In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!
The mystery of the most Holy Trinity is a basic doctrine of faith in Christianity, understandable not with our heads but with our hearts. It teaches us that there are three distinct persons in one God sharing the same divine nature. We cannot grasp this doctrine which teaches that 1+ 1+ 1 = 1 and not 3. But we believe in this mystery because Jesus who is God taught it clearly, the evangelists recorded it, the Fathers of the Church tried to explain it and the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople defined it as dogma of Christian faith.
There are only vague and hidden references to the Trinity in the Old Testament. But the New Testament gives clear teachings on the Holy Trinity.
1) At the annunciation God the Father sends His angel to Mary, God the Holy Spirit overshadows her and God the Son become incarnate in her womb.
2) At the baptism of Jesus the Son, the Father’s Voice is heard and the Holy Spirit appears as a dove.
3) At the ascension, Jesus gives the missionary command to baptize those who believe in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In John chapters 15-18, we have the account of Jesus’ teaching of the role of each person of the Holy Trinity. 1) God the Father creates and provides for His creatures. 2) God the Son redeems us and reconciles us with God. 3) God the Holy Spirit sanctifies us, strengthens us, teaches us and guides us.
Let us respect ourselves and others because every one is the temple of the Holy Spirit where all the three Persons of the Holy Trinity abide.
Let us have the firm conviction that the Trinitarian God abides in us and He is the source of our hope, courage and strength and our final destination.
Let us practice the Trinitarian relationship of love and unity in the family relationships of father, mother and children because by baptism we become children of God and members of God’s Trinitarian family.
Explanations by Sts. Patrick and John Maria Vianney: The shamrock, a kind of clover, is a leguminous herb that grows in marshy places. St Patrick, the missionary patron saint of Ireland, used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity. The story goes that one day his friends asked Patrick to explain the mystery of the Trinity. He looked at the ground and saw shamrocks growing amid the grass at his feet. He picked one up one of its trifoliate leaves and asked if it were one leaf or three. Patrick’s friends couldn’t answer–the shamrock leaf looked like one but it clearly had three parts. Patrick explained to them: “The mystery of the Holy Trinity – one God in three persons- the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – is like this, but more complex and unintelligible.”
St. John Maria Vianney used to explain Holy Trinity using lighted candles and roses on the altar and water in the cruets. “The flame has color, warmth and shape. But these are expressions of one flame. Similarly the rose has color, fragrance and shape. But these are expressions of one reality, namely, rose. Water, steam and ice are three distinct expressions of one reality. In the same way one God revealed Himself to us as Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.”
“But that is impossible, my dear child:” There is a very old and much repeated story about St. Augustine, one of the intellectual giants of the Church. He was walking by the seashore one day, attempting to conceive of an intelligible explanation for the mystery of the Trinity. As he walked along, he saw a small boy on the beach, pouring seawater with a shell into a small hole in the sand. “What are you doing, my child?” asked Augustine. “I am trying to empty the sea into this hole,” the boy answered with an innocent smile. “But that is impossible, my dear child,” said Augustine. The boy stood up, looked straight into the eyes of Augustine and replied, “What you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of God with your small head – is even more impossible.” Then he vanished. The child was an angel sent by God to teach Augustine a lesson.
Later, 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. Evagrius of Pontus, a Greek monk of the 4th century who came from what is now Turkey in Asia and later lived out his vocation in Egypt, said: “God cannot be grasped by the mind. If God could be grasped, God would not be God.”
Today’s feast invites us to live in the awareness of the presence of the Triune God within us: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 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. “There is one God, who has three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each person is God, yet there is still only one God” (C.C.C.).
The doctrine of the Trinity underlies all major Christian feasts, including Christmas, the Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter, the Ascension and Pentecost.
All the official prayers of the Church, including the Holy Mass and the sacraments, begin with an address to the Holy Trinity: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We are baptized, absolved of our sins and anointed in the name of the Blessed Trinity. We bless ourselves with the sign of the cross invoking the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and we conclude our prayers glorifying the Holy Trinity, saying “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”
Today’s readings from Proverbs, Romans, and John are all about “pouring out.” God pours Self out in Word; God and Word pour out the Spirit to help us pour ourselves out; and the Spirit pours forth faith and strength and character. Instead of spelling out the doctrine of Holy Trinity, today’s readings summarize the effects of the Trinity in our daily lives.
The Book of Proverbs reflects on Wisdom, a quality that 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. In today’s Gospel, Jesus, the Son of God, mentions the role of the Holy Spirit, His close relationship with God the Father and what the Holy Spirit is going to do for us as we go about our daily tasks. 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, of reconciling and of healing, and to the Holy Spirit, the work of guidance in truth, the work of teaching and the work of sanctification. As the Father, God has brought forth the created universe and even our very selves. As God’s Son and our Brother, Jesus has made known a God who hears our cries, who cares, who counts the hairs on our head and who loves so passionately as to become one of us, to suffer for our sins, to die that we may live. As Spirit, God remains with and within us.
Since Yahweh was careful to protect His Chosen People from the pagan practice of worshipping several gods, the Old Testament books make only indirect and passing reference to the 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.
In the New Testament. a) The Annunciation (Luke 1: 26-38) describes how God the Father sent the angel Gabriel to Mary, to announce to her that God, the Holy Spirit, would “overshadow” her, and that God, the Son, would be made flesh in her womb.
b) During the baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3: 16-17), the Holy Spirit is shown descending on Jesus in the form of a dove, while the voice of God the Father is heard from the clouds.
c) John (Chapters 15 through 18) presents the detailed teaching of Jesus on the Persons of the Holy Trinity.
d) In the preaching mission given by the risen Lord to the disciples, Jesus commands them to baptize people “in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
St. Francis Xavier’s favorite prayer was: “Most Holy Trinity, Who lives in me, I praise You, I worship You, I adore You and I love You.” Let us conclude our reflections on our Trinitarian God with St. Paul’s prayerful greeting: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:13).
Wisdom from child’s mouth: A priest went into a second-grade classroom of the parish school and asked, “Who can tell me what the Blessed Trinity means?” A little girl lisped, “The Blethed Twinity meanth there are thwee perthonth in one God.” The priest, taken aback by the lisp, said, “Would you say that again? I don’t understand what you said.” The little girl answered, “Y’not suppothed to underthtand; ‘t’th a mythtewy.”