Mystery of the Blessed Trinity and Mystery of the Church
Today we celebrate the feast of the Blessed Trinity, or in the formal
title, “The Solemnity of the Holy Trinity”. The Trinity is something of an
abstraction. We rarely, if ever, hear of devotion to the Blessed Trinity. The
Trinity is recognized as the greatest and deepest of the Christian mysteries.
It took centuries, with errors, heresies and bad formulations, for the Church
to arrive at the formulation of or belief in the Blessed Trinity as we have it
to day. Belief in the Trinity is belief in one God in three divine persons. As
formulated in the latest Catechism of the
Catholic Church (paragraphs 253-260) the Trinity is One, We do not confess
three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity”. The
divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them
is God whole and entire. The divine persons are really distinct from one another.
A brief survey of the
development of the doctrine will help us to understand somewhat the development
of the Church’s doctrine with regard to the mystery. Any development had to
take place within the strict Jewish doctrine of monotheism, namely that there
is one God, and only one God. In the New Testament (as in Jewish piety) this
God could be referred to as “Father”. Then there was Jesus who preached the
advent of the kingdom. He once asked his disciples who people, and they
themselves, thought he was. Peter, on behalf of the Twelve, said they believed
he was the Christ, the Messiah (Mark; Luke, “the Christ of God”; Matthew, “the
Christ, the Son of the living God”). The resurrection and the post-resurrection
appearances opened a new period in Christian belief. Jesus was now seen as more
than human; he was seated at God’s right hand, as Lord, that is the one who
sends the Holy Spirit on the Church. By the end of the first century Jesus was
worshipped as God. “In the beginning was the Word, … and the Word was God.
… And the Word became flesh and lived among us”. Jesus promised to send the
Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Advocate, on the Church. The Holy Spirit was
also worshipped as God. To express its belief in this mystery, respecting
Christian tradition and the underlying belief in one and only God, the Church
did not have adequate biblical language to do this. It resorted to the current
Greek philosophical terms person, substance, nature (while recognising their
partial inadequacy). The fourth-century formulation, still used, speaks of
Father, Son and Holy Spirit as persons, really distinct from one another; not,
however, three Gods, but each sharing the same divine nature or substance, and
though distinct, all three are active in all the works of salvation, even if a
given activity is referred to just one of the three persons.
So much for the theology
of belief in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as the Trinity, the one true God.
Such theology does not necessarily make for devotion, or a greater understanding
of the mystery of the Trinity. This great mystery of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit reveals the innermost nature and life of God to us: God as love, as
saviour, as unity. This mystery of the Blessed Trinity was revealed to us as
source and model of our Christian life. In his farewell discourse at the Last
Supper Jesus prayed to his Father for his followers, in all ages to come: “I
ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe
in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me
and I am in you, may they also be one in us, so that the world may believe that
you have sent me. The glory that you have given me, I
have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, … that the world may
know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
(John 17:20-24). This is practically what Paul says in writing to the Romans,
summarised in the heading to today’s second reading: We go “to God through Christ,
in the love poured out by the Holy Spirit”. The Holy Spirit in the hearts of
believers makes them, makes us, aware of our dignity as children of God, called
and enabled to live according to the pattern of the inner life of God himself,
as revealed by Jesus, and continued in the mystery of the Church. The Church
will never be properly understood unless viewed as a mystery, the Body of
Christ, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit called to live in accord with
that deep mystery which is the Blessed Trinity, and as a witness on earth to
the living God, the source of true life.
