(Jn.16:12-15)
Today we celebrate the feast of the most Holy Trinity. In today’s Gospel, while speaking about the Holy Spirit who will be given to the disciples after his departure from the earth, Jesus mentions his identity with the Father as well as with the Holy Spirit.
In our faith journey from the time of our baptism until our death , it is in the name of the Father , the Son and the Holy Spirit that we are blessed and anointed. Our daily life begins with the sign of cross in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus, without resorting to any high flown language of rhetoric expresses very simply that God is three in one.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church points out that 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.” It is a mystery beyond our comprehension. We know it because Jesus has revealed it. It is incomprehensible because human reason is incapable of comprehending it.
Just as one cannot look at the Sun with naked eyes, so also one cannot understand the mystery of God with one’s intellect.
Sir Isaac Newton speaking of the vast vistas of knowledge that lie ahead of him as he tries to understand the mysteries of the Universe says: “ I do not know what I appear to the world but to myself I appear to have been like a little boy playing on the ocean shore…finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell…while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” If
In trying to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity, we often ask ourselves why Jesus should reveal this doctrine to us and whether we would be much more comfortable in knowing that God is one than knowing that God is three in one.
Our Lord has a purpose in revealing this mystery. If Jesus had not revealed this, we would never know that it is love that is in the heart of God. Jesus calls God as Father and wants us to call Him also as Father. To Philip who asked him to show the Father, Jesus responds by saying that seeing Him is seeing the Father. Jesus gives also an inkling into the love that is in the heart of God in the parable of Prodigal Son, one of the most beautiful parables in the Gospel. Without the son even asking for a meeting, the Father waits on the hill desiring intensely to meet him and pour his love lavishly on him. Jesus has summarized all his teachings and commandments into the commandment of love: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Nothing else is more important in his eyes than
a life based on love. Nothing else can transform human life except love.
Through the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity, Jesus invites us to replicate the love that is in the heart of God. He is asking us to live in love whatever may be our preoccupations, professions or states in life. In our homes, work places and social gatherings, the guiding motive for our actions and thoughts should be this unselfish concern for the well-being of the other person.
Christian societies and Christian families are often violently torn apart because of this lack of love, compassion and understanding. We are too much caught up in the spirit of the world that we become too aggressive in pursuing our selfish and personal ambitions to the detriment of the happiness of other people.
The celebration of the feast of the most Holy Trinity is an invitation to each one of us to become icons of love in the community in which we live. May the people who interact with us may feel and experience the Christian love that is in us which reaches out to others , seeking their well-being and goodness.
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