Holy Trinity Sunday

The Holy Trinity by necessity is a Holy Mystery. It is the central mystery of our Christian Faith. It is the mystery of God himself, for the inner life of God is known to God alone. But through his gracious self-revelation (God’s outpouring of his own Devine love) we have come to know Him as; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God one nature, yet expressed to us as three persons.

 I was once told, everything you can say about the Father (the 1st person of the Trinity) you can say about the Son and the Holy Spirit, expect that they are the Father. Everything you can say about the Son (the 2nd person of the Trinity) you can say about the Father and the Holy Spirit except that they are the Son. Everything you can say about the Holy Spirit (the 3rd person of the Trinity) you can say about the Father and the Son except that they are they Holy Spirit. Each defining the other as profound love. Each person of the Trinity is inseparable, yet distinct.

The Holy Trinity as the inner life of God is an infinitely deep communion between equals in perpetual and mutual self-gift of love so abundant and so excessive that it pours out upon creation, all of humanity and most graciously onto and into each individual open to transcendent encounter.

 The Holy Trinity as Truth is the fundamental reality of the world that grounds and encompasses all known and unknown realities. This Truth is the sense of things hidden within the senseless. It is the meaning hidden within all that seems meaningless. It is simply the unconditional ground of our being and non-being.

 Truly the Holy Trinity is unknowable, a different sort of thing all together. But, as creator, savior and spirit of the world we have come to experience God as - for us, with us and in us.

 God for us is our loving Father. Creator and sustainer of all life. Known through salvation history and scripture. But, experienced through his Son Jesus Christ the Word and the image of the invisible God. In Jesus’s life, death and resurrection we see the Father and his kingdom.

God with us, is Jesus Christ, savior and Lord, teacher and friend He choose to dwell among us. He came to us. He reached out to us, all of us, to heal us, to set us free and to love us unconditionally and completely. We come to know and experience Jesus, the Son of God because the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, in the name of the Son, reveals and makes Jesus present to each of us.

 God in us is the Holy Spirit or rather the life we share with the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself was Spirit driven.  He promised to send us that same Spirit when he was no longer with us. And so we too are Spirit driven. Enlivened by the Spirit stirring throughout the world as truth and stirring within us as Agape.  

 God (for us, with us and in us) is always and everywhere seeking relationship with us. And through the gift of our baptism and our sharing in the life of the Holy Spirit who shares in the life of the Son who shares the life of the Father and so we (in our way) share the Trinity’s own inner communion. We are simply caught up into the transcendent life and love of God.

 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth the foundation of our existence, the stage for salvation history that finds its fullness in Jesus Christ, the Word of God. St John rightly says of Jesus “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.”

 The first reading from Proverbs tells us, the Word was the Wisdom of God.  And the Word as Wisdom was in the beginning before the cosmos and in joy Wisdom as Spirit swept over a new creation. Wisdom was a craftsmen. Wisdom was a delight playing on the surface of God’s creation. Wisdom, Word and Spirit, found delight in the human race.

 St Paul in the second reading describes the Trinity’s outpouring Grace. Through Jesus, who is God with us, we find true peace with the Father, who is God for us. And in this peace, our endurance is enlivened and our hope does not disappoint because it reflects the fidelity and love of God which has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who is God in us.

 In today’s Gospel Jesus tells his disciples that there is a deeper mystery which they cannot yet bear. A Holy Mystery that encompasses all realities.  Jesus tells the disciples that it is only through the Holy Spirit that they will come to understand. Or at least begin to understand because what is to be understood is still coming, still being revealed. Still being lived out in lives of self-sacrifice and compassion. Jesus says the Spirit of Truth will guide them to all truth and the Holy Spirit’s work is not yet done.

 All knowledge and understanding of transcendent things can only come from the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit will say and do only what he hears and sees. The Holy Spirit can only take what is given him by the Son. And what Son gives is given to him by the Father. And what is being given is communion. The transfiguring mutual love of the Trinity itself. And its power we cannot yet bear.

 It is clear that whatever I say about the Holy Trinity, how I describe it are simply human ideas and my inadequate words. But, the inexpressible reality is God as the Holy Trinity is the living truth that continues to reveal its self to us as the Father, who creates and sustains, transfigures and redeems all life including our own. And the Son (God’s only Son our only Lord) who taught us that God is Abba (Father). A father who is always forgiving, deeply personal and always seeking relationship with us. And the Holy Spirit, driving us to live lives of compassion and transcendence. Guiding us to Agape, leading us to live beyond ourselves and teaching us to love someone other than ourselves.

 In the end, at least in this life we will never fully understand the Holy Trinity for it is God’s mystery known only to God himself.  But, the Trinity continues to affirm that God who creates us and who comes to us in Jesus and who remains with us as Spirit is the one living God who loves us.