The Blessed Trinity
By Mike Lambrecht
This Sunday we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. The Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith. In fact, it is so fundamental to our beliefs that often we take it for granted and do not even think about it when we begin and end our prayers with the sign of the cross while professing God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know that each is God, yet we also know that we do not worship three gods. The Trinity is the mystery of three persons in one God. Each person has the fullness of the divine nature. We cannot fully comprehend how this mystery is possible here on earth, but we know it is true because it has been divinely revealed to us.
The Old Testament gives a couple of implicit insights into this mystery if you read very carefully. In Genesis, you can read, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”1 Many times we read this and gloss over the fact that God is speaking in a plural form. Another example of this can be found in Isaiah.2 However, it is not until Jesus revealed the trinity to us that we have our first explicit understanding of the trinity. Jesus tells us, “I and the Father are one.”3 A little later Jesus also states, “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee.”4 Lastly, when questioned about his authority, Jesus answers, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”5 From each of these examples we can clearly see that Jesus is joined to God the Father.
What else can we say about the Holy Trinity? We know that all three persons have existed from the very beginning. We profess in the Nicene creed at Mass, “God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father.” All of these statements serve to clarify the fact that Jesus is not a created creature but has always existed as God. God chose to show his love for us by taking on flesh and becoming incarnate.
Saint John best illustrates this when he refers to Jesus as the Word of God, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”6 In this very beautiful and poetic verse we can see the inspiration of the Holy Spirit at work in John as he informs us of the nature of Jesus Christ.
Moving on to the Holy Spirit, we know several things. First of all, we know that the Holy Spirit is not created by the Father and the Son, but proceeds from them as an uncreated divine person. Secondly, we know that the Holy Spirit is completely divine and coequal with the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God that moved over the waters at creation; he brings about a new creation in each soul through the grace of the sacraments of the Church.7 The Holy Spirit was sent by Jesus to the apostles on earth at Pentecost. It is this same spirit that we receive in all of the Sacraments of the Church.
To conclude, I would like to leave you with this reflection on the Trinity by Saint Gregory of Nazianzus:
The Old Testament proclaimed the Father clearly, but the Son more obscurely. The New Testament revealed the Son and gave us a glimpse of the divinity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit dwells among us and grants us a clearer vision of himself. It was not prudent, when the divinity of the Father had not yet been confessed, to proclaim the Son openly and, when the divinity of the Son was not yet admitted, to add the Holy Spirit as an extra burden, to speak somewhat daringly.... By advancing and progressing "from glory to glory," the light of the Trinity will shine in ever more brilliant rays.8
1 Genesis 1:26 2 See Isaiah 48:12-16
3 John 10:30 4 John 17:20-21
5 John 8:58 6 John 1:1-3
7 CCC 683-686 8 CCC 684