Sermon about the Mystery of the Holy Trinity

Introduction

Every year on the first Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reminds us of this fundamental reality, basis of our Catholic Religion: the Holy Trinity, the vision of which will fill us with perfect joy and happiness in Heaven. To believe in the Holy Trinity is essential for our salvation.

Let us refresh our memory today on this Mystery in order to renew our Faith in it.

1)     The Mystery of the Holy Trinity

The word “Trinity” means “Unity in Three” or also “Triad” and it is used to say that there are 3 Persons in one God or that One God in 3 Persons. The expression “Holy Trinity” is not to be found in the Bible. It comes from Catholic Tradition, from the teaching of the Fathers of the Church and of the Popes.

The Holy Trinity, One God in Three Persons, is a Mystery for us. We know its existence because Our Lord Jesus Christ has revealed it to us, but we don’t understand it, in the sense that we cannot grasp the “How” of this reality. But let us explicit a bit what the Mystery is.

For this, we need to consider human beings first.

a)     What makes us be human beings and different from anything else is to have a sensibility like animals, and to have a reason, an intelligence and a will, like Angels. Our sensibility is rooted in our human body and our reason is rooted in our soul, and so all our activity is originated from our body and our soul, all our activity is regulated by our body and our soul. Using our body, we eat, drink, sleep, move, work physically, write, speak and so on. Using our soul, we know, reason, decide, learn philosophy, mathematics and sciences and so on. This is our human nature: the union of a body and a soul, principle all our activity. But concretely there are different souls and different bodies, forming distinct human beings. And each human being, with his own soul and his own body, subsists by himself in the sense that he exists independently from the others: he has his own life and activity, his own reason, his own temperament, his own liberty. In short each human being has his own personality, each human being is a person. This human being, body and soul, is Peter with his own life and personality; this other human being with another body and another soul is Paul having his own life and personality; that other human being with again another body and another soul is James having his own life and personality. Peter is not Paul, Paul is not James, James is not Peter: each one has his own human nature, each one is a human being subsisting by himself, and each one is a distinct person. And this is true for all human beings: each one has a human nature and is one person.

Now let us consider the Divinity.

b) What makes God be God and nothing else is to be Being itself, Being as such, prior to any form. To Moses, God said: “I am who am” (Ex 3;14). Since God is Being itself, He is also the principle of whatever exists, of all perfections, of all activity: Our Lord Jesus who is God said: “Without me you can do nothing” (Jn 15;5) and St Paul told the Athenians: “In Him [God] we live and move and are” (Act 17;28). And since God is Being as such, He subsists by Himself: He can never cease to be, He cannot not to be. When we speak about the Divine essence or Divine nature or Divine Substance, we mean the same: to be Being as such, principle of all what exist and subsisting by itself. Such Divine nature or substance or essence is necessarily one, unique, supreme. There can be several human beings because there can be several bodies and souls, but there can be only one God because there can be only one Being as such.

And we human being who develop our understanding from what we see in this world, seeing that one human being is one person, we would naturally conclude that One God is also One Person. But no! God is not One Person. Our Lord Jesus Christ told us that God is 3 distinct Persons sharing the same unique Divine Substance, 3 Persons who are Being itself. And Our Lord Jesus revealed to us, adapted to our human language, the Names of these Persons: the first one is named “Father” because He generates the Second Person, the second Person is named “Son” because He proceeds from the First Person, and the third One is named “Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit” because He proceeds from both the First and the Second Persons.  Let us remember some words of Our Lord talking about these Persons: “No one knows the Son but the Father, neither does anyone know the Father but the Son” (Mt 11; 27); “When the Paraclet comes, whom I will send from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he shall give testimony of me.” (Jn 15;26); “Teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Mt 28;20). At the time of Jesus’ Baptism, people witnessed the manifestation of the Three Persons: the Father saying about Jesus “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” , Jesus the Son who was baptised and the Holy Ghost appearing in the form of a dove. The Three Persons are distinct: the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost is not the Father. However they are all the one same God as Our Lord Jesus said: “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10;30), “Philip, he that sees Me sees the Father also” (Jn 14;9), “The spirit of truth will teach you all truth” (Jn 16;13).

This is the Mystery: three distinct Persons sharing the same one and unique Divine Nature. It is as if I would say: Peter, Paul and James, each one with his own personality, share the same body and the same soul. We cannot say it is impossible, but we say: how is it possible? When we think 3 persons, we immediately think 3 human beings; and when we think one human being, we immediately think one person. But how to think 3 Persons being one unique God? To that question, we have no answer until we go to Heaven. St Augustine, who was a genius, was one day walking along the ocean trying to understand the Mystery of the Holy Trinity. While walking he noticed a child fetching the water of the ocean with a small shell and pouring it in a small hole which he had dug in the sand. After watching for a while the child moving back and forth between the ocean and his hole, St Augustine asked him: “What are you doing?” and the child answered: “I want to put all the water of the ocean in my hole”. “My child, see how small is your hole and how big is the ocean: how can you put the ocean in your hole?”. And the Child who was an Angel sent by God replied: “I will have done it before you manage to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity” and he disappeared.

2)     Analogies

We cannot understand the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, but we accept it because of the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ who has proved to be God and therefore who knows the truth about God much better than us, and who cannot tell a lie. But while accepting by Faith the reality of one Divine nature or substance shared by 3 distinct Persons, we are allowed to try to get some understanding of this Mystery by looking for comparisons in the world around us.

You know all how St Patrick preaching the Faith in Ireland and explaining the mystery of the Holy Trinity, picked up a clover and showed how this one clover had 3 distinct leaves, the 3 distinct leaves forming one unique clover. In the same way there is one God in 3 distinct Persons, the 3 distinct Persons form one unique God.

Some authors also used the comparison of the sun: the fire produces the light and through the light the heat, but fire, light and heat form together only one sun; so the Father generates the Son as the fire generates the light, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son together, as the heat comes from the fire and the light. Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one God as fire, light and heat form one sun.

Very commonly we use the example of an equilateral triangle: as one unique triangle is formed by 3 perfectly equal angles, so the one Divine nature is formed by 3 perfectly equal Persons Father, Son and Holy Ghost. As in the triangle each angle is distinct one from the other, so in God each Person is distinct from the others. As if you remove one angle of the equilateral triangle, you destroy the triangle itself, so if you deny One Person of the Trinity, you destroy the Divine nature itself.

At last some authors made a comparison with a human nature which is made of 3 faculties: the intelligence to know, the will to love and the sensibility to feel. One human being has these 3 faculties, but imagine that these 3 faculties become each one a person: then you would have one human nature in 3 persons.

These comparisons can give us some light on the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, but they are very limited and we must not push these comparisons too far: we would get mistaken as so many people have been in the past. We must simply take the Mystery as it has been revealed by Our Lord Jesus. It will be our joy, the source of our eternal happiness in Heaven to see this Mystery.

Conclusion:

Let us take advantage of the feast of the Holy Trinity to renew our Faith in it, and our desire to go to Heaven to see this Marvel. But also let us humiliate ourselves before God: He is so greater than us! We understand so little of His Being, of His perfections! And yet when we face a trial, when we suffer, so easily we question Him why this or that is happening to us, so easily we feel like lecturing Him on how to do things, how to govern the world to make it better, how to direct our lives in order to become saints and reach Heaven… We know so little of God’s being, God’s perfections: how can we question Him? Let us humiliate ourselves before the Divinity, and once for ever, let us admit that God is Greater than us, that His thoughts are not ours, His Ways are not our ways (Is 55;8), and that actually He does perfectly well all what He does in the world and in our personal life.