The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
“By sending his only Son and the Spirit of love, in the fulness of time,
God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.” (CCC. 221)
Friends, we come once again to what’s been described as ‘The Preacher’s Nightmare’ the Trinity Sunday. What do you say about this central and confounding mystery of our faith? Well, I never think it is the preacher’s nightmare. I think Trinity Sunday is actually a wonderful time for us to reflect deeper on one of the central beliefs of our faith.
I wish to begin with the great protestant theologian, Karl Barth. Karl Barth said, that ‘the central claim of our faith is that God has spoken’. God has spoken to us in human history and from this we can derive, the doctrine of the Trinity. If God has spoken; that means there is a speaker who is God; it means there is a word spoken who is God; and finally it means, there is an interpreter of the Word who is God.
There are religions, mysticisms, and philosophies that are based more on intuitions, our perceptions of reality, our perceptions of God and of the ultimate truth. Think of much of new age spiritualities. Well, Christianity is based upon this conviction, that the personal God has spoken to his people. That God has taken the initiative and revealed himself to us. Revelation isn’t philosophy. In the Bible, God speaks. They are not just arguments or intuitions. In the Bible we encounter a personal God who reveals his heart to us.
In human history God reveals himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and in the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament we come to an understanding ‘that God spoke in various and many ways to our ancestors, but then we hear, ‘in these later days, he has spoken to us through His Son – we have the fulness of God’s revelation in Jesus. Jesus, as Saint John tells us ‘is the logos’ - the very word of the Father made flesh. What was anticipated in the revelations of the Old Testament now is fully disclosed in Him. In Jesus, the Father said all that he could possibly say. That’s why Jesus could say to Philip, ‘he who has seen me has seen the Father’.
God has fully spoken God. This means there is speaker who is God and there is the word spoken who is also God. There is the Father and His Son. Not two Gods but two persons of the one God. But, we don’t invoke divinity, we invoke the Trinity. We don’t stop with the two – the speaker and the word spoken, we also speak of a third in the terminology of Karl Barth – the divine interpreter, the Spirit.
The best interpreter of God’s Word is God himself and so we speak of the Holy Spirit operating in this interpretative manner up and down the centuries of the Church’s life. The Holy Spirit is the one who guides us to interpret the meaning of God’s Word. And so if God has spoken, there must be a speaker (that’s the Father) there must be a word spoken (that’s the Son) and there must be an interpreter of the Word (the Spirit) and all three are divine; that’s the Trinity and so it’s co-related to the central claim that God has spoken to us!
So as we celebrate, the great feast of the Holy Trinity a feast which was also very dear to our founder Saint Arnold Janssen. May this feast remind us of the fact that our God is a relationship of persons. And so as missionaries we are called to be bridge builders of God’s reign. That God is a community of persons an eternal exchange of love who invites each of us to actively participate.
Image above: Rublev's 'Trinity'