Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
/Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Proverbs 8:22-31; Ps. 8; Rom. 5:1-5; Jn. 16:12-15
15 June 2025
On the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity we commemorate the central and fundamental mystery that we receive and accept in faith. We can say that our faith in the Trinity is the “mystery of mysteries” because it is a mystery about the very being of God Himself and, as such, is the center and foundation of everything else we believe. The mystery of the Holy Trinity expresses our faith in how God exists, what His inner life is like – not just that He exists. This aspect of our faith is something purely of God’s revelation, that is, His showing of Himself to us. In other words, no human mind on its own would come up with the concept that the one God exists as Three Persons, were it not for God revealing this about Himself. For this reason, I think we can say that this expression of our faith is a prime example of how we Catholics are obedient to the Sacred Scriptures. I say that because the language of the Scriptures can help us understand why we accept in the obedience of faith this notion that God is one being in three divine Persons, a notion that is barely comprehensible to our minds.
Jesus’ own words give the first indication of a relationship that he has as Son with the Father. By those very words, we can see how the Church would believe that in God there is something more than an isolated, solitary life. Rather, there is a Father and a Son. We hear today from St. John’s Gospel. Listen to a selection of remarks from Jesus in other parts of the same Gospel. I think they reveal some of the foundations that led the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to eventually give shape to, and to define, how we think God exists in Himself. Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father…. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:9, 10)? Here not only are two relationships in God revealed, but also a clear indication of some type of oneness, for the Father and Son seem not to exist as two physical beings side-by-side, but as one in the other. In John 16:28: Jesus says, “I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father”. Relational language that supports our faith that God is Trinity gets stronger in John 17 in Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper. He says, “Now glorify me Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began” (John 17:5). There is a complete sharing of everything between the Father and the Son as we hear in these words of the Lord, “everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine” (John 17:10). A strong revelation of the unity within God comes again as Jesus prays to the Father that the disciples may be one “Just as we [Father] are one” (John 17:11). This unity language continues further on in John 17 “that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us…. That they may be one as we are one” (John 17:21-22).
But we learn still more in that the Lord’s words also reveal another relationship in God: The Spirit of truth. That is what today’s brief Gospel selection shows us. The Lord says of this Spirit, “Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he [the Spirit] will take from what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:15). In other words, we learn that just as Jesus, the Son, has received and shared everything from the Father, likewise the Spirit of truth will take from this common treasury. The Spirit shares in the “everything” of the Father and the Son; the Spirit does not speak a different revelation. In time, this “Spirit of truth” would come to be understood as the Holy Spirit, the distinct third Person of the Trinity. In fact, that unfolding understanding of the Third Person of the Trinity that developed in time sounds rather like what Jesus himself said, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth” (John 16:12-13).
Now, I have sort of bombarded you with Scripture passages such that, if you weren’t aware that the Bible is a Catholic book, you might be tempted to think you had walked into a service at one of the many denominations that dot the landscape! But I have shared these brief selections from Scripture to show the reason for why the Church would come up with an expression of faith like the Blessed Trinity. The reason is not some arbitrary ivory-tower concept, but obedience to, and serious reflection upon, what the Scriptures reveal. With all this in mind, that’s why I say that this mystery of the faith is a prime example of the humility by which we Catholics express the obedience of faith to God and to the Scriptures because we accept what our minds cannot grasp. And we accept it because it has been revealed by God. And God cannot deceive.
Therefore, we observe today our belief about God, that He is one divine being, one divine substance, and that within Himself are three distinct relationships of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each Divine Person is co-equal and co-eternal. They are not a division of substance, rendering each somehow one-third God, nor are they somehow three gods. Rather, they are undivided in the unity of divine substance, yet distinct in the three relationships within the one Godhead.
I want to leave you with something about the Blessed Trinity that I hope you can take directly into your prayer life as a disciple, something that I hope will be more simple and practical. Elsewhere in St. John’s Gospel, Jesus says this about what the Holy Spirit will accomplish in disciples when he is sent. “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you” (John 14:20). When we respond to this gift of the Spirit and love the words and commands of Jesus, he says, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him” (John 14:23). No matter how much our minds can or cannot grasp of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, we have the astounding promise that we disciples are brought into the unity of the Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity! Provided we love and keep the Lord’s words, we receive the Father’s love and the Trinity comes to dwell in us. Let this impact your own personal prayer. We frequently begin and end our prayers marking ourselves with the sign of the cross as we call upon the Persons of the Trinity. Why not take a few moments to directly acknowledge the presence of the Three Divine Persons in your prayer? Really. Even verbally. You could say: I acknowledge you God the Father my Creator here with me. I acknowledge you present God the Son who have taken on flesh to show me the nearness of God. I acknowledge you God the Holy Spirit who come to dwell within me. Distilled down to its most basic lesson for us, our faith in the Holy Trinity teaches us that God is not a “force” or an “energy” or an “abstract idea”. Rather, God is relational and personal. Begin your prayer acknowledging and expressing faith in that presence with you, near you, even in you, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For we are told that if we come to love and to keep the word of the Lord, God Himself comes to dwell in us and to make His home in us!