On The Blessed Trinity

[sub-labels: Holy Trinity, Jesus as God]

Today is the feast of the Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity. Last week, it was Pentecost Sunday, before that it was the feast of the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, and of course, there was Easter, and Lent, and Christmas, and Advent before that.

I do not recall if this is like so even back when I was in a Catholic high school - maybe it was and I was just not paying as much attention. But if I didn't go to Catholic school, here was a series of free Catholic Catechism schooling! It just really meant paying attention. But unlike in Catholic school, there are no written exams every two and a half months, four times in a span of a year, and no two-month "summer" break. This is real life, and the "exams" could be given anytime by anyone.

A charming person from another religion may come into your life, influence you much, and ask you to consider changing faiths. Or, one time, you might be forced to face a panel of two or more people, who are very well read with the Bible or a version of it, and question you about what you know. Or, a young man may suddenly come up to you and ask you, "Why believe in the Trinity when it is so much simpler to stick to the conviction of our God?"

One such man asked one such question to Fr. Stephen Placente, SDB, he writes for the Sambuhay publication (of St. Paul's, Philippines). How prepared are we for that "surprise exam" in life?

I must say that I am not 100% prepared... not even 75% prepared... or not even 50% prepared. And that is already considering I was in a Catholic school for 10 years. Because really, there is much to be learned and one life time may not even be enough. That of course, shouldn't also ever discourage us. But if you just try, and keep on trying to learn, that is well and good.

In Sunday's Gospel reading (John 16:12-15), Jesus says "Everything that the Father has is mine..." If God owns our lives, and everything we have, then Jesus says he owns them, too. He also speaks about the coming of the Holy Spirit of truth.

Right now, I am writing this a day after Sunday, and note to self - it is difficult to react and reflect a day after! At this point, I recommend you to read Fr. Stephen's write-up printed on Sunday's Sambuhay publication:

"The question of a wise man has half the answers," Professor Maman of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem often reminds his class. The rabbinic saying came back to me once when a young man threw me a question, "Why believe in the Trinity when it is so much simpler to stick to the conviction of one God?" Read between the lines: he has half the answers.

The teaching on the Trinity is not an invention of the Catholic Church, as some skeptics would like people to believe. Rather, it is a fundamental faith that leads us back to the preaching and witness of Jesus. In other words, we would never know this much about God if Jesus had not told us so. Surprisingly, there are Christians today who cannot bear Jesus' revelation. In one television program, a Christian pastor tried to earnestly prove that the belief in the Trinity is heretical. As one plus one plus one is equal to three, so too, according to his computation, the Trinity would make three gods. But the pastor misses the point. When you reflect on the Trinity, you throw your calculator away, for faith in the Trinity is not mathematical, but relational.

As in any human bonding, relationship with God deepens in the passing of time. When I met my best friend for the first time, the little I knew about him was his name, Ken. But as we matured, we discovered a lot more about each other apart from our names. Getting to know God takes us beyond knowing his name, YHWH. God tells us more about him as far as we are capable to receive his revelation. Students of the Bible are all too familiar with the phrase "progressive revelation." It is like baby Jeremy who starts learning a language, not by poring over Sionil Jose's novels, but by uttering his first loving words, Pa and Ma. We, too, learn about God step by step, from exclaiming his name to accepting him as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Understandably, the revelation of God does not stop with the composition of the Bible. It is narrow-mindedness to think that God speaks and reveals himself to us solely through the Bible. If that were so, God's mouth would have shut up sometime between 100-150 AD when the last book of the Bible was written. Yet God is still actively speaking to us today as he did in the past. Jesus affirms so: "But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth" (Jn 16:13).

What is the point of God baring his life to us in a deeper fashion? We find a hint in John's affirmation - "God is love" (1 Jn 4:16). God is Trinitarian because God is love. Love cannot be alone. Our experience tells us that the first impulse of love is to go out of oneself. A person who claims love but only has oneself to love must be egotistic. But God is love since God's love is the Son, and the love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. If you think that God should be "so much simpler" than this, ask married couples who live faithfully through the years whether an inch-deep meaning of love is ever possible.

Thus, behind the doctrine of the Trinity is the flame of God's passion leaping up, warming both heart and mind, of God and man who hold less secrets and share more love. When we believe in the Trinity, we become part of the love story that has neither beginning nor end. The teaching on the Trinity is a doctrine with a soul as it stares us in the face with a glaring truth: "God wants the heart" (Jewish Talmud, Sanhedrin 106b).

-- Fr. Stephen Placente, SDB