Holy Trinity
We are talking today about the summit of our Christian faith, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. When we walk through other mysteries, we need to walk on tiptoe; now we need to postrate ourselves in front of the majesty of God, touch the floor with our forehead and keep silence. This is holy ground. We cannot see God and live. But God has opened his intimate life to us. He has given us access to his inner life. Open the door slowly and glance with awe.
We say that God is incomprehensible. And it is true. We cannot fit God into this coconut we all have on top of our shoulders. But we can try to go deeper. Saint Josemaria used to say that sometimes God gave him some insights about Him, and he became happy; but other times he couldn’t see much, it looked like he had hit a wall, and he was happier, thinking that God is much bigger than anything we can imagine. We need to plunge ourselves into this mystery, knowing that we will never be able to touch bottom, but nevertheless we can go deeper and deeper. Saint Catherine of Siena says that “the Holy Trinity is like a deep sea, where the more you seek, the more you find, and the more you find, the more you seek.”We should be ambitious. We shouldn’t be happy in the way we are. We need to go deeper. Look at the love saints have for God. How they immersed themselves in God. You cannot find deeper or truer love than theirs.
We use our time in many endeavours, listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks, watching movies, following our favourite tv series, reading the news, surfing social media, hobbies, topics of interest. We are looking for happiness and trying to fill our hearts with all sorts of things. We cannot be happy drinking from the pot holes. We need to quench our thirst with the true living water. We come from God and we go back to God. We are created to know and to love Him.
There are four classical ways to reach the Holy Trinity. The first one is through created things. In the same way we can discover God in creation, in the beauty of nature, we can also find traces of the Trinity as well, even though in a more hidden way. Theologians talk about groups of three things: air, water and earth; gas, steam and fire; rain, slate and snow; spring, lake and sea; frost, snow-flakes, and ice; father, mother and child. You can try to find more. The second is the reality of the indwelling of the Trinity on the soul of the just man. If our soul is in friendship with God, He is there with us, making his abode in the depths of our spirit. We can find him inside of ourselves. We don’t need to look outside to find love. He is with us all the time. We need to become more inward looking. It happens to us like Saint Augustine: “You were within me and I was looking outside of me.”
The third place is Sacred Scripture. God revealed to us this mystery in the New Testament, with the arrival of Jesus Christ. Before, God emphasised in the Old Testament the oneness of God, to avoid the belief in many gods. When we were ready, he opened his inner life to us. Through the Bible we can find the three persons of the Trinity. The fourth is the liturgy, the public action of the Church, specially the Eucharist. When we participate in the Mass, we are attending the heavenly liturgy, that liturgy celebrated by the Holy Trinity in heaven. Let us hide behind our Mother Mary.
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