TRINITY SUNDAY
A farmer one day travelled from his
farm into the city. He was walking down a very busy street when he suddenly
stopped and said to a friend who was with him, 'I can hear a cricket'. His
friend was amazed and asked, 'How can you hear a cricket in the middle of all
this noise and confusion?' 'I can hear him because my ears are attuned to his
sound,' he replied. Then he listened again, and following the sound, found the
cricket perched on a window ledge. His friend couldn't get over this. But the
farmer showed no great surprise. Instead he took a few coins out of his pocket
and threw them on the pavement. On hearing the jingle of coins, all the people
around stopped in their tracks. 'You see what I mean,' said the farmer. 'None
of those people could hear the sound of the cricket, but all of them could hear
the sound of the money. People hear what their ears are attuned to hear, and
ignore or miss all the rest'. The point being made here is that it is natural
to admit the existence of God as soon as we open our eyes and ears. Yet many
people look and see nothing. They listen and hear nothing. We have to be
attuned to 'hear' and 'see' God. This calls for great openness, sensitivity and
faith. The best thing a Christian can do is look at the Gospels, to see how Jesus
spoke about the mystery of God and how he lived it. He spoke about God as a
merciful and forgiving Father. He spoke about himself as the Son of the Father.
And by seeking to do the will of his Father at all times, he showed us how a
child of God should live. The will of the Father was that Jesus should bring us
the good news of salvation. But it was the Holy Spirit who sent him for this
work. He said: 'The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me. He sent me to
bring good news to the poor'. So the witness of Jesus shows us that there are
three persons in the one God.
When we are born as
children of God, we are baptised in the name of the Father, of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit. These are the three persons in the one God. God, who is three
persons in one God, is called the Holy Trinity. Since we are baptised in the
name of the Holy Trinity, then our faith in the Holy Trinity is very important
to us. Because the Blessed Trinity is so essential to our faith, the Church
gives this feast to celebrate and commemorate our God who is one and yet also
is a community of three persons.
The
doctrine of the Holy Trinity states that God the Father, God the Son and God
the Holy Spirit form a community in the one God. There are many images used to
help us understand this. For example, the Father may be seen as the Sun in the
sky, the Son is the Light from the Sun and the Holy Spirit is the heat from the
Sun. Another image is to think of the Father as a spring begetting the Son like
a river and the Holy Ghost like a sea, for the spring and the river and the sea
are all one nature. Again we can think of the Father as a root, of the Son as a
branch, and of the Spirit as a fruit, for the substance in these three is one. Another way of imagining the mystery of God is to look at water. Water
can exist in three different forms: gas, solid, and liquid — that is, in steam,
in ice, and in falling rain – God is three persons each with the same nature in
one God.
For our one God, we have
three persons and each person has his own role. So, we can sum up our
relationship to the Holy Trinity in terms of the three great acts of love that
God has bestowed on us. The first of these three acts of love is creation. We
attribute (assign) the work of creation to the Father. God the Father has power
over everything in this world, he created the world and he gives life to all
people. The Father calls us into being and puts each of us on earth for a
purpose. The Father sent his Son into our world. The second of these acts of
love is salvation. We assign the work of salvation to the Son. God the Son, the
Son of the Father is Jesus Christ. He came to live with us to free us from the
slavery of sin to bring to the Kingdom of God and to make us children of God.
Jesus calls us to complete the work he began on earth. The third act of love is
sanctification. We assign the work of sanctification to the Holy Spirit. The
Holy Spirit helps us carry out the work for which we were created and called.
The Holy Spirit helps us to keep the commandments of God and to live good lives
as children of God. So God the Father is our Creator. God the Son is the God
who frees us from the power of evil. He is our Redeemer. God the Holy Spirit is
the God who gives us power to do good; he is our Helper. All this work of God
the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit is to show their respect, love
and guidance to us.
So
the Holy Trinity shows us how great God is, how God is a great mystery to us –
three persons in the one Godhead, who loves and honours us totally. On our side,
we have to remember the first commandment of God, ‘I am the Lord your God; do
not have any other god apart from me’ and the command that Jesus gave us, ‘Love
God with all your heart, with all your spirit and with all your strength’. This
means to love God above all else, and especially we do not allow our desire for
money, power or prestige to distract us from our call to love and adore the
Lord our God. Secondly, since God is a great mystery, a Holy Trinity, then we
must give him great praise and thanks and we must give him honour and glory
always. Thirdly, we especially remember the Holy Trinity when we make the Sign
of the Cross. We begin all our prayers with this prayer because of the great
respect we have for the Holy Trinity. The other great prayer of the Holy
Trinity says, ‘Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit’.
So let us always recite these two prayers with respect to God. Fourthly, the
Holy Trinity expresses the reality of three divine persons loving each other in
the One God with great love for us; this give us an example to love our
brothers and sisters in our community.
