THE ICON OF THE TRINITY

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Jn 16:12-15 (Prov 8:22-31 / Ps 8 / Rom5:1-5)

We celebrate today the deepest and greatest mystery of our Christian faith: the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.  This is the mystery of God Himself.  This is the mystery of what and who He really is.  Today is the fiesta of God Himself.

First of all, this is what the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is telling us: There is only one God.  He is not two, three, or one thousand.  He is only one.  He was the God of the Old Testament just as He is the God of the New Testament.  He was God before anything existed.  He is God today.  He is God forever.  He has no beginning and no end.  He does not fade, and neither does He increase nor does He decrease.  Yesterday, today, and forever, He and He only is God.  Omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, there is no other like Him and no one is equal to Him.  God is one.

Second, though He is the one and only God, He is not alone.  He is one, but not solitary.  There are Three Persons in Him: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  His Godhead, however, is not divided into three.  On the contrary, the fullness of divinity resides in each of the Three Persons.  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit enjoy individual divine existence; thus, each is indeed a Person, equal in majesty and power.  Each of Them also has His own role in the economy of salvation and in sustaining the whole of creation.  The Father creates, the Son redeems, and the Holy Spirit sanctifies.  However, when each fulfills the role proper to Him, all Three Persons are actively present in loving cooperation.  Thus, the Father creates by His Eternal Word, who is the Son, and breathes His breath, who is the Spirit (Ruah Yahweh), into His creation.  The Son redeems, as He was sent by the Father out of love, and makes it possible for us to share in His divine life through the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, teaches and reminds us everything that Jesus revealed for our salvation.  And dwelling in us, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit sanctify us, giving us a share in Their love and life.

Clearly, God is a community where mutual love, respect, and active collaboration reign.  Despite their individualities in existence, identity, and roles, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit do not fight over the one Godhead; instead, they are one God.  They do not contrive against one another.  They congregate as one God.  They do not congregate against any of Them.  The inexhaustible beauty of this unfathomable mystery is that it is us who benefit from this perfect unity of the Three Divine Persons.  The blessings of God's communitarian character does not remain within Himself, it naturally flows out to us.  God's community does not exist for Himself but for others.

Third, the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity constantly reminds us of our mandate as Church to mirror God in His being a community.  As there are three different Persons in One God, so it is with us.  We are different from one another – in physical features, in knowledge and skills, in roles to fulfill, in states in life, and in ministries – but we are  one Church, Christ's mystical body with Himself as Head.  Thus, if we want to build up the Church, we must build up one another.  If we love Jesus, we should love the Church, and loving the Church means for us loving one another because we are, again, the Church.  When we do so, we reflect the Trinitarian mystery of God to all.

Therefore, we have to seriously strive for unity in our midst.  A people that worships the Triune God but neglects the call to unity mocks the very God it says it worships.  A church that allows disunity among its members, much more sows and nurtures it, is not the Body of Christ but the slave of the devil.

Instead of being the reason for deep-seated conflicts, unhealthy disagreements, and wounds that refuse to heal, the fact that we have differences should be ironically the very reason for our greater unity.  Through generously contributing our unique gifts and giftedness, we can make our Christian community more and more a mirror of the Most Holy Trinity.

As mentioned earlier, God’s being a community is not for Himself, but for others.  The same should be true to our Christian community, whether we are referring to our parish or our dioceses or even the universal Church herself.  We exist not for our selves.  We must live for others.  And by “others”, we mean not only the others who already share our Christian faith, but also those who do not.  “Others” include all humanity and the whole of creation in fact.  Our being Church is for others – friend and foe.  Being Church is being men and women for others.  The graces of our unity, respect, collaboration, and love should never remain exclusively within our community.  They must continually flow in and out of our community.  We are a parish but we should not be parochial.  We are a Church, not a ghetto.  We are Church not only in the world but also for the world. 

On this day of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, we declare three things: first, God is one; second, there are Three Persons in One God; and third, we, the Church, are the icon of the Trinity in the world and for the world.  Today is the fiesta of God Himself and so today is our fiesta, too.  Happy fiesta po!  Let us face and take the challenge of this feast: Mirror the community of the One God in and for our one, but fragmented, world.