12 June 2022 – The Most Holy Trinity (Year C)

By Fr Francis Anthony

My Parish Priest is torturing me to speak on Holy Trinity within 10 minutes. And he has been in the seminary, I was not his dogma lecturer and they had one topic – God, One or The Triune God, and they will have two hours lectures a week for three months on this topic on The Trinity. He was fed with it for three months and now he is torturing me.

And I, from the scriptural point of view, I will take eight hours, not to speak on The Trinity but just to explain the first chapter and not the whole chapter, just the beginning 18 verses of Saint John’s Gospel. And that is where we have the foundation for The Trinity. So what I am trying to tell you is we are dealing with a mystery.

Let us humble ourselves. We cannot comprehend the mystery of The Holy Trinity with our human minds. If we can do that, then we are gods. No, mathematically three and one – big difference. Philosophically, that three and one is different. Person and substance are different but we believe in it due to the revelation given by Jesus in the New Testament and the whole of the Bible.

The scripture begins ‘In the beginning, the Holy Spirit was hovering over the waters‘. And God created. The Holy Spirit is there and in the Genesis, we do not have the Son being mentioned. In the Saint John’s Gospel chapter 1 verse 1 to 3, it begins ‘In the beginning was the word‘ and the word is referring to Christ. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and in God it was. At once, mind boggling. We read it so fast we do not see the implication.

And the same thing is being reflected in the Book of Proverbs, the First Reading where it says:-

I was by the side, a master craftsman delighting Him day after day.

Christ is in this section, He is with God.

And in the opening prayer, we stumble a lot of words but very often we do not pay much attention and the text says:-

God our Father, by sending into the world the word of Truth and the spirit of Sanctification.

It is coming in the form of prayer but mark ‘God our Father, by sending into the world‘ and what did He send? The word of Truth that is Jesus and the spirit of Sanctification that is the Holy Spirit. The spirit of Truth bringing to us the ultimate truth of Jesus, that is what comes in the Gospel. And the spirit of Sanctification making us whole.

And so we will see the Trinity in a certain way we will say He is responsible for what we are:-

God the creator, Jesus Christ is the Redeemer, the Saviour and the Holy Spirit the Sanctifier.

Yes, we can only associate by relationship. And Jesus himself has said ‘The Father has sent me‘, this is in John’s Gospel, ‘and I speak what the Father wants me to speak‘. Again, the same teaching is coming either from the Father or the Son. It is God revealing. And we accept this because it is not being told to us by Pope Francis or Saint Peter. It is being told to us in the scriptures. And in the scripture, God is revealing himself.

In the scriptures, God is not telling us how to maintain ourselves. It is a self revelation of God through the human history that we get a glimpse of who God is. And that is why we always say when we come to faith, we are dwelling in the area of mystery. When I speak/say the word ‘mystery‘, it goes beyond our thinking ability and we surrender to God, help me in my unbelief.

Yes, the Father created, the Son saved, the Holy Spirit sanctifies and I don’t know, I’m not a liturgist, and today we are celebrating Holy Trinity and it is sandwiched by two big feasts. Last Sunday, what was the celebration? So soon you all forgot. Thank God I was not preaching. The Holy Spirit, Pentecost coming down, sanctifying. And coming Sunday, we are going to celebrate Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ, the real presence of God.

And this just shows us the church is struggling to make this mystery of Holy Trinity relevant to us, not to be conquered by our thinking power but asking us to surrender. When we come in the realm of God, a lot of things go beyond us. Ask God to strengthen our faith. It is He who is telling me and I accept because it is God telling and not the Pope or some great Saint.

It is God’s self revelation and so I accept that revelation and I ask God to help all of us to humble ourselves in the presence of God. There are a lot of things we do not know and in the sphere of divinity, we know very little.

Let us ask God to help us to be faithful to His teaching.

Click below to listen to the homily and watch the video:-

Click to live-stream Mass on 12 June 2022