TRIUNE GOD, TRIUNE FAITH.
May 26, 2024.
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity – B.
Glory be to God the Father. Glory be to God the Son. Glory be to God the Holy Spirit. Three persons in an undivided, unconfused, and co-equal divinity. We profess faith in One God in Three Persons. Because we are, since our Baptism, immersed in this mystery. All our prayers are centered on this reality of the Trinity. And to say it right, we are a Trinitarian being, a Trinitarian People. There is nothing we can do without the Holy Trinity. For, the Holy Spirit gives us the strength of sons and daughters to cry out to the Father as the Son does, "Abba".
An Akan proverb says: “In a community, it's better for every
person to have a little of something than one person to have everything.” An
Argentinian proverb adds: “Two in harmony are in god’s company.”
We are celebrating today an unprecedented revelation. God
manifests to us his unique true identity, which he has never manifested to any
other nation. We see and know him as he truly is: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
About the Holy Trinity, we have this beautiful summary from
St. Gregory of Nazianzus. He says: "Above all guard for me this great
deposit of faith for which I live and fight, which I want to take with me as a
companion, and which makes me bear all evils and despise all pleasures: I mean
the profession of faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I
entrust it to you today. By it, I am soon going to plunge you into water and
raise you up from it. I give it to you as the companion and patron of your
whole life. I give you but one divinity and power, existing one in three, and
containing the three in a distinct way. Divinity without disparity of substance
or nature, without superior degree that raises up or inferior degree that casts
down... the infinite co-naturality of three infinites. Each person considered
in himself is entirely God... the three considered together... I have not even
begun to think of unity when the Trinity bathes me in its splendor. I have not
even begun to think of the Trinity when unity grasps me..." CCC 256
We believe and are created by one divinity "One in
Three". What could this mean, and what are the implications for our lives?
In Catholic theology, we understand the persons of the
Blessed Trinity subsisting within the inner life of God to be truly distinct
relationally, but not as a matter of essence, or nature. Each of the three
persons in the godhead possesses the same eternal and infinite divine nature;
thus, they are the one, true God in essence or nature, not three gods. Yet,
they are truly distinct in their relations to each other.
The first greatest implication is unity in diversity. The
three persons of the Godhead are intimately united in their diversity. The
second implication is the relationship or relationality. The Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit are eternally in relation with each other, making the
Godhead a school of relationality. The Father actively and eternally generates
the Son, constituting the person of God, the Father. The Son is passively generated
by the Father, which constitutes the person of the Son. The Father and the Son
actively spirate the Holy Spirit in the one relation within the inner life of
God that does not constitute a person. It does not do so because the Father and
Son are already constituted as persons in relation with each other in the first
two relations. This is why CCC 240 teaches, “[The Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity] is Son only in relation to his Father.” The Holy Spirit is passively
spirated of the Father and the Son, constituting the person of the Holy Spirit.
So, the Holy Trinity is a symbol of unity, relationships, and love. These
virtues should also be ours.
In today's readings, as we celebrate the Godhead, a
particular emphasis is put on each one of the members of the Trinity. The first
reading points to the omnipresence and omnipotence of God the Father. Moses
tells the children of Israel, "The Lord is God in the heavens above and on
earth below and there is no other." He invites them to recall the wonders
he worked, bringing them out of Egypt and now leading them as a Father, toward
the Promised Land. Therefore, Israel is invited to keep his statutes and
commandments so that they may live and prosper. Like a Father, he has chosen
them for his own, to be his people. He is no longer only their God, he is their
Father.
St. Paul, in the second reading, speaks of the work of the
Spirit. Paul says that through him, we are made children of God by adoption.
The Spirit sets us free from all fears to become children, "heirs of God
and joint heirs with Christ..." Therefore, like Christ Jesus, the Son of
God, we too can call God: “Abba, Father!” Without the work of the Spirit, we
are not children but slaves erring in our sins.
In the Gospel, we are taken to the last encounter of the Risen Lord with his disciples and his final mandate to them. Matthew says, "The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them." Let's recall the beginning of the Lord's mission. It all began on a mountain in Galilee, in Matthew 5, with the giving of the new law, the Beatitudes. Jesus summoned the disciples to himself on the Mountain. In St. Luke's Gospel, the calling of the disciples was also done on a mountaintop (Luke 6). After his Resurrection from the dead, and before ascending to his Father, the Lord summons his disciples once again on the mountaintop and gives them a special mandate: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit..." Not only does he state of his omnipotence, but he also gives them a special mandate, to make disciples. And the means of making those disciples is none other, but Baptism.
Through our Baptism, we have become children of God,
immersed in the Trinitarian being and we have become a Trinitarian People. The
Baptism confers unto us a new identity with many implications. We are urged to
imitate and incarnate in our daily lives the Trinitarian life. As children
baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the
relationship between the Godhead should apply to us. Love, unity, harmony, and
co-responsibility should be our goals in every endeavor.
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