is from the
closing words of
Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians (2
Corinthians 13:13).
Today, we celebrate the Most Holy
Trinity, the revelation of the mystery of God’s inner life.
Three persons in one God is a challenge to
even the most learned theologian. The Holy Trinity
is beyond the reach of time
and the grasp of human reasoning. It is a mystery of our faith. We
can only
fumble in the dark in search of glimmers of understanding. The Jews had a very
strong
conviction about the oneness of God; there is one God and no other. We
find that expressed in
Sunday’s
first reading, “The Lord is God indeed, he and no
other.” The first Christians, who
were Jews,
shared that conviction. However, because of all that Jesus said and did, they
came
to recognize that within this oneness of God, there was a wonderful
diversity. In other words,
they understood that if God is one, he is one
community. God’s life is a communal life; within
God
there is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit who relate to each other in
love. The
church eventually came to speak of God as a Trinity of persons.
“Two is company, three is a
crowd” is a popular expression. The gospel would have it otherwise.
There,
the figure three symbolizes completeness and perfect balance, and re-appears at
all the
key moments of the Christ story. His life itself constantly reflected
the Trinity. Three figu-
res make up the nativity scene in Bethlehem – the Holy
Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Their
early visitors were the three wise men.
Later, in the desert preparing to begin his public life,
Jesus was tempted
three times by the devil. A good story should have a beginning, a middle and
an
end. Christ was a storyteller par excellence, and three figures prominently in
his parables
. The Prodigal Son is about a father and his two sons; the Good
Samaritan tells of the behavi-
or of three passers-by, the priest, the Levite and
the Samaritan; the sower sowed his seed in
three different types of terrain,
yielding three different levels of harvest. The end of his
life, as the
beginning, has again the three motif. During his Passion, Peter denied him
three
times. On the road to Calvary, he
fell three times. The crucifixion scene has three figures,
Christ between two
thieves. Before his resurrection, he spent three days in the tomb.
God is love. There are Three Persons in
the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Together they represent
the fullness of love. The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Fa-
ther. The
Holy Spirit is their love for each other. We are made in the image of a triune
God.
God the Father, who created us, his Son who saved us, and the Holy Spirit
who continues to gu-
ide us. Our lives should reflect the Trinity. We should be
always creative like the Father,
compassionate like his Son, and dispose our
talents in the service of others like the Holy Sp-
irit.
The Trinity will remain a mystery for
all of us as long as we live in this world, even though
the veil which covers
it is lifted ever so little. Our Bible assures us that not only is our
God a
personal God, but God exists as three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
while remai-
ning one God. Although we cannot even begin to give a logical
explanation for this, our faith
enables us in some small measure to experience
the presence of God.
It is in allowing ourselves to be drawn
into the communal life of God in that we in turn will
be enabled to build
communities that reflect the life of God. In that sense, there is a two
fold
movement in our lives as Christians which is ongoing throughout our lives. We
are conti-
nually drawn into the life and love of God and continually sent forth
to form relationships
that give expression to the relational life and love of
God.
Fr. Don, cp