TRINITY SUNDAY

Trinity Sunday

            Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity. It is an occasion to reflect on a very important teaching of our faith. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 234), the mystery of the Trinity is “the central mystery of Christian faith and Christian life. It is the mystery of God Himself.” This means that if a person has the wrong ideas about the Trinity, he/she will probably have the wrong ideas about everything else that concerns the faith.

            Many people have wrong ideas about the Trinity; some think the Holy Spirit is not God, others think we believe in three gods. What is the Holy Trinity? Going through the Scripture we find Jesus talking a lot about His Father. He also makes a number of references to the Holy Spirit who will come after Him. And the best known reference to the three persons of the Holy Trinity is found in St. Matthew’s gospel Jesus saying to His disciples: “Go then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” And at baptism of Jesus in the gospel of Mark we find the presence of the Holy Trinity: the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus in a dove-like form and a voice from heaven says, “….You are my Beloved Son” (Mark 1:11).

            From what we find in the Sacred Scripture there is no clear and elaborate presentation of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. The doctrine of three persons in one God, equal in divinity yet distinct in personality, is not explicitly spelt out in the Bible. In fact the very word, “Trinity” is not found in the Bible. What is Trinity? The New Catholic Dictionary (Van Rees Press, NY, Copyright 1929) stated that the root of the word “Trinity” originates from the Latin word “trini” which means “three each,” or “threefold.” “The term has been used as early as the days of Tertullian (200 A.D.) to denote the central doctrine of the Christian religion. God, who is one and unique in His infinite substance or nature or Godhead is three really distinct Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Each of these Persons is truly the same God, and has all His infinite perfections, yet He is really distinct from each of the other Persons. The one and only God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; yet God the Father is not God the Son, but begets the Son eternally, as the Son is eternally begotten. The Holy Ghost is neither the Father nor the Son, but a distinct Person having His Divine nature from the Father and the Son by eternal procession.

            Early Christians arrived at this doctrine when they applied their God-given reason to the revelation which they had received in faith. The idea of the Trinity came from how people experienced God in their life. Early Christians discovered that they simply could not speak of God without speaking of the three ways in which He had revealed Himself to them. This does not mean that there are three Gods. It means that there is only One God who has shown Himself in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

            There is a need to stress that the doctrine of the Trinity does not attempt to explain God. It only presents to us in a very elemental way what God has revealed to us about Himself . We Christians affirm the Trinity, not as an explanation of God, but simply as a way of describing what we know about Him; a God who revealed himself to us as Father, the creator; Son, the savior, and Spirit, the sanctifier.

            That is the teaching of the Church, that is our faith from the council of  Nicea up to today. “We believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, of the same substance with the Father, and in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the father and the son” (325 AD).

            On the practical level, what is Trinity in our daily life? How does the mystery of the Trinity fit in our day-to-day life as Christians? To ponder this mystery more deeply, what comes out is: Community. If there are Three Persons in One God, then, there has to be a community, a unity among the Three. We are made in the image and likeness of God. That being so, we ought to mirror our various communities, for example, families, religious congregations, offices, workplaces and others in the image of the Holy Trinity. This community should bear fruit of unity, understanding, love, peace and harmony. It’s pretty good that these will be the fruits in us. We are the Icons of the Blessed Trinity. And so let us make the Blessed Trinity concrete in our lives.

            This Trinity Sunday is a chance for us to once again hear God calling us to live up to our dignity as His children and enter more deeply into communion with Him and with other persons. Out of love, God has created us in His image, made us capable of receiving His own love and life within, and given us the joyful privilege of sharing it with others. Today we thank God for that gift and that calling. Trinity calls us to life in communion, unity, love, harmony and trust as children of God created in his image.

            There is a story that St. Augustine was walking on the beach contemplating the mystery of the Trinity. Then he saw a boy in front of him who had dug a hole in the sand and was going out to the sea again and again and bringing some water to pour into the hole. St. Augustine asked him, “What are you doing?” “I’m going to pour the entire ocean into this hole.” “That is impossible, the whole ocean will not fit in the hole you have made” said St. Augustine. The boy replied, “And you cannot fit the Trinity in your tiny little brain.” The story concludes by saying that the boy vanished as St. Augustine had been talking to an angel.