A blessed Feast of the Most Holy Trinity to you!
St. Rupert writes: “On the Sunday following the Feast of Pentecost, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Trinity. The place is well chosen, for immediately after the descent of this Divine Spirit, began the preaching and belief in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
Praised and blessed be the holy and undivided Trinity, now and for all eternity! Amen.
The very essence of the Catholic Faith consists in the knowledge and adoration of One God in Three Persons. This is the Mystery from which all others flow, the infinite object whose vision is to form our eternal happiness.
Trinity Sunday
by Dom Prosper Guéranger
It was God’s good pleasure to make known to us His essence, in order to bring us into closer union with Himself, and to prepare us, in some way, for that face-to-face vision of Himself which He intends to give us in eternity: but His revelation was gradual. During the period preceding the Incarnation of the eternal Word, God was intent on inculcating the idea of His Unity, for polytheism was the infectious error of mankind; and every notion of there being a spiritual and sole cause of all things would have been effaced on earth, had not the infinite goodness of that God watched over its preservation.
Not that the Old Testament Books were altogether silent on the Three Divine Persons, Whose ineffable relations are eternal; only, the mysterious passages, which spoke of them, were not understood by the people at large. When the Book of Genesis tells us that God spoke in the plural, and said: “Let Us make man to our image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26), the Jew bowed down and believed, but he understood not the sacred text; the Christian, on the contrary, who has been enlightened by the complete revelation of God, sees, under this expression, the Three Persons acting together in the formation of Man.
In the Books of Proverbs, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus, Solomon speaks, in sublime language, of Him Who is eternal Wisdom. He tells us of the divine essence of this Wisdom, and of His being a distinct Person in the Godhead; but, how few among the people of Israel could see through the veil! Isaias heard the voice of the Seraphim, as they stood around God’s throne singing in alternate choirs this hymn: “Holy! Holy! Holy! is the Lord!” (Is. 6:3), but who could explain to men this triple Sanctus? So, again, in the Psalms, and the prophetic Books, but the world had to wait for the fullness of time to be completed; and then, God would send into this world His Only Son. By seeing the glory of the Only Begotten Son of the Father, we have come to know that in God, there is Father and Son. This Latter Himself has told us expressly that no one knoweth the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him. (Matt. 11:27) Glory, then, be to the Son, Who has vouchsafed to show us the Father! and glory to the Father, Whom the Son hath revealed unto us!
The Son has taught us that He and His Father are one (John 17:22); that They are one and the same Essence, in distinction of Persons. One begets, the Other is begotten; the One is named Power; the Other, Wisdom, or Intelligence. The Power cannot be without the Intelligence, nor the Intelligence without the Power, in the sovereignly perfect Being: but, both the One and the Other produce a Third term. No sooner had the Son ascended into Heaven, than lo! the Father and the Son send into this world the Spirit Who proceeds from Them both. It was a new Gift, and it taught man that the Lord God was in Three Persons.
The Spirit, the eternal link of the first Two, is Will – He is Love, in the divine Essence, distinct from the Father and the Son, Who had sent Him to us with the mission of abiding with us. (John 14:16) He manifested Himself by divine operations which are especially His own, and were the object of His coming. He is the Soul of the Church; He keeps her in the truth taught her by the Son. He is the source, the principle of the sanctification of our souls; and in them He wishes to make His dwelling.
In a word, the mystery of the Trinity has become to us, not only a dogma made known to our mind by Revelation, but, moreover, a practical truth given to us by the unheard of munificence of the Three Divine Persons; the Father, Who has adopted us; the Son Whose brethren and joint heirs we are; and the Holy Ghost, Who governs us, and dwells within us: Three Divine Persons, each possessing the fullness of Being, without beginning, without succession, and without increase; three eternal terms of God’s uncreated Substance – the Act, pure and infinite.