The God we believe in

The church in its liturgy invites us today to celebrate the mystery of the Blessed Trinity: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three divine Persons in one God. There is hardly any other fundamental truth of our Christian faith with which we Christians have become more familiar. We all know that at the very beginning of our Christian existence we were baptised in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And throughout our Christian life we keep professing our belief in the Trinity each time we bless ourselves by making the sign of the Cross before we begin our prayers or undertake something of importance.

And yet most of us, who believe in the Trinity because Christ himself has revealed it to us, find ourselves faced by a 'concrete wall', as it were, each time we even attempt to understand what the Holy Trinity is, three distinct Divine Persons in one God.

All great theologians and Doctors of the Church throughout the centuries, like St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, have attempted to 'explain' this mystery for us. The conclusion they have all reached, however, is that "no contradiction can be proved to exist in the Trinitarian Mystery", which is tantamount to saying that 'no one can prove the opposite'.

The feast of the Blessed Trinity, coming as it does right after Pentecost, which marks the birth of the Church, insinuates in our minds as Christians our close and intimate relationship to each of the three Divine Persons. It reminds us that we were created by God the Father, that we have been saved by God the Son, and that we have been sanctified by God the Holy Spirit.

Many theological and devotional treatises centred on the theology of the Trinity have been written almost from the beginning of the Christian era; all of them, one way or the other, have underlined the importance of the Trinitarian mystery for us Christians and for the Church at large. Even visual 'representations' of this mystery are to be found throughout the history of sacred art; the most important and most beautiful among them is probably the famous Roublev Russian Icon, dated around the 14th century and now preserved in a Moscow gallery, representing the three Divine Persons appearing to Abraham in the form of three angels.

The solemnity of the Holy Trinity reminds us anew of the foundation of our Christian hope. As someone has said, "we are not loved by a distant God, but by one whose Son offered up his very life for our sake and whose Spirit keeps us spiritually alive".

And the Church today is kept alive by the gift of the Spirit sent by the Father and the Son, which makes us sons and daughters of God. This Spirit, which touches all of us created in the image and likeness of God, is capable of leading people who love the light into ever more profound and fruitful unity.

If the Church is the Body of Christ, its soul is the Holy Spirit. God the Father has so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son to redeem all men and women, His own children, and to pave the way in their hearts for the infusion of the Spirit. Hence the obvious question that we all should set to ourselves today: "How sensitive am I to the presence of the Spirit within me, and to what extend do I allow the Spirit of God to guide me all along the way, inspiring me with his divine love, sanctifying me with his grace, and saving me by his goodness?"