Meditation Fifteen, Third Week of June, 2003

The Mystery of the Trinity

Readings: Matt. 28:16-20; 2Cor. 1:19-22; John 15: 4-11

The cycle of the Church's year beginning at Advent and going through the memorials of Our Lord's life and the mystery of our redemption comes to an end with the celebration of the most Holy Trinity. We invoke the Triune God, as the Trinity is properly called, many times a day-when we make the sign of the Cross, at the end of the prayers at Mass, and in blessings. But the teaching is so mysterious that we seldom think of what we can know about the infinite reality from which all things proceed. Since the time Our Lord spoke of the Father and the Holy Spirit and identified Himself as the Son of God, Christians, led by the Church Fathers, have sought to conclude what they could from His words in the New Testament. They asked what Christ meant when He spoke of the Father and the Holy Spirit, and of Himself being the Son of God equal to the Father. As the Church emerged from centuries of persecution, it began to study these things. At the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) the priest Arius was condemned for describing Christ as a lesser God than the Father. The bishops at Nicea, with the approval of the bishop of Rome, declared that there is but one God, in whom there are three persons-in other words, a triple unity, or trinity. Later the Council of Constantinople (381) made very clear that the Holy Spirit was also "Lord and Giver of life," equal to the Father and the Son. The Trinity must always remain the deepest of mysteries-the mystery of God Himself-but the Councils give us a partial explanation. A person is that which does something, a principle of predication. The Father alone is the origin of all being. The Son is the Word of God and receives from the Father all that the Father gives Him out of love, which is His whole self. The love between Father and Son is equal to them and is therefore yet another Person, the Holy Spirit. This is not an explanation of the Trinity; it is simply the idea of the three divine Persons, who are equal to but distinct from one another, as revealed in the Christian dogma of one God. We learn two very great things from meditating on the Trinity: God is infinitely mysterious and that out of all eternity He is not a solitary Person but a single being filled with relationship and love.

Quotation for Meditation

O Lord our God, we believe in you, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Truth would not have said, "Go and baptize the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 29:19), unless you were a triad. Nor would you have commanded us to be baptized, Lord God, in the name of any who is not Lord God. Nor would it have been said with divine authority, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God" (Deut. 6:4), unless while being a triad you were still one Lord God. And if you, God and Father, were yourself also the Son your Word Jesus Christ, were yourself also your gift the Holy Spirit, we would not read in the documents of truth "God sent his Son" (Gal. 4:4), nor would you, only-begotten one, have said of the Holy Spirit, "whom the Father will send in my name" (John 14:26), and, "whom I will send you from the Father" (John 15:26). Directing my attention toward this rule of faith as best I could, as far as you enabled me to, I have sought you and desired to see intellectually what I have believed, and I have argued much and toiled much. O Lord my God, my one hope, listen to me lest out of weariness I should stop wanting to seek you, but let me seek you face always, and with ardor. Do you yourself give me the strength to seek, having caused yourself to be found and having given me the hope of finding you more and more. Before you lies my strength and my weakness; preserve the one, heal the other. Before you lies my knowledge and my ignorance; where you have opened to me, receive me as I come in; where you have shut to me, open to me as I knock. Let me remember you, let me understand you, let me love you. Increase these things in me until you refashion me entirely. (The Trinity 15:53, trans. Hill, as cited in Benedict J. Groeschel, Augustine: Major Writings (Crossroad, 2001)

Quiet Time and then Discussion

Questions for Meditation

1. Do you pray to each Person of the Trinity?

2. Are you aware of the Trinity in your life?

Prayer

Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we bow in the most profound worship of the mystery of Your Being. Our beloved Savior revealed this mystery to us, and we accept and rejoice in it. The mystery of eternal love explains why You created the world and human beings to share in Your love and to come at last to the mystery of eternal love through the salvation that the Son and Word of God won for us on the Cross. Amen.