Most Holy Trinity Sunday 2001

June 10, 2001
Most Holy Trinity Sunday
Proverbs 8:22-31 / Romans 5:1-5 / John 16:12-15

INTRODUCTION - God Reveals Himself

Our first reading personifies Wisdom as begotten from God before all ages. Wisdom was one with God when he created the universe and established his wondrous order. This text foreshadows the later revelation of a plurality of divine Persons in the Godhead. Wisdom, literally the Word of God, will become incarnate in Jesus Christ. The second reading speaks of the experience of the Trinity by early Christians. Faith in Jesus Christ has justified them before God the Father. Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit upon them so that divine love now flows through human hearts. We are literally invited into the inner divine and Trinitarian life. The Gospel has Jesus assuring his disciples that the Holy Spirit will make the significance of his mission and teaching clear to them. Something of the intimacy in the Trinity is hinted when Jesus says, "All that the Father has belongs to me." The Spirit will draw them into this intimacy and saving truth.

BODY - The Doctrine on the Trinity

God makes himself known, as a Trinity, in the revelatory message of Jesus Christ. This truth is not simply academic, but relational. Despite our unworthiness, the eternal Son of God offers his Father to us as "our" Father. In contrast to the Cosmic Watchmaker of philosophical Deists, the Judeo-Christian God called a people to himself and established covenants with them. The same Spirit that hovered over the waters of creation would overshadow a Virgin in Nazareth and bring forth forgiveness, healing, and life in the ministry of Christ. God delivered his people from political oppression and slavery. He gave them both the Prophets and his Law. Finally, he gave them his Son. Ours is a God who never forgets us. This abiding reality is most forcibly expressed in the saving mission of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He is sent into the world as one of us. He comes to rescue us from the sin and death, which was of our own making. God the Creator offers us the opportunity of a re-creation and of a new life in Christ.

God is the Father of us all. He calls us into union with him. He is the Supreme Being, infinitely perfect, and the maker of all things, keeping them in existence. Created things reflect the glory of God, their Creator. As the source of all goodness, God willed certain things into existence so that they might enjoy his benefits and participate in his goodness. His infinite power brought all things out of nothingness into being and he keeps them in being. Otherwise, and it is against the divine economy, they would sink once more into nothingness. Above all creatures, he is self-existing; indeed, he is existence, itself. He is an infinitely perfect Spirit. All perfections find their eminent degree in him. All the goodness, beauty, truth, and power we appreciate in created things are but the merest shadows of the perfections found in their source, almighty God.

God is revealed through the laws of nature and, in a more personal way, through his revelation as assembled in God's Word. Because of the limitations of human knowledge, many of the ways we know and speak about God are through analogies and stories. God identifies himself with Truth and with Love. He is all-good. He is mercy itself and ever forgiving. His is all-knowing. He is just. He is without limit. He is perfect and therefore, unchangeable. He is omnipotent (all-powerful) and present everywhere. He has no need of anything or anyone outside of himself. He creates freely, to give glory to himself, to share his life with his creatures, and to have them return thanks and praise to him. While there is ONE God, his identity is Triune: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three Persons of the Trinity are not "persons" in the sense of contemporary usage dealing with psychology. Rather, it implies a sort of divine dynamism wherein there are three mysterious interlocked equal cores of God's identity. The Scriptures never use the word "Trinity," but the doctrine resonates there clearly in the New Testament.

Jesus calls upon God as Father. Jesus does the things that only God can do, like forgiving sins and making atonement. The Holy Spirit is experienced as God, giving life to the community just as he breathed life back into the crucified Christ. The Lord gives the command to go out to all nations and to baptize "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Baptism in the name of a creature would be meaningless, thus all three Persons constitute the one God of faith.

We give thanks and glory to God in response to his gift of creation and the act of re-creation wrought by his Son through the power of the Holy Spirit. A sin offering had to be made and only one who was sinless could offer it. It is the teaching of the Church that the Lord's human origin was the work of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Jesus' conception, unlike our own, is the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit and is untouched by original sin. The Holy Spirit can directly create nothing sinful. Further, the fact that Jesus is God would make the presence of sin an inner contradiction. Jesus is viewed in the incarnation as the eternal Son of God born in the flesh of Mary. This revelation of Christ's identity is derived from a comprehensive look at the details of the Gospels. It took the first three centuries of crucial pondering in the Church's existence to reach a precise formula on this teaching: Jesus is one divine Person, existing fully in two natures, divine and human.

CONCLUSION - Knowing and Loving in God

God the Father exists of himself from all eternity. God the Son is eternally begotten of the Father. Using an analogy from human consciousness, the Father perfectly knows himself. While we have many fragmented and imperfect ideas, God has only one idea and it encapsulates the identity of God and all that is. We speak or write our ideas for others to share. God's one idea is called the Word and it is written upon human flesh, Jesus. God's knowing perfectly mirrors who he is and thus the second Person of the Blessed Trinity must by definition be divine. The Father and the Son share an infinite love which brings both life and eternal life to believers. This procession or generation of "Love Personified" also perfectly reflects God's identity and constitutes the third Person of the Blessed Trinity. We call him the Holy Spirit. This divine love is poured into our hearts. He is the Helper (Paraclete) whom Christ promises to send to assist the Church, to sanctify her, and to preserve her from error. Distinctions between the Persons can only be made according to the various relations and generations. They are joined into a perfect unity. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son with whom he is equal. The mystery of the Trinity is not easy to understand, and every analogy, including this one, becomes erroneous if taken too seriously or too far. It is ultimately beyond the full grasp of finite mortals. However, we know it is true from the testimony of Scripture and the teaching Church.