Trinity Sunday
From the dawn of history, ever since our first parents were expelled from the Garden of Eden, every civilisation has sought commerce with the divine, groping in the dark, desperate to know something, anything really, about the power that rules over the universe. Most of them achieved a partial knowledge of the divine, and this is evident from the fact that every civilisation has believed in a divinity. Almost all, however, held bits of truths that were plunged into an ocean of errors. Enslaved by their passions, they often attributed their own deficiencies to the gods they imagined to be like them.
Some of them came to the realisation of the one true God, but even they still found a place for the worship of idols. The ancient Greeks, in particular, arrived at a clear perception of God, but, as is well known, Aristotle’s conception of the Unmoved Mover was that of a Being who essentially set the universe in motion but showed no concern for what happened within it. The reason Aristotle thought this was that he did not see how a self-subsistent Being could have anything to do with finite creatures as insignificant as ourselves. In particular, he believed that it was inconceivable that God could enter into any kind of communication, even less a friendship, with us.
The Hebrews were set apart from all other nations, for to them, God revealed Himself as Creator and Lord. He sought to enter into a relationship with His people, going so far as to refer to it as His bride. They were His, and He cared for them. He gave them intricate rules about how they were to serve Him and how they would draw down His blessings. More than anything, however, the Hebrews served to prepare the world for God’s ultimate revelation of Himself.
The entire liturgical year of the Catholic Church, from Advent to Pentecost, is the celebration of God’s eruption into our world. He made it clear that not only is He not indifferent to our plight, but to make sure no one could ever think that again, He became one of us, taking our flesh, living and dying with and for us. When He had ascended into Heaven after His resurrection, He promised to send the Holy Spirit. That was the great celebration of the Pentecost octave that just concluded.
Today, bringing together all the mysteries of our faith, we celebrate and honour that which in other generations was not known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit (Eph 3:5), the secret that no one could have ever dreamed of had it not been revealed, this astounding truth that God is not just a Person, but a communion of Persons. When St John brings revelation to its climax with the one verse of the Bible that even the most unchurched person has at least heard – God is love (1 Jn 4:16)– he is already saying that there are Persons in God, for in order to love, there has to be a Person to love and a Person to be loved. When the Son came into the world, we knew that there were two divine Persons, but on Pentecost, we learn that there is a third: the whole Trinity is revealed, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Such is the most fundamental and the most central truth of the Christian faith. It is what makes a Christian. To believe in the Trinity is to be a Christian. Not to believe in the Trinity is not to be a Christian.
Let’s pause for a moment and consider the prodigious love of God for us in revealing this sublime mystery to us. We could have never even suspected it had it not been disclosed to us. But what does its revelation mean? It means that we poor creatures are given a glimpse of the inner life of the Godhead. God pulls back the veil, if you will, so that we can enter into His mystery, the mystery of the communion of Divine Persons, sharing the same essence, the same divinity, who know and love each other so perfectly that they have only one intellect and one will. Their knowledge and love for each other are the source of their eternal bliss and ecstasy. It is this absolutely breathtaking truth that has been revealed to us, along with another even more staggering truth: God wants us to share with Him in that life, knowledge, and love.
Nor is it a matter of small importance. One not infrequently hears people say that what really matters is to believe in God, and the details make no difference. Would God have revealed to us things that are not important or that we do not need to know?
Let’s be clear: it is the glory of the Christian faith to believe and to preach the Trinity for two essential reasons. The first is that we may give fitting glory to the Godhead, and this can only be done by worshipping God as He is, and for this, we must know who He is. The entire liturgy of the Church, which in some way reaches a climax on this Sunday, sings the glory of God. It prostrates itself before the Majesty in giving thanks for having been admitted into such a profound and intimate mystery. If ever you doubt that God loves you, remember that He revealed His intimate life to you so that you could come to share in it.
But there is a second reason, no less crucial, for which it is our glory to believe and to preach the Trinity, and that reason can be summarised in these words: you become what you worship. If you worship demons, you become a devil; if you worship the flesh, you will rot with it; if you worship a god who does not care about the world, neither will you care about the world; if you worship a god who lords it over the world and treats creatures as slaves, you will become a slave-driver and a warmonger. But if you worship the true God in the Trinity of Persons, you become like Him, knowing the truth and loving the good. You learn to seek and cherish the truth and conform your life to it. If you worship the God who became man to suffer and die for you and who identified Himself with the least and the most needy of the world, you come to love God Himself, with the very love that God has put into your heart, and from that divine love flows love for your neighbour, for every neighbour, whoever he may be and from whatever distant horizon he may come.
If you believe in the Trinity, your heart is constantly carried forward towards a real, true and efficacious love for your neighbour, for each brother and sister that God has created, and who, like us, is called to share the intimate life of the Trinity. If you believe in a God who became incarnate in order to live with us, to suffer and die for us, then you begin to want to live and die for Him, to offer your life to His glory, and to serve the needs of all His little ones, those who already know Him and those who are waiting to know Him, waiting perhaps precisely for you, for you alone are the one who can reach him. This is the source of the missionary thrust of the Church and the reason for which we just read the Gospel of the Great Commission, in which we are sent out to give Christ, and through Christ, the whole life of the Trinity, to others. Since He has returned to Heaven, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which must look out Christ’s compassion on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless men now” (words attributed to St Teresa of Avila). So be it.
