Trinity Sunday

FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:  

TRINITY SUNDAY (Year C)

Appreciating the Three Persons: Christians are united with the Jews and the Muslims in believing that God is One — and unique. We differ from them both in believing that God is three Persons in one divine Nature. All three Persons “reveal” themselves “in the depths of our being.” Through them we “come to know the mystery” of God’s own divine Life and Being.

Invitation:

Be conscious of how God shows his love for you in different ways in each Person of the Trinity. Vibrate when the presider at Mass proclaims in the Introductory Rites: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and communion in the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

Our faith: How many of these statements do you believe? And so what?

John calls Jesus the “Logos” — which means the “intelligibility” — of God. Because we have made our faith in God depend too much on rational proofs, we need a “new recognition of the intellectual significance of religious experience.” Nevertheless, without the Logos of God and a basic metaphysics there really is no ultimate intelligibility in the universe.

Intelligibility depends on the recognition of intentional design. We call a spade a spade only if we judge someone designed and formed it to be one. But people call a tree a tree while refusing to allow any explanation of its structure but pure chance. This is a denial of reason.

We accept logic (logos) in technology (the study of how things work), but are blind to it in ontology  (the study of what things are). We know so much about how things work that it distracts us from our gaping ignorance about what things are. We know enough physics to prevent conception or produce it in a test tube; but not enough metaphysics to recognize when or even whether what is conceived can be called a “human being.” That depends on logos.

What the Logos is to knowledge of God by reason, the Spirit is to knowledge of God by faith and love, which is the gift of sharing in God’s own act of knowing and loving. No one can say “Abba, Father!” or “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.

The Father, perceiving the truth of his own Being, has been exclaiming “God!” from all eternity. This “Word” of knowledge is the Son. And the two affirm God’s goodness in a mutual act of love that is the Holy Spirit.

We experience that we must be like God because we are able to understand his design in things he has made, recognize his purpose, and “reproduce” his creative act by “breathing out” a being’s name in a “word of knowledge” that echoes of the creative “word” by which God “breathes into being” every creature..

God is three and so are we. By memory we are like the Father. We say, “Let it be” and it is. By intellect we are like the Logos: we perceive intelligibility. And by will we are like the Spirit: we love.

Decisions:

When you make the “Sign of the Cross,” consciously address each Person.