HOLY TRINITY [C]: Prv 8:22-31; Rom 5:1-5; Jn 16:12-15

The mystery of the Holy Trinity, a doctrine enunciated by the ecumenical councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, is one of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity and the greatest mystery of our Faith, namely, that there are Three Divine Persons, sharing the same Divine nature in one God.   

Richard of St. Victor said: Three are the perfection of Charity. God has to be a trinity. For God to be good, God has to be one. For God, to be loving, God has to be two, because love is always a relationship. For God to be Supreme joy and happiness, God has to be three. Lovers do not know full happiness until they both delight in the same thing, like new parents with the ecstasy of their first Child. If God is only one person, in the pre-state of the creation of the world, God would have been a very lonely person. He would have been craving to love someone outside of Himself. That would show a deficiency in God. But as it is revealed to us, since God is three persons in One God, He was not a person longing to be loved to fulfill His need for love.

Augustine wrote: “You see the Trinity if you see love.”  According to him, the Father is the lover, the Son is the loved one and the Holy Spirit is the personification of the very act of loving. This means that we can understand something of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity more readily with the heart than with our feeble mind.

Three Persons in one God, equal in Divinity yet distinct in Person, is not explicitly spelt out in the Bible. Even the very word “Trinity” is not found in the Bible. But the doctrine of the Trinity underlies all major Christian feasts. All the official prayers of the Church, including the Holy Mass and the Sacraments, begin with an address to the Holy Trinity. We are baptized, absolved of our sins and anointed in the name of the Blessed Trinity.

The Book of Proverbs reflects on Wisdom, a quality which that book identifies with God. St. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, teaches us that we have peace with God the Father through Jesus Christ, and that the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. 

God has revealed to us three separate functions that are carried out by the Three Persons.  He has told us that it is proper to attribute to God the Father the work of Creation, to God the Son the work of Redemption and to God the Holy Spirit the work of Sanctification.  Since Yahweh, the God of Israel, was careful to protect His Chosen People from the pagan practice of worshipping many gods, the Old Testament books give only indirect and passing references to the Trinity, and the Jewish rabbis never understood them as references to the Holy Trinity.    Genesis 1:26 presents God speaking to Himself:  “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”    Genesis 18:2 describes how Yahweh visited Abraham under the appearance of three men, an event that the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates as the “Trinitarian Experience of Abraham.” In Genesis 11:7, before punishing the proud builders of the Tower of Babel, God says, “Come, let Us go down among them and confuse their language. “These passages imply, rather than state, the doctrine of the Trinity.

Our conviction of the presence of the Triune God within us should help us to esteem ourselves as God’s holy dwelling place, to behave well in His holy presence, and to lead purer and holier lives, practicing acts of justice and charity.  This Triune Presence should also encourage us to respect and honor others as “Temples of the Holy Spirit.”

We are created in love to be a community of loving persons, just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are united in love. We belong to the Family of the Triune God.  The love, unity and joy in the relationship among the Father, Son and Holy Spirit should be the supreme model of our relationships within our Christian families.  Our families become truly Christian when we live in a relationship of love with God and with others.

We are made in God’s image and likeness.  Just as God is God only in a Trinitarian relationship, so we can be fully human only as one member of a relationship of three partners.  The self needs to be in a horizontal relationship with all other people and in a vertical relationship with God.  In that way, our life becomes Trinitarian like that of God. 

Like God the Father, we are called upon to be productive and creative persons by contributing to the building up of the fabric of our family, our Church, our community and our nation.  Like God the Son, we are called upon to reconcile, to be peacemakers, to put back together that which has been broken, to restore what has been shattered.  Like God the Holy Spirit, it is our task to uncover and teach truth and to dispel ignorance. 

The celebration of the mystery of Holy Trinity reminds us that we have to grow in unity   like the perfect Unity that exists in Trinity. The greatest hindrance to unity is selfishness (Phil 2:4). When we strive to overcome our selfishness we will be able to contribute positively to strengthen our relation with the trinity and others.

May God, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit shower their blessings on us and help us to strengthen our bond of unity.