Lucy, an energetic ten-year-old, told her Dad, “It’s not hard to believe that God can be three persons. Look at you Dad. You are a husband to mom, a daddy to me, and a son to pop-pop.” Smiling she concluded, “So God can easily be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and still be one God. I think I get it now!” she exclaimed. Well Lucy solved the long-standing mystery fairly rapidly. However, for many Christians, the Trinity remains a confusing mystery! 

Although the Trinity is baffling, we Catholics have enjoyed a familiarity with it making the Trinity a major part of our daily prayer life. When we enter a Catholic church anywhere in the world we automatically reach for the holy water and bless ourselves saying, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” We do it effortlessly and spontaneously.

Then, when we kneel in our pew to pray, we begin again by making the sign of the cross. Catholics easily speak to the mysterious Trinity, the triune God. There is no hesitation or fear.

Believers name all three persons, bow before them, and adore them before praying. With this gesture and action, we are doing on earth what the angels are doing in heaven, i.e., adoring and bowing before the Lord God. 

Why are we so comfortable with the Trinity?  It is because it begins with God’s love.  God chose the Israelites to be his people.  God showed them his affection because his intention was to draw them closer to himself. God hoped that once they delighted in his affections, they would willingly invite other nations to worship him.

Then God sent someone to be a prefect reflection of the Father, someone to speak the truth: Jesus, God’s son made flesh, whose mission of preaching salvation and whose act of dying and rising regains creation’s freedom, drawing all to the Father.

When God’s creation is baptized, Jesus shares his glory, asking them, as adopted children of the Holy Spirit, to “Go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The feast of the Holy Trinity for ten-year-old Lucy, and for all of Jesus’ followers, shows every believer that the spirit bears witness that we are children of God and his heirs.  As beneficiaries, the obligation from the triune God is to gather and draw all to his son, Jesus.

The Trinity does not want to be feared, but rather loved and therefore included in our lives. Love binds the three persons as one. God’s love brought about the mission of Christ, and this love is the source of every spiritual gift including the gift of the Spirit, whose flames of love unite the entire believing community-unto this very day!

Painting: Gloria Turner, Artist