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Trinity Sunday

Many are ready to give a polite nod of some sort to Jesus of Nazareth. Most honor him as a great moral teacher. Many even confess him as Savior. But the Incarnation of the Eternal God? Second person of the Holy Trinity? God can’t be one and three at the same time. Such a notion is at worst illogical, at best meaningless. “This was all invented by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 313 AD,” scoff a motley crew ranging from the Jehovah’s Witnesses to the DaVinci Code.

Of course this charge has no historical leg to stand on. St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote seven brief letters around 110 AD in which he called Jesus “God” 16 times.

True, the word “Trinity” is not in the bible. But everywhere the New Testament refers to three distinct persons who seem to be equally divine, yet one (see 2 Cor 13:13). So over 100 years before Constantine, a Christian writer named Tertullian coined the term “Trinity” as a handy way to refer to this reality of three distinct, equal persons in one God. It stuck.

But if the doctrine of the Trinity is authentically biblical, is it relevant? Does it really matter?

If Christianity were simply a religion of keeping the law, the inner life of the lawgiver would not matter. But if Christianity is about personal relationship with God, then who God really is matters totally. Common sense tells us that some supreme being made the universe and that we owe Him homage. But that this creator is a trinity of persons who invites us to intimate friendship with Himself, we never could have guessed. We only know it because God has revealed it.

God is love, says 1 John 4:8 (see too John 3:16). If God were solitary, how could he have been love before he created the world? Who would there have been to love? Jesus reveals a God who is eternally a community of three persons pouring themselves out in love for one another. The Father does not create the Son and then, with the Son, create the Spirit. No, the Father eternally generates the Son. And with and through the Son, this Father eternally “breathes” the Spirit as a sort of personalized sigh of love. “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.” That’s what the conclusion of the Glory Be really means, that the self-giving of the three divine persons did not begin at a moment in time, but was, is, and is to come.

If we are truly to “know” our God, we must know this.

But if we are ever to understand ourselves, we must also know this. For we were made in the image and likeness of God, and God is a community of self-donating love. That means that we can never be happy isolated from others, protecting ourselves from others, holding ourselves back selfishly from others. Unless we give ourselves in love, we can never be fully human. And unless we participate in the life of God’s people, we can never be truly Christian either. Because Christianity is about building up the community of divine love which is called the Church. If God is Trinity, then there really is no place for free-lance, lone-ranger Christians.

The family, the domestic Church, is a reflection of trinitarian love – the love of husband and wife, distinct and very different persons, generates the child who is from them but is nonetheless distinct from them, indeed absolutely unique.

And that is the final point. One of the greatest treasures of Western culture is the concept of the uniqueness and dignity of the individual person. You really don’t find this idea in the ancient societies of Greece and Rome or in other great world religions, such as Islam.

The concept of the irreplaceable uniqueness of each person came into Western culture straight from the doctrine of the Trinity, three who possess the exact same divine nature but who are yet irreplaceably unique in their personhood.

The irony? As it progressively abandons the triune God, the Western world is undermining the very foundation of personal dignity, individuality, and freedom.

So yes, the Trinity does matter.

Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio writes from Texas. For his resources on the divinity of Christ, the Creed, and the Trinity

Holy Trinity Sunday

First Reading: Dt 4:32-34, 39-40

Psalm: 33:4-5, 6, 9, 18-19, 20, 22

Second Reading: Rom 8:14-17

Gospel: Mt 28:16-20

This Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity celebrates the most fundamental mystery of our Catholic faith. It is the only day of the year when we stop to consider and meditate on who God is in Himself. Many times, we consider just our Lord or just the Holy Spirit but today, we think of God as three persons in one God. This idea was very difficult for the Jews to grasp. You see, the Jews believe in one God and that one God is one person. You and I, however, as Catholics, believe in one God as well but that one God is three persons. For the Jews, that sounds like polytheism, but it is not. We do believe in one God, just as we say in the Creed, but He is three persons. This is a deep, deep mystery.

