Fr. Manuel João, comboni missionary
Sunday Reflection
from the womb of my whale, ALS
Our cross is the pulpit of the Word
Everything That Exists Bears the Imprint of the Name of the Trinity!
Year C – Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
John 16:12–15: “The Spirit of truth will lead you to the complete truth”
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. During the seasons of Lent and Easter, we experienced the saving action of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. On this Sunday after Pentecost, the Church invites us to contemplate this loving action of the three Divine Persons in their unity and synergy.
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity is a relatively recent feast. It was introduced into the liturgical calendar in the 14th century and placed on the Sunday after Pentecost, considered the most appropriate time, since the Trinity was fully revealed with the descent of the Holy Spirit.
We are not celebrating a catechism truth locked within a dogmatic formula, nor an enigmatic mystery. This is a living, beautiful, surprising reality, at the very heart of the Good News of the Gospel, which St John summarises in the statement: “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
The Journey Towards Faith in the Trinity
All Christians profess belief in the Trinity: “God is one in three Persons.” This definition is not found in the Bible, and the first Christian generations did not yet use the word “Trinity”. The first to use it (Trinitas) was Tertullian, a Father of the Church (+240). His use was not an invention, of course, but the result of his meditation on Sacred Scripture.
The New Testament contains many allusions to this truth of faith. The conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel gives us the most explicit Trinitarian formula: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
Given the deeply monotheistic context of Israel’s faith, we can imagine how scandalous it was that Jesus proclaimed himself the Son of God and spoke of the person of the Holy Spirit. The first Christians were truly bold in initiating belief in the Trinity, which would only be clearly formulated in the 4th century, at the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381). Only a profound conviction, received through Jesus’ teaching and witness, could make them so courageous: “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is God and is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him” (John 1:18).
The Trinity as a Requirement of Love
If, on one hand, the mystery of the Trinity is hard to grasp because it goes against our logic, on the other hand, it could be seen as simple, since it is a requirement of love itself. A God who is only one Person would be solipsistic: how could such a being be love? Love between two might become a love of reciprocity, a mirrored love, in which the two lovers reflect one another: this is still imperfect love. A Third is needed—one who embodies diversity and pushes love beyond mere reciprocity to embrace the other.
God created humanity “in his image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26–27), but the icon of the Trinity is not the couple—it is the family: the fruitful couple that welcomes “the other” and goes beyond mirrored logic. God is Family. Humanity bears the Trinitarian imprint. Within the Trinity is the revelation of our deepest identity and vocation.
Not only the human family, but all of reality bears this Trinitarian mark, as Pope Benedict XVI said:
“In everything that exists, the name of the Most Holy Trinity is, in a certain sense, imprinted, because all being, even down to its tiniest particles, is being-in-relationship; and thus the God who is relationship shines through—ultimately, the Creator Love shines through. Everything comes from love, tends toward love, and moves under the impulse of love, naturally with different degrees of awareness and freedom.” (Angelus, 7 June 2009)
Two Reflections on Today’s Gospel
Jesus speaks of the close relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Most Holy Trinity can only be understood within this network of relationships. God is pure Relationship. This is beautifully portrayed in the famous icon by Andrei Rublev, which, inspired by the Genesis account of God’s visit to Abraham, depicts three angels seated around a table, their gazes meeting with infinite tenderness.
We too are invited to take part in this intimacy. One might say that whoever works to create bonds, to weave communion, to foster fraternal relationships, lives within the very heart of the Trinity. “If you see love, you see the Trinity,” says St Augustine.
Speaking of the specific role of the Holy Spirit, Jesus says that he still has many things to say, but the disciples are not yet ready to bear them. Think, for example, of the weight of the Word of the Cross, so absurd and scandalous (cf. 1 Cor 1:18–30). It is the Spirit who will guide them to the fullness of truth.
Just before this, Jesus had said to Peter: “What I am doing you do not understand now, but later you will understand” (John 13:7). We too still dwell between that “now” and the “later”. Truth is a journey to be travelled. It is always ahead, “beyond” each stage. We will only reach it “afterwards”, at the end. And each one must make this journey personally. For this reason, truth must be proposed with patience and respect—never imposed. Only the Spirit can enlighten the mind, warm the heart, and strengthen the will to “guide us to all truth”.
“The Spirit is the watchman at the prow of my ship. He announces lands I cannot yet see. I listen to him and steer in their direction, and I can act with certainty that what delays will come—to behave as if the rose had already bloomed, as if the Kingdom had already come.” (Ermes Ronchi)
Prayer Exercise:
- Make the sign of the cross at the beginning of the day with special awareness of living it in the name of the Trinity.
- Repeat often throughout the day, as a breath of the heart, the doxology:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. - Let us pray with Saint Catherine of Siena:
“Eternal Trinity, you are like a deep sea; the more I search, the more I find, and the more I find, the more I thirst to seek you. You are insatiable; and the soul, satiated in your abyss, is not sated, because it remains hungry for you, it longs ever more for you, O eternal Trinity, desiring to see you in the light of your light.”
Fr Manuel João Pereira Correia, MCCJ
