This Sunday, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. Through this celebration we not only honour God, but also, try to have a glimpse into the vast mystery of God’s nature. When we have an idea of God – which may not be complete but still true – we deepen our relationship with God through proper worship, adequate to the nature of God. God calls each and every one of us to have a relationship with Him. True relationship is made possible through proper worship.
The word ‘Trinity’ is not mentioned in the Bible. Although the early church spoke about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit spontaneously and pondered the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, it is only around the early third century that they postulated a doctrine on the Trinity, which would be further developed for another millennia. The main purpose of defining in clarity what was already accepted by faith is to ward off any error in teaching and misconceptions leading into heresies.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in part one, no 266 succinctly paraphrases the essence of the doctrine of Trinity as the most important aspect of Christian faith. “We worship one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity, without either confusing the persons or dividing the substance; for the person of the Father is one, the Son’s is another, the Holy Spirit’s another; but the Godhead of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.”
God is a mystery and everything He has created has that sense of mystery in it. We are all created in the image of God and therefore, we have that aspect of mystery in us. The more we understand about our Creator the more we understand about His creation and ourselves.
God lives in a unity of three persons. He does not live in isolation or solitary individualism. God lives in a community of love, sharing oneself totally with each other. A Christian cannot live in isolation. Every Christian’s life reflects the life of God when one unconditionally offers oneself for another in love. Through the coming of the Holy Spirit, we are given the grace to love like God Loves, and we are invited to love each other with the love of God.
–Fr. Ranjan D’Sa OCD