Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
Recently one of our fourth graders posed a question to me concerning the Most Holy Trinity. Their question boiled down to who created the Holy Spirit. The answer to this question is complex and the Holy Spirit was always present, as was Christ, and as was the Father. Therefore, from the very beginning the love between the Father and the Son was so great a love that from it came forth another, the Holy Spirit. At this point the child confessed that the Trinity was very confusing and was hard to understand. To this I remarked that they now perfectly understood the Trinity.
You see the Trinity is a mystery. There are many who attempt to explain away this mystery through the use of metaphors. Each and every one of these metaphors fall short of explaining the Trinity and usually fall into some form of heresy. If you want a perfect explanation to what we must believe when it pertains to the Most Holy Trinity I would encourage you to spend some time in reflection with the Athanasian Creed. This is a third Creed of the Church which many have probably never heard of, but it gives a perfect glimpse into what we must profess and believe when it pertains to the Trinity.
Therefore, of the Trinity we can profess that there is one God in three persons. It would be incorrect to say that there is three Gods. These three Persons are distinct from one another and yet one God. There was never a time when the Trinity was not for God has always been. The Trinity is the perfect outpouring of love and thus the love that exists between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is so great a love that it is mutual and flowing over. The Trinity is thus important for us because it is an expression of God and His great love for us as is stated in the Acts of the Apostles, “In him we live and move and have our being.”
May we enter into this communion of Persons for through the Trinity we receive an outpouring of life, faith, hope, and love. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit might be a mystery, but at the same time they are not abstract words which remain far from our grasp. Through these words we are pointed towards truth and thus something greater. Through the Trinity we are shown love in its most perfect way and thus through entering into the Trinity we are encouraged to truly enter into love itself.
It should be no secret to us that love is something which is so often abused, that faith is something which is so often neglected, that hope is something which is lost, and life is something which is not fostered. It is the Trinity which encourages us to enter into something so much deeper. Let us be willing to enter into the life of the Trinity and thus begin to see the bigger picture of what it means to love, to have faith, to have hope, and to have life. May the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit always be our guiding and molding light.
