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Dear Parishioners,
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, the central mystery of our Christian faith. We believe in a Triune God: one God, two natures, three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is not only the “central mystery of [our] faith and life” but is “the source of all the other mysteries of faith” (CCC 234). The whole of the Church’s life flows from this central belief, and it reveals who God is, and how we are meant to be united to him. “God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange” (CCC 221).
Christians are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit – (that’s the divine imperative, the non-negotiables of our faith I talked about last Sunday). When we make the sign of the cross, we do so using the name of each person of the Trinity. All throughout Mass, the Trinity is invoked: in the Gloria, the collect, at the dismissal, and everywhere in between. Our prayer is addressed to the Father but offered through Jesus Christ in the unity of the Holy Spirit ... God, forever and ever. During the Eucharistic Prayer, we will ask the Father to send the Spirit so that our gifts of bread and wine might become for us the body and blood of Christ, his Son.
In a few moments, though, we will profess our creed, which is in its own right a short course on Trinitarian theology: a belief in one God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit – words signifying not human gender, but divine relationship. We will say God is consubstantial [we used to say “one in being”], meaning that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all share the same divine substance. The Trinity is eternal, meaning God is outside of time: He always was, and is, and is to come.
The relationship of the divine persons is one of perfect unity and communion. Everything that belongs to one belongs to the other, and yet each is not the same as the other. Our Triune God is three divine persons who are consubstantial and eternal, and who are all adored and glorified. It is through the totality of the Triune God that love and grace flow as a complete whole to us, Christ's faithful.
In celebrating the Trinity, the Church is not simply laying out a doctrine of complex theology. It is bringing to the forefront what ought to be the foundational principle of our lives: God is love, he made us for love, and he desires that we live in this love with him forever. As John wrote in the Gospel passage: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
This love is so real that Christ was willing to die for us. Further, the Spirit is the gift of the Father and Son to us, teaching and reminding us of that love, and strengthening and consoling us in times of challenge and trial, empowering us to be his disciples. May God’s love permeate our lives.
Blessings,
Fr. Tad
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