Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
Today the Church celebrates Trinity Sunday which invites us to reflect on just who and what God is. Jesus revealed to us in numerous places in the Gospel that He, as the Son, is one with God the Father. He also revealed that the Holy Spirit is God. In God there are three relationships that we call the three “persons.” Thus, early Christians came to realize through what had been vaguely revealed through Jewish prophets and clearly through Jesus Himself that God is one, but that this one God exists in three distinct Persons.
The doctrine of the Trinity is the foundational doctrine of the Christian faith. During the first several centuries of Christianity, the Church confronted conflicting ways of defining God and differing theological perspectives on how Jesus related to the Father. This demanded clarification by the Church of the truth of God that had been handed on from the apostles. The Church in using more sophisticated and precise philosophical terms such as, “nature” and “persons”, provided a better understood way of describing God. The Creed that is recited every Sunday reflects the Church’s understanding of the three persons of the Holy Trinity and how they relate to one another.
God is a great mystery which our human minds cannot fully grasp, but knowing as much as we can about God helps gives us insight into His creation. The very nature of God is a relationship of persons, an icon of sorts of family life within God’s creation.
The family can serve as an analogy for the Trinity. A human family is a communion of life and love that is fruitful. So too, the Holy Trinity is a communion of life and love that bears abundant fruit. When a husband and wife express their marital love for each other, a new, third person can result. In an analogous way, the Holy Spirit is sometimes described as the love be- tween the Father and the Son, we even say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The analogy, of course, between a human family and the Triune God has definite limitations when speaking of some- thing as profound as the Holy Trinity.
We remind ourselves every time we make the sign of the cross that the One God exists in three divine persons that we call the Holy Trinity. Heaven will be a participation in the life of the Trinity, in that eternal communion of life and love that is God.
Sincerely yours in Christ Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life,
