As we celebrate the feast of the Most Holy Trinity May 26, I think of a priest (true story) who was presiding at Mass at his small rural church without air conditioning in the middle of a heat wave.
He said, “Theologians have been trying to explain the mystery of the Trinity for over 2,000 years; I’m not even going to try.” With that he sat down, and his sweltering congregation was pleasantly relieved with his overly brief homily!
Often, when explaining the Trinity, there are diagrams with three overlapping circles, or triangles with lines and arrows, or a clover with three leaves, or mathematically 1+1+1=3 while 1x1x1=1, or other examples to try to convey the sense of one God but three distinct persons.
Such static examples can help us perhaps, but nothing from our world can really explain it and our limited human minds cannot really grasp it. At the heart of the mystery of the Trinity from human experience is Jesus. Jesus is either divine or not. There is no in-between. The early Church fervently defended itself against heresies that denied the divinity of Christ (Arianism), as well as those which claimed he only seemed human (Docetism), or that it was the same God simply appearing in different forms (Modalism).
The Church proclaims that Jesus is fully human and divine, and because he is fully human and divine, he invites us humans into his divine life. St. Athanasius said, “He became human, that we may become divine.” Imagine that! We, our tiny selves, are welcomed and invited into the divine life of the Most Holy Trinity.
The Holy Spirit gives life to the Church and makes the invitation concrete in our day as we participate in this life. It begins at our baptism when we are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as Jesus instructs in this Gospel (Mt. 28:19). It continues as we live a life of grace through the Church’s sacraments, Scripture, Church teaching, and virtuous and charitable living, all of which is only possible with the grace of the Holy Spirit. Each Mass and our personal and family prayers begin with the Sign of the Cross: Father, Son and Holy Spirit — making us conscious that this is both the inspiration and the direction of our prayer.
The invitation is reflected in the three feasts we have been celebrating, including the feast of the Most Holy Trinity. With the May 19 celebration of Pentecost, the Trinity is fully revealed with the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. The feast of Corpus Christi on June 2 highlights how we powerfully participate in the life of the Trinity by receiving the most holy body and blood of Jesus.
The invitation can be seen in the Nicene Creed that we profess at Mass each Sunday. It begins with paragraphs about the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and the Church. It concludes with “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” That reminds us that we are invited into the very eternal mystery of God whom we are professing. That doesn’t mean that we become God, but rather, that we are called to share in eternal life with the Trinity. What an amazing invitation. May we all say yes to life in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
Father Deziel is pastor of Annunciation in Minneapolis. Starting in July, Father Deziel will be pastor of St. Joseph in Lino Lakes.
Sunday, May 26
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
