Reflection from Fr. David: The Core of The Most Holy Trinity

From childhood, We, Catholics learn to pray the sign of the cross: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit." At Mass, the priest's prayers mention the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as well. The reason for this is that Catholics believe that God is One, but also Trinity.

The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the most fundamental of our faith. On it everything else depends and from it, everything else derives. Hence the Church's constant concern to safeguard the revealed truth that God is One in nature and Three in Persons.

What we mean when we say that God is a Trinity is that there is one divine nature, one divine substance. God, as a Trinity, exists in three Persons. In God, however, three Persons possess the same divine nature. Each divine Person, while not identical to the other divine Persons, is one in being with the other two divine Persons and is fully God. The word we use to describe this in the Nicene Creed is consubstantial. While we say in the Nicene Creed that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, it is also true that the Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son.

Jesus' life was the greatest revelation to us of God's inner life. He claimed for Himself things that belonged only to God, like the power to forgive sins. Jesus also prayed to the Father and spoke to and about the Father as a separate Person. Jesus also promised to send the Holy Spirit to be with his disciples after he was no longer with them in his physical body (John 14:26). After Jesus' death and resurrection and his ascension into heaven, early Christians understood that the Holy Spirit was also God. Yet Jesus was clear when he talked about the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit was someone other than himself or the Father.

God revealed His innermost secret to us, to invite us to share in His inner Life, to imitate the lifestyle of the Divine Family of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What is the core of the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity? The Gospel this Sunday talks about it: Love. God is love. It is perfect love that binds together the three Divine Persons, so that they are not three, but One God. True love always unites. And if we live in love, therefore, we will be united with each other, and more importantly, united with the family of God – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

As a Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love one another completely and entirely. Love is truly the essence of God's inner life. At times the Trinity may seem like a dull doctrine, but Jesus showed us this truth about who God is to reveal God's inner life to us. God loves us and wants us to know him. God created us out of love, and we are created for love. We are created out of a relationship. Faith in the Trinity, therefore, is not merely a doctrine but a dogma that shows us who God is and who we are as creatures made in his image.

The Trinity is the perfect model of our selfless love. As revelation tells us, within the Godhead is a plurality of Persons, so God is defined as Love because He has within His being, to use our language, the object of love which is an Other with whom each of the Persons can share the totality of their being.

We, therefore, see from reflection on this Triune Love that love by its essence is not self-centered, that love unites, that love gives, and that love shares perfectly within the Godhead. Love is therefore as perfect in us as it approximates the perfect sharing that constitutes the Trinity.

At the same time, we recall that, while perfectly selfless in their mutual sharing of the divine nature, the Persons in the Trinity do not thereby cease to be themselves. Again, this is a lesson for us. We are to give of ourselves generously and without stinting. Nevertheless, we are also to give in such a way that we remain ourselves and not become, as it were, something else in the process of sharing. There is such a thing as calculating charity when a person gives of himself but "not too much" because he fears that his love may be too costly. This is not the teaching of Christ, who told us to love others not only as much as we love ourselves but as much as He loves us.