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“Si comprehendis, non est Deus… If you can grasp it, it’s not God.” — St. Augustine (s. 117.5)
That stark declaration by the Doctor of Grace brings us, creeping like Moses, to the cleft in the rock through which we must peer longingly for the ultimate mystery. We believe in the Triune Godhead, and therefore strive for understanding. But this mystery is not for human comprehension, but rather for adoring and transforming awe. Trinity Sunday is not so much an occasion of theology and debate.
Again Augustine:
Certainly it is great blessing to have a little touch or taste of God with the mind; but completely to grasp him, to comprehend him, is altogether impossible. (ibid.)
This is a day of worship raised towards Heaven’s throne.
Trinity Sunday fittingly follows Pentecost. With the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the full revelation of the Triune God was made manifest. Pius Parsch wrote, “The feast of Pentecost leads logically to the contemplation of the divine Trinity, whose mystery has now been revealed.” Ildefonso Schuster affirms this saying, “The Church, illumined by the Paraclete, turns to adore the ineffable mystery of the Three in One.”
The Introit of Holy Mass already lays out the terms while the priest wreathes the altar in the smoke of the sacrificed incense:
Benedícta sit sancta Trínitas atque indivísa Unitas: confitébimur ei, quia fecit nobíscum misericórdiam suam. Dómine, Dóminus noster, quam admirábile est nomen tuum in univérsa terra! … Blessed be the Holy Trinity and undivided Unity: we will give glory to Him, because He has shown His mercy to us. O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is Your Name over all the earth!
So far above our grasp is the Christian mystery of the Trinity that we depend on that very Trinity to profess it. We hear in the Collect of Trinity Sunday and Votive Masses:
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus,
qui dedisti famulis tuis, in confessione verae fidei,
aeternae Trinitatis gloriam agnoscere,
et in potentia maiestatis adorare Unitatem:
quaesumus; ut, eiusdem fidei firmitate,
ab omnibus semper muniamur adversis.
LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Almighty everlasting God,
who granted to Your servants, in a profession of the true Faith,
to recognize the glory of the eternal Trinity
and to adore Its Unity in the might of majesty:
we beseech You; that, in the steadfastness of that same Faith,
we may always be defended from all adversities.
One of the things I appreciate in this prayer is the acknowledgment that we have adversities in this life, even deadly spiritual enemies. The transforming power of the Holy Trinity, dwelling in our souls when we are in the state of grace, gives us power in the face of our challenges.
The note of awe continues in the Epistle from Romans 11:33-36, in which Paul breaks out in song:
33 O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen.
These are the words of a man who has been silenced by the majesty of God. Paul gazes into the abyss of the divine and simply bows. We profess belief in the Trinity, yes, but more fundamentally, we worship. This posture, this bowing, kneeling before the incomprehensible, is precisely what we need to form us properly and reunify us in our fragmentation.
Note also the threefold structure in verse 36: “ex ipso, et per ipsum, et in ipso … from Him, and through Him, and in Him.” This is certainly a veiled Trinitarian formula: the Father is the origin (ex ipso), the Son the means (per ipsum), and the Holy Spirit the end or goal (in ipso). Not distinct operations, but distinct relations in one divine essence. God’s unity is so rich that it overflows into tri-personal communion. So the Canon of the Mass concludes with the elevation of the Host and Chalice and the awe-filled echo of Romans 11, “gloria in saecula … glory forever!”
Remembering that the assignment of chapters and verses in our Bibles was imposed long after their acceptance as divinely inspired, here are the verses that follow:
I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
All that we are rooted in and are directed to is worship. This is why how we worship is so important to fulfill the virtue of Religion.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, “Religion is a virtue whereby a man gives due worship to God.” By the virtue of Justice, we give to human persons what is due to them. God, too, is personal, three Persons having the same divine essence. The uncreated Persons of the Trinity are substantially different from created human or angelic persons. Hence, a different virtue identifies what is due to divine Persons: Religion is giving to God what is His due, that is, worship, reverence, and obedience. Religion orders the soul to God, acknowledging His supreme excellence. Religion shapes our liturgical acts, personal prayer, and sacrificial offering. Aquinas explains that interior devotion is the chief act of religion and that external acts express and nourish it. Thus, religion binds us rightly to God, forming the foundation of all true moral life. This virtue finds its fullness in the Christian understanding of and worship of God as the Most Holy Trinity. Every liturgical act, every prayer, every sacrifice of the altar is offered to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Aquinas insists that proper worship flows from right knowledge, and no knowledge is more sublime than that of the Triune God. The virtue of religion, then, rightly orients us to adore the mystery of the Trinity with mind, heart, and action.
In our age of distraction and fragmentation, the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity offers a corrective. God has relationality at His core.
In the mystery of the Unity and Trinity of God we believe that, from all eternity and before material creation and even outside of time itself, the One God who desired a perfect communion of love expressed Himself in a perfect Word, containing all that He is. The Word God uttered was and is a perfect self-expression, also perfectly possessing what the Speaker possesses: being, omniscience, omnipotence, truth, beauty, and even personhood. So, from all eternity there were always two divine Persons, the God who spoke and the Word who was spoken, the God who Generates and the God who is Generated, true God with and from true God, Begetter and Begotten, Father and Son. There was never a time when this was not so. These two Persons eternally regard and contemplate each other. From all eternity they knew and loved each other, each offering the other a perfect gift of self-giving. Since the self-gift of these perfect and divine Persons, distinct but sharing one divine nature, can be nothing other than a perfect self-gift, perfectly given and perfectly received, the very Gift between them also contains all that each of the Persons have: being, omniscience, omnipotence, truth, beauty, and even personhood. Therefore, from all eternity there exist three distinct divine Persons having one indivisible divine nature, Father, Son and the perfect self-gift of love between them, the Holy Spirit.
This is a foundational, saving doctrine we believe in as Christians. At the core of everything else we believe in and hope for, we will find this mysterious doctrine of divine relationship, the Triune God.
By baptism we as images of God are brought into a new relationship with this Triune God.
We become the adoptive children of the heavenly Father, members of the Son our Lord Jesus Christ in the Mystical Person of the Holy Church which He founded. The Holy Spirit makes of us His dwelling so that all the divine Persons are present to us and in us, informing all that we are, do and say. Our membership in the Church opens the way to an eternal relationship of glory and praise with the Trinity.