In the Name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Praised be
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
The Father glorified his obedient Son through the
Resurrection. The Son returned to his Father and sits at his right hand. From
the throne of the Father, the Son sent the Holy Spirit to complete the work of
salvation. Now, the revelation of the true God being completed, we honor this
great God, three Persons and yet united in Divinity: Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. “This Sunday of the Most Holy Trinity, in a
certain sense 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.” (Benedict XVI, Angelus, 30 May 2010.)
For many, today is a very difficult feast to
celebrate inasmuch as our tendency today is to be very “heady” or “conceptual”
about the Trinity. To many Catholics, the Holy Trinity is some idea which we
memorize through our catechism. We study, discuss, and even debate on the
Trinity to the point that we fail to keep in mind that the when we speak of the
Trinity, we speak of 3 Persons in 1 God. I think that this is the key to
appreciate the Trinity: He is 3 Persons. What is a person? A person is someone
who knows and loves. A person is not a something but a someone. I am a person.
Each angel or each demon is a person. But God…He is not a person but 3 Persons.
Far from being simply an idea that tickles your intellect, God is a Communion
of Persons who live in a relationship among themselves and also with us. The
interior life of the 3 Persons is very much a mystery to us. This much we know:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in mutual self-giving. The mystery of the
Blessed Trinity is very much the unfathomable mystery of Love and Communion.
The 3 Divine Persons are not mindless and stoic figures. Their personal names,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, tell us that they are in a relationship. The 1st
Person’s name is Father because he has a Son. The 2nd Person’s name
is Son because he is born of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the mutual love
that Father and Son share with each other. The Holy Trinity is a perfect
communion of 3 Persons in life and love. In mutual sharing, the Persons of the
Trinity glorify each other: “(The Holy Spirit) will glorify me, because he will
take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is
mine…” The 1st reading from the Book of Proverbs has an even more
moving insight into this relationship between the Father and the Son. The Son
(the Wisdom of God) speaks of the creation of the world: “there was I beside
him as his craftsman, and I was his delight day by day, playing before him all
the while, playing on the surface of his earth; and I found delight in the
human race!”
The Trinity invites us to enter and share in this
communion of life and love. The 3 Persons know us and wish to be known by us.
The 3 Persons love us and wish to be loved by us. We enter and share in the
communion of the Blessed Trinity through the Holy Spirit who began to dwell in
us through Baptism. Being the Spirit of Truth who guides us to all truth, he
makes the Blessed Trinity known to us. Being the love of God who is poured into
our hearts, the Holy Spirit makes us experience the Trinity’s love for us and
transforms our will to love the Trinity who reveals himself to us. The Holy
Spirit brings us to encounter the Blessed Trinity. Our Christian Faith is born
out of this encounter. We do not encounter an idea, or a concept. We encounter
the living Persons of the one God: the Father who adopts us and makes us his
children; the Son who redeems us and affiliates us into his mystical Body which
is the Church; and the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us and who is our closest and
most reliable friend and Sanctifier. Our Christian life on earth should be a
lifetime of knowing and loving and serving the Blessed Trinity. How wonderful
is our Catholic faith! By this faith, “we have gained access…to this grace by
which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.”
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to
the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world
without end. Amen.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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