Deut. 4:32-34. 39-40; Rom. 8:14-17; Mt. 28:16-20
The
Trinity is not merely an abstract doctrine but a living reality that shapes our
faith and practice. It teaches us that God is relational and communal, inviting
us into a divine fellowship of love. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in a
perfect relationship of love, and we are called to reflect that love in our
relationships with others.
There’s
a story about a young boy who goes and climbs up a mountain in India and he
meets a guru. And he wakes the guru up because the guru is half asleep.
And the guru says, “What can I do for you, young man?”
And
he says, “I want you to explain God for me.”
And
the guru smiles and he say, “A God that can be explained is not a God that you
should worship.” And he smiled and went back to sleep.
A
God that can be explained is not a God that you should worship, because if you
can explain Him, it means that you’ve reduced God, the Creator of the world,
reduced Him to being another one of us.
The
mystery of the most Holy Trinity is a basic doctrine of Faith in Christianity,
understandable not with our heads but with our hearts. It teaches us that there
are three distinct Persons in one God, sharing the same Divine Nature.
There
is a very old and much-repeated story about St. Augustine, one of the
intellectual giants of the Church. He
was walking by the seashore one day, attempting to conceive of an intelligible
explanation for the mystery of the Trinity.
As he walked along, he saw a small boy on the beach, pouring seawater
from a shell into a small hole in the sand.
"What are you doing, my child?" asked Augustine. "I am trying to empty the sea into this
hole," the boy answered with an innocent smile. "But that is impossible, my dear child,”
said Augustine. The boy stood up, looked
straight into the eyes of Augustine and replied, “What you are trying to do -
comprehend the immensity of God with your small head - is even more impossible.” Then he vanished. The child was an angel sent by God to teach
Augustine a lesson. Later, Augustine
wrote: "You see the Trinity if you see love." According to him, the Father is the lover,
the Son is the loved one and the Holy Spirit is the personification of the very
act of loving. This means that we can understand something of the Mystery of
the Holy Trinity more readily with the heart than with our feeble mind.
Everything
God created remain a mystery to us. First of all, the mystery of the magnitude
of the universe: The universe has around 100–1000 billion galaxies. Our galaxy
is called the Milky Way. The Milky Way contains 100–400 billion stars with
their planets (including the sun and its planets), and our earth is one of its
tiny planets. This means that our Sun is just one star among the hundreds of
billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.
The diameter of the observable universe is about 93 billion light years:
a light-year is a unit of length equal
to 6 trillion miles. The number and size of galaxies and stars and planets in
the universe remain mind-baffling mysteries. In spite of all our latest
astronomical discoveries and studies — we have been able to send astronomers
only to our earth’s single moon.
We
ourselves are a mystery. Our body is unequalled for complexity. Each one of its 30 trillion cells is a mini
chemical factory that performs about 10,000 chemical functions. With its 206
bones, 639 muscles, 4 million pain sensors in the skin, 750 million air sacs in
the lungs, 16 million nerve cells and 30 trillion cells in total, the human
body is remarkably designed for life. And the brain! The human brain with the nervous system is
the most complex arrangement of matter anywhere in the universe. One scientist estimated that our brain, on
the average, processes over 10,000 thoughts and concepts each day. The three
billion DNA pairs in a fertilized egg (a child into whom God has already
breathed an immortal, spiritual soul), control all human activities, and the
30,000 genes make 90,000 proteins in the body.
So,
it’s no wonder that the nature of the Triune God Who created everything remains
a mystery. That is why we have to accept in Faith the mystery of the Triune God
who has revealed Himself in the Holy Scripture!
The
oldest doctrinal formulation of the Church’s belief in the Trinity is found in
the Apostles’ Creed which has served both as the basis of instruction for
catechumens and as the Baptismal confession of Faith since the second century. Later, the Nicene Creed, originating at the
Council of Nicaea (AD 325), stated the doctrine more explicitly. This creed was introduced into our Western
liturgy by the regional council of Toledo in AD 589. God has revealed to us
three separate functions that are attributed to the Three Persons. He has told us that it is proper to attribute
to God the Father the work of Creation, to God the Son the work of Redemption,
and to God the Holy Spirit the work of Sanctification. Our knowledge of God as Trinity is made
possible by God, who has chosen to reveal Himself as Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.
The
Father was continually seeking us from the beginning. The Father called Abraham
and called a people to himself out of all the peoples on earth. God called
Moses and gave a covenant forming them into the Jewish people. The first
reading (Prov 8:22-31) described the Wisdom of God. Other passages in the Bible
identify this Wisdom with God’s Torah or Law or Commandments (Sir/Ecclus 24:23;
Bar 4:1). God’s Wisdom or his Commandments are one of the ways we see God
seeking his people before the time of Jesus. God’s commandments, his Wisdom, is
one way God reached out to his people to lead them to himself. The Father
continued to seek his people by sending the prophets to call his people back to
live according to the covenant when they were wandering away.
Jesus,
the Son, became one of us in order to suffer for our sins, and even to die for
us. that we may live forever in Him. As
Spirit, God remains with us and within us, guiding, protecting, comforting,
instructing, and defending us throughout our lives here that we may be one with
God forever.
We
are made in God’s image and likeness.
Like God the Father, we are called upon to be productive and creative
persons by contributing to the building up of the fabric of life and love in
our family, our Church, our community, and our nation. Like God the Son, we are called to a life of
sacrificial love and service, so that we may help Him to reconcile people with
each other and with God, to be peacemakers, to put back together that which has
been broken, and to restore what has been shattered. Like God the Holy Spirit, we are called, with
His help, to uncover and teach Truth and to dispel ignorance
God
has a most wonderful plan for each of us: that we reflect the love within the
Trinity to the world, that we be the image of God in the world.
Satish