Holy Trinity Sunday
We are back in ordinary time! After 40 days of austerity and fasting during the penitential season of Lent, three climatic days of celebrating the central mystery of our faith during the Easter Triduum, and 50 gloriously festive days of Eastertide concluding with a commemoration of the birth of the Church at Pentecost, one would have expected a more sedated Ordinary Time allowing us to return to our daily, ordinary and sometimes mundane routine. We are in Ordinary Time, but there is hardly anything ordinary about this time. The next few weeks remained littered with celebrations, a series of three Solemnities of the Lord, beginning with the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, which we celebrate today, followed by the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) next Sunday and finally, the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Friday following Corpus Christi.
Celebrating the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity after Pentecost makes perfect sense because today’s feast sums up God’s revelation which was brought about through the Paschal Mysteries: Christ’s death and Resurrection, his Ascension to the right hand of the Father and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Whenever some of us talk about the Holy Trinity, we often get a headache? Many of us are often caught up in the problem of numbers and mathematics – how can three be one and how can one be three? We often forget that this isn’t what the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is all about. Today’s readings give us three areas of reflection.
The doctrine of the Trinity highlights the fact that God is mystery. In the old testament, we read about God appearing on mountain tops and speaking from clouds. Mystery here doesn’t mean that God has kept many things secret. On the contrary, God has fully revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. When we speak of mystery, we are speaking of the limitations of human knowledge. Man may have advanced in science and medicine and many other fields, but he is still unable to explain everything. This is because man is himself a mystery. Life and death are mysteries. The universe is a mystery. Suffering is a mystery. Love is a mystery. And finally God is a mystery. Learning this truth will make us more humble. Learning this truth will make us understand that we do not have all the answers to all the problems in the world. Learning this truth will allow us to depend wholly on God and allow him to take charge of everything.
The second truth which we can learn from today’s feast is that God is a God of relationships. Mystery does not mean that God keeps at a distance. Although we can never fully know or understand the depth of God’s mind, we can still have an intimate relationship with him. In fact, man was created for relationship with God. This is possible only because God chooses to come close to us. He does not come close to us by descending from the clouds. God comes close to us by becoming one of us. God the Son came into the world in order to save it. God the Son became human, became one of us, so that we might become one with God.
God chooses to come close to us because he is love. This is the third truth that we can learn from today’s feast. If there is any quality which can best describe the nature of God, it is Love. The Trinity is not a thing. It is a relationship of persons. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father and this love is perfected by the bond of the Holy Spirit. That is why St. Paul reminds us that we should “grow perfect; help one another, …be united, live in peace” because we are made in the image and likeness of this God of love and peace.
If we are to be signs of the Trinity in today’s world, then we must be people who are able to live with mystery. In other words, we must remind the world that there is more than meets the eye, that there is a greater truth than that which is revealed by science – it is God. We are also called to be witnesses of the Trinity through our way of life. We must strive to build communities where we can live in unity and peace and in mutual forgiveness. When we are able to express this in our actions and words, the Trinity ceases to be a mere concept but becomes alive in each of our lives.
The second truth which we can learn from today’s feast is that God is a God of relationships. Mystery does not mean that God keeps at a distance. Although we can never fully know or understand the depth of God’s mind, we can still have an intimate relationship with him. In fact, man was created for relationship with God. This is possible only because God chooses to come close to us. He does not come close to us by descending from the clouds. God comes close to us by becoming one of us. God the Son came into the world in order to save it. God the Son became human, became one of us, so that we might become one with God.
God chooses to come close to us because he is love. This is the third truth that we can learn from today’s feast. If there is any quality which can best describe the nature of God, it is Love. The Trinity is not a thing. It is a relationship of persons. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father and this love is perfected by the bond of the Holy Spirit. That is why St. Paul reminds us that we should “grow perfect; help one another, …be united, live in peace” because we are made in the image and likeness of this God of love and peace.
If we are to be signs of the Trinity in today’s world, then we must be people who are able to live with mystery. In other words, we must remind the world that there is more than meets the eye, that there is a greater truth than that which is revealed by science – it is God. We are also called to be witnesses of the Trinity through our way of life. We must strive to build communities where we can live in unity and peace and in mutual forgiveness. When we are able to express this in our actions and words, the Trinity ceases to be a mere concept but becomes alive in each of our lives.
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