Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Sunday June 11th, 2017
Today, on this first Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. It is not an extraneous feast day, without relevance in our daily lives. The Holy Trinity is in fact our Beginning and our end. He is our reason for being. Everything, EVERYTHING! we have, our family, our possessions, our world and our very existences is a gift from the Holy Trinity. Our Final Goal is the Holy Trinity, to be One with the Holy Trinity, one with the God who is Love. This is the reason why the truth of the Holy Trinity is the key pillar of the Christian faith and so why we celebrate liturgically this great Solemnity right after Pentecost.
In speaking of the Holy Trinity, simply stated, the mystery of the Holy Trinity states that there is one God in three Divine Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet there is only one God, not three Gods, one divine nature in three distinct divine Persons. The Divine nature is not divided (like pieces of a pie) between the persons of the Blessed Trinity. No, each person shares in the fullness of the Divine nature; yet, the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Holy Spirit, etc.
It contemplating the Holy Trinity it doesn't work to think mathematically (i.e. one plus one plus one equals one. This is the mistake Mohammad and others made). No, we must think in terms of love to begin to begin to understand the Trinity. Perhaps one of the easiest ways to think about the Trinity is their essential unity, a unity which comes from Perfect Love. The Three Persons of the Trinity are One in Perfect Love. We have never experience perfect love, but even so, we desire it and so it must exist.
Let’s use the example of Human love to help us understand. When we love someone we want to be close to them not far away; in fact if we really love them we want to be so close that we desire to be one with them. Our love gives us the intention to live our lives with our loved one in a way that not only proves our undying love and fidelity, but moves us towards a more perfect unity, a unity of love. We understand this intention and yet we understand how hard it is to accomplish. Yet, we do try; hopefully with God’s grace. For example, a man and a woman who love each other desire to give their whole selves to each other in marital love-to be one in mind, heart and spirit; when we see someone who loves like this we even say they are as of “one heart and mind.”
For the Holy Trinity, however, perfect love is not just intentional; it is completely real. In other words, unlike us, they don’t just intend to love each other perfectly, they are able and do love each other perfectly. Each member of the Trinity gives of Himself totally, sacrificially, perfectly to each other, nothing held back. And this total sacrificial gift of themselves unites them in perfect oneness, the oneness of perfect Love.
The Fathers of the Early Church liked to say that the Holy Spirit is the substantial love between the Father and the Son. Their quality is essentially one- unity is the most important. God is Love, the Father is Love, the Son is Love, the Holy Spirit is Love; three persons united so perfectly in Love that they are a unity of one God; Very simply—love unites--perfect Love unites perfectly.
The Holy Trinity is a mystery; but not a mystery to be solved, but a mystery to be professed and lived. The Mystery of the Holy Trinity reveals to us that we are called to greatness, for we are called to the Oneness of Love Himself. We are called to share in the inner Life and so the inner Love of the members of the Blessed Trinity; we are called to become one with the Trinity.
The Holy Trinity is therefore our everything. And our eternal destiny depends on whether we believe this and so live our lives according to this great truth. How important our understanding and belief is then in the Trinitarian God. If we don't know what or for Whom we are made, how can we ever find our way back to Him, to live as one with Him. We are Made by Love and For Love; we are made to be eternally One with Love--The Most Blessed Trinity.
And so we must in this life come to know the Blessed Trinity intimately. Before we can live in eternal Love itself--the Trinity, we must learned to love with perfection in this life, to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, in order to be united in love with God and others for love of God. This is by the way, why unity is so important; unity in our families, unity in our Church on the Universal level, the local diocesan level, and the parish and unity among all Christians and among all men. There is no true love without unity; true love unites.
To obtain this unity of love we must of course have daily, intimate contact with Perfect Unity Itself, Perfect Love Itself, the Blessed Trinity. The Blessed Trinity is the source of all unity and all love; He is the source of true and authentic family life because He is Family, not a family but The Family.
How do we have intimate contact with the Trinity? Well yes through daily prayer, but especially through the most perfect of all prayers—The Holy Mass. All the prayers during the Mass invoke the members of the Blessed Trinity. All of the action of the Holy Mass is directed toward the Holy Trinity. And Every Holy Mass gives us the real opportunity to come in intimate contact with the Most Blessed Trinity. And more than contact, but to actually become more and more united to the Son, and through the Son, to be united to the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Mass makes Truly present Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament along with HIs once and for Sacrifice to the Father on Our behalf, but it does so that through this action of the Son (the second Person of the Trinity) made truly present in our midst, we may have access to the Holy Trinity. The Blessed Sacrament is then the Way to the Blessed Trinity of Divine Persons, for it is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus become Man. Through our adoration of the humanity of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, His Resurrected, glorified Body and Blood, we can in faith touch the divinity of Jesus and so touch the Holy Trinity, in, with and through the perfect Love and unity of the Son…”through Him with Him, and Him
And then when we receive Jesus with faith in Holy Communion, He comes to us, in us; and through Him, the Father and Holy Spirit comes to us and in us, and if we let Them, They make Their abode, Their dwelling with us. As a result, when we receive Holy Communion worthily (and worthily is the key word here, that is, in the state of grace by frequent Sacramental Confession) we receive all Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. In the Holy Eucharist God gives Himself totally, sacrificially perfectly to us in love. And if in Faith, Adoration, Hope and love we offer ourselves to Him in return, we then begin to share already on earth, in the inner life and love of the members of Blessed Trinity. And the Trinitarian love is from whom we came and the greatness to which we are called to return and the Love that we are called to share with others so through us they too may adore and so become one with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Let us pray:
O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me forget myself entirely so as to establish myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity. May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you, O my unchanging God, but may each minute bring me more deeply into Your mystery! Grant my soul peace. Make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling and the place of your rest. May I never abandon you there, but may I be there, whole and entire, completely vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative action.
Our Lady, daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, and spouse of the Holy Spirit, help us to offer ourselves totally, perfectly, in a sacrifice of love at this Holy Mass and at every Holy Mass, help us to place our heart on the paten, so that we, like you will live and lead others to live, in the Divine life and Love of the Most Blessed Trinity, beginning now, and fully and forever in the life to come. Amen
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