The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Jun. 15: The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is one of those complicated things that seems contradictory at first blush, then gets even more confusing the more you think about it. Bishop Barron offers a good explanation.
One way to think of it is when you picture yourself. You have an image of yourself in your mind, and you love yourself. But we don’t really know ourselves perfectly. When God “pictures” Himself, that image is so perfect, it’s as if it’s another Person, Jesus. And the love between themselves is so real, that love is a Person, too: the Holy Spirit.
Leo Trese puts it another way in The Faith Explained:
However, we do attribute to the individual divine Persons certain works, certain activities that seem most suitable to the particular relationship of this or that divine Person. For example, it is to God the Father that we attribute the work of creation, since we think of him as the “generator,” the instigator, the starter of things, the seat of the infinite power which God possesses.
Similarly, since God the Son is the knowledge or the wisdom of the Father, we ascribe to him the works of wisdom; it was he who came upon earth to make truth known to us, and to heal the breach between God and man.
Finally, since the Holy Spirit is infinite love, we appropriate to him the works of love, particularly the sanctification of souls, since sanctification results from the indwelling of God’s love within the soul.
God the Father is the Creator, God the Son is the Redeemer, God the Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier. And yet what One does, All do; where One is, All are.
The difficulty we have in grasping the nature of the Blessed Trinity is, on the one hand, understandable. We’re talking about God, after all.
But I think that’s why the Church gives us wisdom literature today, starting with the book of Proverbs, which we very rarely read at mass.
Reading I
Prov 8:22-31
Thus says the wisdom of God:
"The LORD possessed me, the beginning of his ways,
the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago;
from of old I was poured forth,
at the first, before the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no fountains or springs of water;
before the mountains were settled into place,
before the hills, I was brought forth;
while as yet the earth and fields were not made,
nor the first clods of the world."When the Lord established the heavens I was there,
when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep;
when he made firm the skies above,
when he fixed fast the foundations of the earth;
when he set for the sea its limit,
so that the waters should not transgress his command;
then was I beside him as his craftsman,
and I was his delight day by day,
playing before him all the while,
playing on the surface of his earth;
and I found delight in the human race."
Wisdom is both the knowledge of and judgment about “divine things” and the ability to judge and direct human affairs according to divine truth. (Don’t worry, I consulted St. Thomas Aquinas, not ChatGPT, for that definition.)
It’s one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts, according to Aquinas, are habits, instincts, or dispositions provided by God as supernatural aids to the faithful in the process of our perfection. Jesus, of course, already had all of these traits when He became incarnated, because as the passage above illustrates, the Holy Trinity existed since before all time.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
R (2a) O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars which you set in place —
What is man that you should be mindful of him,
or the son of man that you should care for him?
R O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
You have made him little less than the angels,
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
putting all things under his feet:
R O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
All sheep and oxen,
yes, and the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air, the fishes of the sea,
and whatever swims the paths of the seas.
R O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
We are such a small, insignificant part of creation. Why would God care about any one of us, much less all of us?
And yet, He does. He knows each one of us, and loves us. So much so that He not only gave us this beautiful creation, but His only Son.
Reading II
Rom 5:1-5
Brothers and sisters: Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Much of Proverbs reads like a self-help book, with pithy aphorisms giving life advice. Some of it can come off a little simplistic, as if being a good person is always rewarded in the end.
One of the ways the New Testament responds to the Old is to demonstrate that “in the end” is not necessarily this lifetime. We will suffer afflictions, but those afflictions can benefit us, if we have hope in that ultimate end.
Alleluia
Cf. Rev 1:8
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit;
to God who is, who was, and who is to come.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Trinitarian prayer has been with us since the earliest days of Christianity. It wasn’t always fully understood, but it was there, waiting for us to grapple with.
Gospel
Jn 16:12-15
Jesus said to his disciples: "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you."
Jesus, true man as well as true God, has a limited time on Earth, as do we all. He can’t explain everything to His disciples. That’s why He promises to send the Holy Spirit, to guide the Church.
We are in the age of the Church, but that doesn’t mean revelations are finished. We’re regularly discerning and discovering new1 things, thanks to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Which makes sense; since God is infinite, we’ll never know everything there is to know about Him.
The good news is, we’ll always have something more to learn!
New to us; God is eternal and unchanging.