Trinity Sunday

          Today, Trinity Sunday, the whole Catholic Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity.  The mystery of the Trinity is the basis and foundation on which stands all Catholic Doctrine, from our Faith, the Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, to the Prayers.  It is also the most difficult to understand, which leads us to appreciate some subtleties in the nature of our faith which rests upon such mystery as the Trinity but still commands assent and affirmation and even solutions to our daily struggles.  Faith, although sometimes at best unsure and precisely mysterious, somehow overpasses science, sure and precise science, when it comes to the primal and fundamental issues of life.

          It is necessary that we understand something, even if just a bit, about this basic and fundamental doctrine of our Catholic Faith.  We strive to attain this understanding not only for our own advantage this Year of Faith but most especially for the advantage of our young and our youth.  They depend upon us for the deepening of our faith and it is our sworn duty and obligation, one which we swore in God’s presence during the Baptism of our children and our Godchildren.

          It is fundamental to understand that this mystery is revealed by no less than Jesus Himself.  Later theology would like to trace since the first book of Moses the Genesis the genesis of this doctrine, but it was really the Lord Himself who told us in the Gospels that He has a Father and that from the Father and Him comes the Holy Spirit.  Many times we hear Him, for example from the Gospel of John, how the Father has sent Him and all He does comes from the Father and He does not do anything which is against the Father’s Will.  We hear Him frequently saying that the Holy Spirit does whatever the Father wills, and therefore the Spirit continues the Mission of the Son, the same mission given by the Father.  Jesus explicitly tells us that He and the Father are One, and from them comes the Holy Spirit.  The Father and the Doctors of the Church wrote rivers of ink comprising countless libraries explaining to us the nature and mechanics, as much as it is humanly possible, of this Trinitarian mystery.

Saint Augustine famously used the human images of the mind and heart to approximate to us how God is One in Three.  Our mind thinks and it has something thought and it has a basis for this thought.  The mind is not the thought and the thought is not this basis, but we understand that all three are one for it is just one reality and one process.  The mind thinks, and it thinks about a triangle, and this triangle is the basis of its thinking.  There is the heart, the heart loves, and it loves the loved one it makes its own.  The heart is not the loving of the heart, and the loving of the heart is not what it does love.  We understand distinct realities but we understand them as the one and the same love.  The Sorsogueño loves, he loves the pili, and the pili is what he is making us his own in love.

In our times more images are being utilized to drive home the same point.  Some use the very same examples we used earlier.  The Trinity is like a triangle, one triangle but three angles.  Others use the pili, a reality very near our sensibility.  There is one pili, and it has the skin with the flesh, the hard casing, and the tasty nut inside.  However we try to explain the unexplainable it is really mighty difficult but we realize that we are actually able to approximate our knowledge to the mystery.  Science can actually aid in understanding our faith however unsure and uncertain we many times are.  It doesn’t prove that what we believe is false or a lie, what this strongly tells us that although it is above our capacity for full understanding we are not so bereft of the capacity to understand as we do not absolutely know.  We may safely say that something we have understood.

          Now as ever before it is absolutely important that we take hold of the mystery of Trinity as the basis and foundation of our Catholic Christian doctrines because it can also be called upon as the basis and foundation of human institutions.  These human institutions, family, community and human brotherhood, are now being attacked, maligned and denied by contemporary culture and society.  We may call the Trinity as the basis of human family, human community and authentic human society, and true brotherhood among human beings.  Like the Trinity human family has elements which are distinct but ultimately are one.  The father is not the mother, and the mother is not the child, but we say that the father and mother are one flesh in Holy Matrimony, and we say that together with their child they are one family.  Like the Trinity the human community has elements which are distinct but are one in goal and struggle and hopes and dreams.  Each member is distinct and each has his and her own role but we ultimately call the community one and not many, as there is just one barangay, one municipio, one provincia, one nacion.

          As Catholic Christians therefore, my dear brother and sisters, as Trinitarians, we shout no therefore to divorce and to the decimation and eventual annihilation of human family, calling the family many and not one.  The family is one and daily we work so that it stays one amidst the inherent difficulties of family life and the added difficulties being daily brought about by the enemies.  We shout therefore no to disunity and dissolution in our human communities, in our barangay, in our municipio, in our nacion.  Our community stands precisely on unity, and there may be diversity, but differences are smoothed out by the common vision and mission and goal, by our common nature, and by our common experiences of hopes and disillusionment, dreams and nightmares, and joys and sorrows.  As Catholic Christians, we stand by One God in Three Persons, one family in many family members, and one community in unity and diversity.  Amen.