Holy Trinity C
June 2007
If you are a Catholic the very first thing you learn as a small child is to bless yourself - to make the sign of the cross. 'In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.'
In the earliest stages of religious instruction you learned that there was One God who consisted of three distinct Persons -the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit who are equal in all things. For me, and I suppose for you, this was something which was put on the back burner; was not very exciting and largely irrelevant. Even in the seminary as far as I can remember the subject of the Trinity was covered in only part of one lecture.
It was only in recent years that I began to realize that some understanding of the Holy Trinity was necessary if one was to make some sense of basic Christian teaching: for example, why creation? Why does God love me? Why the Incarnation? What does being a child of God mean? What does God's forgiveness mean? How should one understand the Bible?
God created me in his own image and likeness. God created the human family in the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity Family. So if I want to get some understanding of what makes the Holy Trinity Family tick, the first place to look is at a good human family.
For example why do a man and a woman marry? Why do they procreate children? Why do they spend their time and resources in doing the best they can for one another and for their children? Why do parents sacrifice so much for the sake of their children? Why do parents forgive and constantly care for even the naughtiest and most ungrateful of children? The human family is modeled on the Holy Trinity Family. Anything you can say about the love, care, forgiveness, tolerance, self sacrifice found within the human family can be multiplied a thousand, thousand times within the Holy Trinity Family.
Jesus Christ revealed to us the existence of the Holy Trinity Family. It was only within this context that he could try and explain to us what being children of God means, what the love of God means, what forgiveness means, what tolerance means, what self-sacrifice means, what salvation means. We are saved by becoming members of God’s family -the Holy Trinity Family.