Welcome to the wonderful Feast of the Holy Trinity. The Feast of God himself.
The Christian assembly confesses its faith in the Holy Trinity when, at the beginning of the liturgy, the priest addresses them saying “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” And all respond “Amen.” (I agree). The liturgy expresses in various ways and at every moment our faith in a unique God, one, in three Persons, a fact to which we do not always call attention to. It is a wonderful mystery of faith. Saint Teresa of Avila once said: “A mystery of faith is like a deep ocean, the deeper we delve into it the more of a mystery it becomes.” This does not mean we know nothing of the mysteries of our faith, but perhaps it means we cannot know everything. We know what has been revealed to us by Jesus, Son of God and Second Person of the Holy Trinity. In many ways he tells us throughout Holy Scripture of His Father who sent him and the Spirit whom he and the Father will send.
Our prayers at Mass and in the daily Office all end with an invocation —epiclesis—of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The psalmody of the Liturgy of the Hours and the recitation of the rosary are punctuated by: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit’ and continues “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” For this is how it was, is, and always will be. This doxology is developed in the hymn sung at the beginning of Mass to the glory of God the Father Almighty, glory shared by Jesus Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. The Eucharistic prayer unfolds according to a Trinitarian scheme and concludes with the great doxology: “Through him (Christ), with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever.”
Thus, the liturgy, like the New Testament, like all the Greek and Latin fathers before Augustine, has a very concrete and dynamic conception of the three Persons of the Trinity. Everything comes from the Father and returns to him through the Son, in the Spirit. This liturgical concept gives full meaning to the Feast of the Holy Trinity. For us it is a great show of faith we believe because Christ told us— revealed it to us; we need no other reason to believe in the Holy Trinity than this. Celebrated on the Sunday after Pentecost, it is a great doxology to the Father who raised his Son and brought him into the glory where he reigns with the Holy Spirit he has sent to us. When the sequence of the Sundays in Ordinary Time is about to begin again, this Feast sheds light on the face and true nature of Jesus, the Son of God, who, by his teaching and his acts, reveals the Father and leads humankind to himself in the Spirit.
Saint John Henry Newman, a Saint of our own diocese explains the Trinity thus:
” Do not think that God was idle in that eternity [before the creation of the world] for he was not. He was infinite in his love and activity. For endless ages, God rejoiced in the knowledge of himself, and knowing himself——he declared and expressed his knowledge in the infinite Word— his only begotten Son, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity—to whom he communicates his nature, his life, his perfections, his all. These two Persons loved one another with an infinite love, and from their mutual embrace, bursts forth the Holy Spirit of love— the third Person of the Blessed Trinity. Three Persons, One God, all possessing one nature, yet three distinct Persons.
What humankind knows about God it has learned from God himself and from the experience of the divine action in its midst. This is a fundamental teaching of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. It does not seek to prove the existence of God by reasoning, it does not elaborate on his attributes: it relates how he made himself known, what he said about himself to his confidants, (The Prophets) and eventually in the fulness of time, as Father, through the depths of his unimaginable love and mercy, sending his only begotten Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom and by whom “grace and truth came.”
He, sent from the Father, with whom he is one. Then the Holy Spirit, who by his gifts causes believers to share in the very life of God.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, such are the names of the three Divine Persons of the Trinity manifested by the different part each one plays in the work of salvation. At the heart of this revelation is Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, the “only Son of God, who is at the Father’s side, [and] has revealed him; he sent the Spirit, that proceeds from the Father and guides us to all truth.”
God does not prove himself; he shows himself. One believes in him; one has certitude of his existence because one discovers his active presence in the world and in oneself, since one is touched by “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” This is a concrete and personal experience that happens in faith together with other believers. Lifting the veil covering his mystery, the one God reveals himself Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He did this progressively at first, “in partial and various ways,” and then finally “in these last days…..through a son…. who is refulgence of his glory / the very imprint of his being.” (Heb 1:1-3) It is by attracting its attention to his action in the world and in human lives that God brings humankind to discover who he is, his true nature, his transcendence and his nearness. The articles in the Creed that proclaims one God in three Persons must be placed on a plane altogether different from that of abstraction and metaphysical reflection. It follows that such a revelation determines, in an equally concrete manner, the relations that believers must have with one another. Created in Gods image, humans must live with one another as the three Divine Persons live in their unity: in joy, harmony, peace, in mutual encouragement—in order to seek perfection. God himself is peace and joy because, in the communion of the three Persons, nothing is lacking in his fullness and perfection. Humankind inherits these goods with the salvation gained by the Pasch of Christ. It shares in the very life of the God of love who creates among the faithful of the various Churches bonds of deep friendship. The mystery of the Trinity reveals what can and must be between all those who have been created in God’s image. Each one keeps his or her identity, without confusion, but exists and blossoms only in unity and communion with others, like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the unity of the Trinity. The union of love to which believers know they are called has nothing in common with some sort of search for fusion in which the originality— the personality—of each one would be dissolved. On the contrary, the union of charity demands that each one remains unique, irreducibly distinct from the others.
Such are a few thoughts on the mystery of the Holy Trinity, which have been revealed to us and which we celebrate with thanksgiving. Already now, it is given us to participate through faith in the life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, three Persons. If we live today in peace, harmony, and friendship with all our brothers and sisters, we have the assurance of entering eternal life one day.
“You are blest, Lord God of our fathers.
To you, glory and praise for evermore.
Blest your glorious and holy name.
To you, glory and praise for evermore!”
HAPPY FEAST!