So, how should we understand the Trinity? It’s a question many Christians ask. Catholic doctrine teaches that there are three persons in one God who all share the same nature. Remember that we are talking about three persons in one God; not three gods or three faces of one god. Three persons. Here are some ways of trying to understand the Trinity: St. Patrick of Ireland tried to explain it with a shamrock. The shamrock has three different sections that constitute one shamrock. Each section is distinct and yet is of the same nature of “shamrockness” as the other sections within the flower. Yet the analogy falls short because the shamrock can be divided into three parts and God cannot.

Here’s another analogy: You can have three business partners in one venture. Each has the ability of the other two – to sell, to hire, to lease, etc. Yet, each is distinct. This gives us the idea of how three persons can share the same abilities and do all things together and yet remain distinct. Yet, this analogy falls somewhat short as well for the partners existed before the partnership and could be without it, whereas the three persons of the Trinity could never be apart from each other and whereas business partners can do things on their own. The Trinity always acts together.

Even in our worship of the Eucharist – we say that Jesus is really and substantially present – body, blood, soul and divinity…There is a special dynamic at work here: Father loving Son; Son loving Father totally and unconditionally, from all eternity and the agent of love between them that is breathed forth is the Holy Spirit – not in time, but from all eternity. In prayer, we should be asking God for the grace to get caught up in the conversation between the three persons of the Trinity, to be more than a spectator, but rather – a participant in the very inner life of God.

By revealing Himself as three persons, God shows us who love is. When we say that God or the Trinity is love, what we are really saying is that love is not merely an aspect of God. Rather, love IS who God IS in Himself – three persons loving each other in totality. There is no in-fighting in God or dissent. There is only unity, peace, harmony and love. The Trinity reveals to us that love is at the essence of each person’s calling and our vocations to marriage, the single life or to the priesthood and religious life are the deepest way of living out that love. We should ask if we are imaging the Trinity in our loves: in our marriages and families; in our places of work; in our schools. Are we becoming persons of communion? This notion of communion is integral to Trinity.

Since we are created in God’s image, the Trinity reveals that we are meant to be in relation with other persons. We were created to love and to be loved. Being in relation is part of what it means to be human. I was at a Walmart store some months ago buying some supplies and I used the automatic checkout where I had to follow the instruction of this checkout machine who has that voice that you hear on every computer-generated answering machine. You know the voice. It’s haunting – she’s everywhere. I was at first thrilled by the fact that I could do this all by myself and yet I walked away feeling empty. I went through an entire Walmart without really having had any interaction with any other person.

I then proceeded to an ATM machine and then to buy gas by paying at the pump. Not once did I say anything to another person. When I return calls, I often speak to a voice mailbox and not a real person. How often am I tempted to use email instead of calling another person because I don’t want to “bother” them. While none of these things are inherently evil, we do need to guard against this de-personalization of modern living: the Trinity shows us that we were created to be in relation with each other. Even businesses know that one of the most important ways to retain customer loyalty is through personalized service. So often we see persons patronize a certain business because they are known there and they get that personal touch. Even if that business charges more than the competitor, the personal touch is often the reason they keep coming back.

And, even when we do have to interact with others, what has happened to common courtesy? How often must I remind our teens to greet their elders when they walk into a room? This is not just a matter of a lack of social graces – it’s a real lack of formation in knowing that we are made for communion with one another. How often do you see others avoid acknowledging you with eye contact? If you try to, in some places, people think you’re up to no good. Some feel as if eye contact is the same as stalking another person.

As we continue this celebration of the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, let us ask the Blessed Mother, she who is daughter of the Father, mother of the Son and spouse of the Holy Spirit to secure those graces for us to help us participate more fully in the inner life of the Trinity by our good works, prayers and worthy participation in the sacraments so as to enter more deeply into the very life of God who is love.

May the Blessed Mother, whose “yes” at the Annunciation set the work of our redemption into motion, remind us that we should have a deep and personal relationship with each person of the Trinity, just as she did and that it is in living in communion daily that we better image the inner life of God Himself. She is the fount through which all graces flow, as we sing in the hymn, Hail Holy Queen. May we more deeply trust in her maternal care, knowing that all of God graces flow to through her and all of our prayers flow back to God through her as she places them before His throne.

This homily has been edited for content.