IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST

A MESSAGE FOR TRINITY SUNDAY

In pre-Reformation England, the Sundays from now on until the end of the liturgical year were known as the Sundays after Trinity rather than the Sundays after Pentecost, a practice that has also been kept by the Dominican Order until the present day.  In many ways, it makes sense to measure the rest of our year from this great feast of the Most Holy Trinity.  The Breviary readings of the Sundays after Pentecost are mostly taken from the Feast of Trinity, and we refer to the time after Pentecost as “Trinitytide.”  And after all, isn’t the Blessed Trinity the central mystery of the Christian Faith, the belief in a divine being who is one God and yet three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost?

This triune deity existed before time and space were created.  Indeed, it was this God, three in one, who created time and space, and the world in which all the events of time and space would happen.  All three Persons were present for this great act of creation:  God the Father, maker of heaven and earth, was of course there.  God the Son, the Word, who according to the opening of St. John’s Gospel, was there: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and without him was made nothing that was made.”  At Creation, this Word of God spoke, saying “Let there be light.”  And the Holy Spirit moved over the face of the deep and light was created, doing what light does, moving through time and space at 671 million miles per hour.  And literally, the rest is history.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass contains many references to the Blessed Trinity, some obvious, such as the three-times triple Kyrie/Christe/Kyrie Eleison, and at other times a little more indirect, such as the Tersanctus (“Holy, Holy, Holy…”).  Parents may find it an interesting project to go through the Mass with their children, and see just how many of our prayers contain a triple invocation or supplication, almost all of them reflective of the Most Holy Trinity to whom they are addressed.

Above all, let us be grateful to God for revealing so much of his nature to us, his creatures, who are wholly incapable of ever understanding its profundity or immensity.  He wants us to know him to the best extent our finite minds can do so.  Because God understands that to know him is to love him.  And that we, his children, should love him is God’s greatest aspiration of all.