Today is Trinity Sunday! What exactly is the Trinity? How can we define it? Is the Trinity detached from our daily life? Can we reach it? Or does it reach us perhaps without us being aware of it?
In his theological text in which he teaches how to interpret Holy Scripture, De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine), Saint Augustine of Hippo readily admits it is difficult to speak of God as Trinity. In his treatise on the Trinity, better known as De Trinitate, the Bishop of Hippo rightly warns us: "There is no subject where error is more dangerous, research more laborious, and discovery more fruitful than the oneness of the Trinity (unitas Trinitatis) of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" (De Trinitate, 1.3.5.).
However, having said that, Augustine gives us an interesting explanation of this ineffable mystery. "It is not easy to find a name that will suitably express so great an excellence, unless it is better to speak in this way: the Trinity, one God, of whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things".
"Of", "through" and "in" are key prepositions in understanding not just the roles each person, namely Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has in the Trinity but also it says much about our place in it. To begin with the preposition "of" suggests that we come from the Trinity. The next preposition unravels that our lives are channelled "through" the Trinity. Moreover, our total existence is deeply immersed "in" the Trinity. The last Trinitarian preposition gently reminds me of Saint Paul's catechesis at the Areopagus addressed to Athenians and foreigners alike. When speaking about God's immanence he told them as he says to us today: "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Thus, for Paul, we are like fish that are swimming in God's divine love. We are surrounded by God's love. His love fills not just our surroundings but our very being!
Without the Trinity nothings exists. That is why the Church, in her Catechism, rightly affirms that the Trinity is, to borrow a phrase from Matthias Scheeben's book Mysteries of Christianity, "the mystery of mysteries". This German Catholic theologian and mystic went even further to explain that "before the Trinity "even the seraphim veil their countenances singing with astonished wonder their thrice-repeated 'Holy'."
Again, the Church presents us with not simply a Trinity that is detached from us, or a Trinity which is only a cold doctrinal formula. On the contrary, the Church helps us understand a Trinity that is greatly involved in our history.
"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' (no 234). Since we are unable to get to know God on our own initiative, it was God himself who made himself known to us. 'The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian life. God alone can make it known to us by revealing himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit' (no 261)."
As Pope Benedict XVI said, the Trinity, much like the family, teaches us "to be a community of love and life, in which differences must come together to become a 'parable of communion'". As Pope Francis said, "The Trinity propels us to a dynamism of love, communion, mutual service, sharing." So, "a person who loves others for the joy itself of loving is a reflection of the Trinity".
Am I ready to be that kind of person? If I behave accordingly, will I not be a Trinitarian person, forging communion in what I am, think and do? Am I not an agent of communion in action?
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
Paola