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Trinity Sunday C

Celebrating 100 years

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Cycle C

Q270: Can you explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity to me in a couple of short paragraphs?

No, I can't! This is the greatest and the most awesome of the divine mysteries. Some preachers dread this weekend, because they know they cannot explain the Holy Trinity in ten minutes of preaching.

In our Creed at Mass, we proclaim and confess what we believe in Faith, and in what the Church teaches as Truth. We state our belief that there is only One God, but Three Divine Persons within that One Godhead. Elsewhere in scripture, especially in the epistles of St. John, we are told and we believe that the Life of the Trinity has everything to do with Love. And it is through love that we come closest to understanding the Holy Trinity. This is a profound Mystery, but God has left a "trail of fingerprints" all over his creation, a trail of love. So being only human, all we can do is "tell love stories" to try to give examples of the most profound mystery ever known to humanity. Let me use my own Deacon Community to give you an illustration.

The deacon communities all across this country have a formal program which welcomes and introduces all of the new “aspirants” or “candidates” and their wives into the Diaconate. There are many ways we have used over the years to express and present the meaning of "diaconia" or “servanthood” to these couples. One method talks about Loving, Affirming, and Calling Forth. To me, this speaks to the very core of the life of the Most Holy Trinity, as I know it in my feeble understanding of so great a mystery – and it is this life of self-giving Love that every deacon couple, and every baptized Christian, is called to live and to pass on to others. That responsibility of every Christian to "pass along" God's love is terribly important to us today.

Know Your Catechism! Do you “back up“ your verbal expressions of love with daily actions (CCC #1825)? Have you affirmed someone today, because they are or have been a blessing to you (CCC #1826)? Have you called forth someone to grow in a gift they have but cannot see without your help (CCC #800)? Then you have discovered the life of the Holy Trinity, which is a relationship of loving and self-giving.

Affliction Makes For Hope

Ellen, aged eighty years and more lay in the hospital bed, her movement painfully constricted by a brace meant to help her broken hip. In those hours of strain, however, she was thinking less of herself than her stepson, Leo, whom she had raised from boyhood. A Catholic man of sixty, he had recently got divorced and entered a civil marriage. Ellen knew that she was living on borrowed time, but if Leo could only be reconciled to the Church, she would die happy.

This was her anxious prayer, but her petitions and sacrifices had not yet brought about his change of heart. But one day, she took her priest into her confidence. Something encouraging had happened. Now, Ellen was no "visionary" but a practical and able mother and housewife. Nevertheless, she had lately had a dream, she told him, that had deeply consoled her.

"I dreamt I was lying here," she said, "when suddenly the door opened and a little boy came in and stood beside me. He had rings of golden hair and was so beautiful I couldn't resist him. So I leaned over and took him up on the bed and hugged him. As I did so, he said one word: `Hope!' Then the dream ended."

After that heartening experience, Ellen renewed the vigor of her prayers. When she died a few years later at the age of 89, Leo had not yet come around. But she had passed away confident. Not long after her death, her stepson did return to the sacraments.

This true story fits in well with the second reading of today's Mass for Trinity Sunday. Here St. Paul reminds us that "affliction makes for endurance and endurance for tested virtue and tested virtue for hope." The peace of heart that makes us always hopeful is the special loving gift, not of the Holy Spirit alone but of the whole Blessed Trinity. In giving us hope, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit still require patience, but they forbid despair.

-Father Robert F. McNamara

Q. 426: I have heard that Catholics were called “pagans” and “heretics” at one time. Do today's readings shed any light on this?

Early Catholics were surrounded by heathen nations in the Roman Empire who neither knew nor believed in the Trinitarian God that these Christians proclaimed. Since Catholics refused to participate in emperor-worship and in the worship of statues to the heathen gods (“heathen” means neither Christian nor Jew), they were seen as Outsiders (read “pagans”) and a “threat” to the established norm of societal behavior (read “heretics”). This led to severe persecution by the heathen authorities against the early Christians.

Even the Jewish leaders at that viewed Christians to be heretics. They thought that these Christians believed in “three” Gods, not the one God of monotheistic Judaism. The same held true with the religion of Islam, started centuries later by Mohammed (in the early 7th century).

It took centuries for the precise language of our Creed to appear in dogmatic form (Councils of Nicea, Ephesus, and Constantinople). The early bishop-theologians had to create a “new technical language” to deal with this awesome “mystery” of the Holy Trinity. Our readings today contributed to the early development of our still-limited understanding. St. John seems to stress the relationship between the Son and the Father, throughout his gospel. At one point he even says that “the Father and I are One” - but doesn't offer us guidance in what that means. In fact, in today's gospel (John 16:12-15) Jesus tells the apostles (and us) that we couldn't handle the truth all at once! So the Holy Spirit will gently unfold these divine mysteries to us in ways that bring us always closer to the Reality that one day we will know in heaven.

KNOW YOUR CATECHISM! The Father sends the Spirit of Truth, in answer to Jesus' prayer. This Spirit will teach us everything and lead us into the truth (CCC #729). Pray to the Holy Spirit for the gifts of Wisdom and a Discerning heart, to enable you to use his gifts wisely.


Page last modified on October 17, 2007, at 05:28 PM