Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Today is Trinity Sunday. The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity is the foundation stone of our Catholic faith because the Blessed Trinity expresses our belief that there is one God with one divine nature, but three separate and distinct Persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
As Catholic Christians, we are called to honor the Most Holy Trinity, and show gratitude to each of the three Persons for their role in our lives. First, God the Father, who in His divine love planned our creation and gave us our adoption as God’s children. Secondly, God the Son, who took our human form, suffered and died for us, so that we can share in His divinity. Thirdly, God the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the love of the Father and Son who dwells in the Church and its members in order to fill our hearts with God’s love through its gifts, and directs us to eternal happiness.
To further explain the Most Holy Trinity, the Catechism of the Catholic Church #234 states that, “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the 'hierarchy of the truths of faith'. The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men 'and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin'. #237 continues that “The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the 'mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God'. To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel's faith before the Incarnation of God's Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit."
Hence in summary, the Catholic Church teaches us that: -The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian life. God alone can make it known to us by revealing himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. -The Incarnation of God's Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father the Son is one and the same God. -The mission of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father in the name of the Son (Jn 14:26) and by the Son "from the Father" (Jn 15:26), reveals that, with them, the Spirit is one and the same God. "With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified" (Nicene Creed). -The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father as the first principle and, by the eternal gift of this to the Son, from the communion of both the Father and the Son. -By the grace of Baptism "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit", we are called to share in the life of the Blessed Trinity, here on earth in the obscurity of faith, and after death in eternal light. -Now this is the Catholic faith: We worship one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity, without either confusing the persons or dividing the substance; for the person of the Father is one, the Son's is another, the Holy Spirit's another; but the Godhead of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal. -Inseparable in what they are, the divine persons are also inseparable in what they do. But within the single divine operation each shows forth what is proper to him in the Trinity, especially in the divine missions of the Son's Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Hence, Trinity Sunday calls us to reflect on the life and love of God as one in three Persons. It also challenges us to be one like the Trinity no matter our differences, as the love of the Trinity reminds us to fight Individualism and Selfishness.
So do we truly believe in the Most Holy Trinity? Do you know and believe that God is with us? What are we called to do with the presence of the Most Holy Trinity in our lives today? In order to appreciate and proclaim this love of God in the Most Holy Trinity, Jesus tells and urges us in today’s gospel reading: -To make disciples of all nation baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, -To teach them to observe all that He has commanded us; -And to remind them that God is always with them, until the end of the age.
So my dear brothers and sisters, as we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity today, let us appreciate and proclaim the love of the Triune God, by going out and making disciples of all nations; by teaching them to observe all that God has commanded us; and by reminding all that God is always with us, until the end of the age.
