With good reason we speak of the truths of our faith as ‘mysteries of faith’. By this we mean that these are truths which the human mind can never fully grasp. We accept in faith what God has revealed to us through the Church while realising that that we stand in the face of mystery. Nowhere, perhaps, is this lack of understanding more evident than when we come face to face with the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, whose feast the Church celebrates today. The human race has made vast advances in every field of knowledge and there appears to be no limit to the discoveries and inventions of which we are capable. Yet, we remain finite, limited human beings, and where the inner life of God is concerned the power of our intellects falters. Of ourselves we could never have arrived at the existence of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We believe it because Christ has told us so.Yet the wonder of our faith and Catholic religion consists in just how much almighty
God has drawn back the curtain and permitted us to glimpse something of the mystery of the divine life. The Scripture readings for this Sunday’s liturgy help us grasp in some fashion the Trinity which is God, and the effect of each of the persons on our own life. Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy, muses in wonder at how God intervened in the history of the tiny nation Israel and chose them as a people to be his own. The choice of Israel was a prelude to the coming of the Church as God’s haven for all nations. We might comfort ourselves with the thought that we are never far from God’s mind. His choice has fallen upon each one of us in Christ.
The role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian is underlined by the apostle Paul. It is through the power of that same Spirit, the Spirit of the risen Christ, that we have the privilege to address God in the most intimate fashion, as “Father”, exactly as Jesus the Son of God himself did during his earthly life. We would do well to stop and ponder the significance of addressing almighty God as Father. In a very real sense our God is incredibly close to us, as the Father of us all. As we hear in the conclusion to Matthew’s gospel, Christ has commissioned his Church to teach and baptise all nations in the name of the most holy Trinity, a task which the Church must carry out until the end of time. As members of the Church we have been sealed and stamped with the image of the holy Trinity in our baptism. While we will never fully understand this greatest of all mysteries, today we renew our faith and give praise and thanks to God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
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