The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, May 30, 2021

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.”

This Feast was decreed by Pope John XXII (1316–1334).  While every Sunday Mass particularly but every Mass in general is a celebration of the Most Holy Trinity, it is very appropriate to celebrate this great and mysterious reality of God following Pentecost, when the Church’s mission to the world of proclaiming the Holy Trinity officially commenced. 

The following translation of the traditional Preface of the Most Holy Trinity sums up the truth about him:

“It is truly meet and just, right and for our salvation, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty, everlasting God; Who, together with Thine only-begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit, art one God, one Lord: not in the oneness of a single Person, but in the Trinity of one [divine] substance. For what we believe by Thy revelation of Thy glory, the same do we believe of Thy Son, the same of the Holy Spirit, without difference or separation. So that in confessing the true and everlasting Godhead, distinction in persons, unity in essence, and equality in majesty may be adored. Which the Angels and Archangels, the Cherubim also and Seraphim do praise: who cease not daily to cry out, with one voice saying.”

The Sanctus which immediately follows the preface is the worship of the Triune God by the angels, as witnessed by the Prophet Isaiah in the Temple: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts.  Heaven and earth are full of your glory.”  (The last part of the prayer is taken from Psalm 117).  Each Person of the Trinity is thus acknowledged as “holy”.  The unity of the Persons as one God is also confirmed by the use of “God” and “your” in the singular.  We find this in the words of the Lord Jesus himself 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”.  That is, “in the name” of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, not “in the names”.  

We could never have known that God is a Trinity of Persons unless the Son had revealed this to us.  It is the essential truth of Christianity, for this mystery tells us who God truly is, that God is love, and the Son of God is of the Father and is in the most perfect unity with him, and that our destiny is to share in the glory of the Holy Trinity inasmuch as we are the members of the Body of Christ.  This helps us to see the infinite difference between the God the Muslims worship and the God revealed by Jesus Christ: their God is solitary and alone.  The God revealed by Jesus exists in a perfect communion of life and love.  Only a Triune God can be a God who is love because love requires three things: a lover, a beloved, and the love itself.  Love cannot exist in isolation.  It must have a proper object capable of returning that love.  In the case of God, there must be a perfect Lover and a perfect Beloved to share the perfect love of God.  This is the Father and the Son, and the love itself that binds them in unity is the Holy Spirit, whom St. Thomas Aquinas calls the nexus and connectio of the Father and the Son.

Full of the joy of knowing our God in this way, and in knowing of the love we will fully experience and share in heaven, we go forth “to all the world”, according to our various vocations, and preach the Gospel, whether by deed, word, or prayer.