We have come to the end of our Easter season. Today we celebrate the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. I remind you again, Holy Trinity, the great mystery of our faith, ‘one God’ and ‘three persons’, is not an abstract doctrine or a distinct myth, but an everyday reality of our life and faith. It is a great mystery. I can speak about it for an hour, but may not clearly explain it to you. We should never approach this mystery with a speculative and interrogative mind but with a heart full of love. We like to belong. We like to belong to a family, to a parish, to a community. No one is an island and we need the love, support, and friendship of others in our family and community. Not only do we like to belong, but we also need to belong. It is not good to be alone. It is for our good to belong. Since the day you are baptized, you belong to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How privileged you are to grow up in such a beautiful family. Turn to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in prayer every day. You belong to their family. And we do everything in the name of this family. It’s in the name of the Holy Trinity that we begin everything. It is in the name of the Holy Trinity that we receive all our sacraments. It is in the name of the Holy Trinity that we bless ourselves and receive a blessing from a priest. It is in the name of the Holy Trinity that we begin the Holy Mass and end the Holy Mass. The Holy Trinity, a community of three persons with perfect love, invites us all to be part of them.
Many a person would agree, ‘For its love, and love alone, the world is seeking.’ Such a love would be the fullness of life, the richness of life. For us Christians, God is that love. God is that life. This, surely, is the thought of St. John in his First Letter, (Ch.4.): ‘My dear friends, let us love one another since love is from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love. This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him.’
Our own personal experience of love, of deep friendship, might give us the flicker of a glimmer of understanding of God who is love. In loving one another there is the delight, the beauty, of bonding together, of being there for each other. This is something enriching, satisfying – indeed, mutually life-giving! So it is with God…three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Their life is a communion of love. As the Trinity reaches ‘outside itself’ towards our world, which it has created and now sustains, there is a divine collaboration between the Heavenly Father, ‘through our Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, who lives and reigns with him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.’ The ‘sweet mystery of God,’…the mystery of all mysteries…is that there is only one God who is a Trinity of persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What this means, not one of us can understand, but we do know that in saying ‘Only one God’ we are not claiming that if we had more than one God the better it would be for us and the merrier we would be. Jesus, the Son of God, has revealed to us the Blessed Trinity. As we allow ourselves to be drawn into the life, the love, of the Triune God we discover the mystery that is ourselves, and, indeed, the mystery of one another! It is the sweet mystery of life and of love. We have found this, or better, it is God’s supreme gift to us. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
I would like to share with you a three-minute devotion to the Holy Trinity:
· During the first minute, pick out the high point of your day, something good that happened—like keeping calm when falsely accused. Speak to the Father about it and thank him for it.
· During the second minute, pick out a low point of your day, something bad that happened—like ignoring someone who really could have used your help. Speak to Jesus about it and ask him to forgive you.
· During the third minute, look ahead to tomorrow, to some critical point—like having to confront someone about something. Speak to the Holy Spirit about it and ask for the wisdom and courage to deal with it properly.
As you can see, this exercise combines prayer with an examination of conscience. But more importantly, it brings the Holy Trinity into the nitty-gritty of our everyday lives.