Feast of the Most Holy Trinity
Beloved in Jesus Christ,
in the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, St. Philip makes a request to Jesus. ‘Lord, show us the Father, and then we will be satisfied.’
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– Show us the Father? – For a long time, Jesus had been telling them about his Father in heaven; and he even had told them: ‘I and the Father are one.’ So here comes Philip, and he says: ‘Show us the Father.’ Jesus says, ‘Philip, how long have I been with you explaining these things; if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father!’
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Jesus is the revelation of God in the world. God has ‘put on flesh,’ to be with his people, to walk with us, to love us, and to teach us something about what God is really like.
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In Our Lord’s public life, he spoke many times about his Father in heaven, and he usually did it with parables. For example, the story of the Prodigal Son. This son, who leaves home and wastes his father’s fortune on loose living – But he comes to his senses and returns to his Father and asks for forgiveness, asking to just be allowed to work as a hired man. But this Father not only forgives him, he throws his arms around him, kisses him, and throws a party. Christ tells many such stories really, to teach us about what God is really like.
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Cardinal Ratzinger, in his book Introduction to Christianity, he says in so many ways, we see what God is like through Jesus: God is loving, he is just, he forgives, he is filled with emotion when his child returns, he yearns for us.
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Still, the world says that such things are ridiculous; yes, they will admit that there is probably some form of ‘supreme being;’ but it is absurd, they say, that this Being should concern himself with us, or come down to us. They say that we are naïve to think this; that these ideas are left over from a primitive world of ignorant people.
Our tiny and unimportant planet – this speck of dust in the universe, shows that we are nothing; it is absurd that a supreme being would concern himself with us, with our sins, or our problems –
They will say that God is not like that Father who throws his arms around a lost son and kisses him. God is like a Force or an Energy-field in the Universe. How vast is the universe, and what a tiny, unimportant speck our earth is, so GET REAL! – So say the “modern people.”
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But in fact, things are really flipped around just the opposite. For these “modern people,” THEIR God is actually too small. They have made their idea of God, as a narrow image of themselves; an idea that God is not able to embrace the whole universe and each person – as if God has limitations and is not able to leave his chair to visit the heart of each person. Their God is way too small. The True God is actually very great.
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God reaches down to the smallest, because to him, nothing is too small. This is the true greatness we would expect from a Supreme Being, that the great would stoop down to the little.
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Imagine a powerful executive of Chase Manhattan Bank; why would such an important person have any interest in helping a dirty, street person in the gutter? Well, if he does help such a person, we would call him great. Then isn’t God greater because he compassionates his tiny creatures?
If he stoops down to this speck of dust, and takes concern over each of our problems, unite himself to us, and suffers our own life with us?
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Today is the Feast of Most Blessed Trinity. And this is a uniquely Christian revelation, that God is a communio of Persons.
Buddhism, Islam, the other religions – they don’t know this about their Creator, they don’t know. they don’t know what St. John says straight out in his Epistle: ‘God is love.’ We know this because it was revealed by Christ.
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You can’t have love, by one person. There must be a lover, and a beloved. God himself, if we may say, is an eternal chase of love. 3 Persons in One God. The Father loving the Son, the Son loving the Father, and that LOVE is the Person: the Holy Spirit.
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Now Our Savior has said that if we love God, the Three Persons will come to live in us. ‘If any one love Me, my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and we will make our abode with him (John 14:23).
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Calling on these 3 Divine Persons then, must be part of our daily life. Speaking every day to Our Heavenly Father, to Jesus, our Savior, and to the dear Holy Spirit
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It was by calling on these Divine Persons, that a glass of poison shattered, to save St. Benedict. It was by calling on these Divine Persons that St. Anthony fought the devil, that St. Catherine challenged the emperor, and St. George defeated the dragon. It was in the Name of the Father, Son, and Spirit that St. Lawrence healed the blind, St. Sebastian healed a mute woman, and the martyrs gave their lives.
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The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – These are the Divine Persons by which Jesus commanded us to batpize: ‘I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’
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We praise these Divine Persons every time we say the Glory Be. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. The Glory Be is one of the earliest-known prayers praising the Holy Trinity, and it was an answer to the heretics who denied the Divinity of Christ; ths prayer, the ‘Glory Be,’ should certainly be part of our daily life.
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God is not a Force, or an Energy-Field, or a vapor; He is a communio of Persons. The meaning of the Holy Trinity is that God is love. And the world of nature shows this God of love: St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, when holding a flower in her hand felt wounded by Divine love, saying, God has thought of creating this flower – that I might love him.’ The blue sky, the birds of the air, every tree and each star above, seems to say to us, ‘I am a messenger from God – He loves you.’
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Mary can show us the way into the heart of the Holy Trinity. St. Alphonsus says, see with what love the Most Holy Trinity blessed Mary. The Father crowns her by sharing his power with her, the Son his wisdom, the Holy Spirit his love. Well, God desires the same for us. He wishes to share with us his power, his wisdom, and his love. May all things be to the eternal glory of the most holy Trinity.
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Entrusted to the prayers of St. Teresa of Avila
