The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Sunday, May 26, 2024

Matthew 28, 16–20

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they all saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

Several solemnities follow in order in the weeks after Pentecost, the first of which is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, set in the calendar by Pope John XXII (d. 1334).  The Most Holy Trinity is worshipped at each Mass every day of the week, but this feast, coming after Easter and Pentecost, particularly and explicitly is dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity.  

The doctrine of God as a Trinity of Persons is taught in the New Testament, especially in the Gospel of St. John, but the Christian can look back to the Old Testament and see hints of it.  The Fathers did not fail to point out that Genesis 1, 26 shows God saying: “Let us make man to our image and likeness.”  This, the Fathers taught, was God the Father speaking to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.  Elsewhere, in Genesis 18, 1-2, Almighty God appeared to Abraham in the form of “three men”.  In the New Testament, the doctrine is taught most succinctly at the end of the Gospel of St. Matthew: “Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  We see the three Persons named and their equality in power and majesty is shown in the simple sequence of the naming.  We see their unity in the fact that the Lord Jesus says “the name” and not “the names”.  The “name” of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is God, and he is one.

The doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity endured attacks in the early years of the Church by those who, like the Egyptian priest Arius, doubted the divinity of the Son.  His heresy was condemned by the Council of Nicaea in 325.  The Creed composed at this council, which is centered on his teaching, is recited today at Mass.  A later heresy denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit and this was likewise condemned.  A comprehensive statement regarding the Holy Trinity was drawn up by St. Athanasius (d. 373), Bishop of Alexandria, the so-called Athanasian Creed.

The Lord Jesus considered it of the greatest importance for us to know who God is, and risked stoning in order to teach us this.  In order to love someone, we must know him even if, ultimately, he is beyond our comprehension.  And it is in knowing and loving God that we find our true happiness.  The beatific vision in heaven consists entirely in gazing at God, the Holy Trinity, and bathing in the light and love that flows out from that which the Persons lavish on each other from their inmost selves in infinite  torrents.