Holy Trinity - Year C

It is said that once, Saint Augustine—undoubtedly one of the greatest minds the Church has ever known—was deep in thought, trying to understand and explain the most important mystery of our Faith: that God is one, yet at the same time, three persons. Tired from his thinking, he went out for a walk along the shore. From a distance, he noticed a boy digging a hole in the sand. A little while later, the boy began pouring seawater into the hole using a seashell he had found. Augustine approached the boy and asked what he was doing. The child replied, “I’m emptying the sea into this hole.” Augustine smiled and said, “But dear child, you’re still so young—how can you possibly pour such a vast sea into such a tiny hole?” The boy turned to him and answered, “Just as you’ll never fit the great God—the Trinity—into your small mind.”It is said that the boy was an angel sent by God to help Augustine understand that no matter how much we try, we can never fully grasp the mystery of the Trinity.

Before Jesus came, the people of God believed in one God, but they did not yet know that God is a Trinity of persons—even though there are hints of it in the Old Testament. In today’s first reading, we saw how the Book of Proverbs already speaks of the Wisdom of God as though it were a person. But it had to be Jesus—God made man—who would reveal to us that God is Trinity. As we heard in today’s Gospel, Jesus reveals the intimate relationship between the three Persons of the Trinity:“When he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all the truth... He will glorify me... All that the Father has is mine.”

We believe that the Father is God, and not just a part of God; the Son is God, and not just a part of God; and the Holy Spirit is God, and not just a part of God. Even though each Person is fully God, we do not believe in three gods, but in one God. At first glance, this may seem like a contradiction. But to begin to understand it, we must first recognise that God is Spirit, not matter—so the rules that apply to matter do not apply to spirit. Second, we can get a small glimpse of what this means when we see two people truly in love. Love unites two people so deeply that we say they are “of one heart and one soul.” Now apply this to God, who is pure, uncreated spirit: the love between the three Persons in God is so perfect that, while they remain distinct from one another, they are not three gods, but one God. Love unites them as one.

O God, holy Trinity, help us—rather than trying to understand this mystery of our faith with our minds alone—to seek you more with our hearts. For as the Apostle John tells us, “God is love,” and love is not the language of the mind, but of the heart. And it is only love that can understand another Love. Amen.