Pastoral Message – May 26, 2024
Hey Y’all,
This weekend we, Roman Catholics, consider in liturgical celebration the doctrine of the being and nature of God – Father, Son and Spirit. It’s the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity! In order for us to celebrate this liturgy well we need to remember what is said of the Holy Trinity.
So here is a quick, easily accessible, thought on just what is meant by “Trinity”. I copied this from Wikipedia…
“The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (Latin: Trinitas, lit. ’triad’, from Latin: trinus ’threefold’)[1] is the central doctrine concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons:[2][3] God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons (hypostases) sharing one essence/substance/nature (homoousion).”
As you can see, this doctrine is easily defined but it’s not so easily understood. The doctrine seems to defy both logic, and our human experience. How does 3 = 1? How is 1 the same as 3? How are divine persons distinct yet the same thing? And from these ideas, the questions just keep coming. So, let’s just admit that a questioning mind has lots of opportunity to exercise it’s favorite pastime when considering the nature of our Trinitarian God. God bless the questioner!
So, we’ll leave the questioner to their task – they are budding theologians even if they didn’t know it- and consider not what Wikipedia has to say, but what the Roman Catholic Church has to say about the Trinity. Because is has to do with almost each and every one of us.
For example, Part One, Section Two, Article One of our Catechism of the Catholic Church says…
- 232 Christians are baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”53 Before receiving the sacrament, they respond to a three-part question when asked to confess the Father, the Son and the Spirit: “I do.” “The faith of all Christians rests on the Trinity.”
And…
- 234 The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the “hierarchy of the truths of faith”. The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men “and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin”.”
- 237 The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God”. To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.”
After reading that, you’re a budding theologian too! God bless you the theologian! But after the thinking and theologizing, on this feast day, as Christians baptized into the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, we should be worshippers, awed by the invitation to share in Divine life and relationship. We should be thankful for a Divine Being that would make Himself vulnerable and knowable to his creatures. We should open our hearts and minds to the One in Three who defies our logic and understanding, so that we can exist in His love.
Fr. Reynold