The Feast of the Blessed Trinity

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

This is the feast that talks about God the Father and as Three Persons in One God.  We have separate feasts for the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ on Christmas Day and that of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity last Sunday.

The Blessed Trinity or sometimes referred to as the Holy Trinity reminds us that God is a family in Himself.  A person is not meant to be alone, even things replicate or make an image of themselves by nature.  Let’s take a rock for instance.  When you remove a rock from a soil, we would notice a concave form of the soil molded by the rock for sitting there for some time.  That’s the rock naturally making an image of itself.  When you throw that rock on a glass window, the rock would make an image of itself on the fracture of the window.  When we go higher in the hierarchy of creation say a plant, it has a higher form of replicating itself.  Plant would produce seeds to make an image of itself.  St. Thomas Aquinas says that the higher the being in the hierarchy of creation the more perfect and the more interior would be the way it makes an image of itself.  The rock’s way of replicating through the indentation on the soil and the mark it left on the broken window is a lower level of replicating than the plant producing seeds.

Animals have a higher way of replicating themselves because they would have to mate with other animals to produce an image of themselves.  The replica image would be more interior because the baby animal is growing inside the womb of the mother.  When we come to humans, it would be a quantum leap.  We don’t just replicate ourselves physically like the animals but also spiritually through our minds.  When we examine ourselves for example or when the subject of our thinking is ourself, which is the process of trying to know ourselves, it is an act as if we are making a second self, look on our first self.   It’s being outside of ourselves, to see ourselves.  Only humans can do this, not animals, because of our power of consciousness.  Consciousness means we are aware of being alive, thinking and in control of our actions.

When we arrive at the Highest Being, God, who is Infinitely Perfect and Powerful, His thought would become another being.  We human beings’ knowledge of ourselves remains a thought but with God it becomes another Person. God’s knowledge of Himself becomes another Person, and that would be the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity or God made man in Jesus Christ.  That’s why Christ is called “The Word” in St. John’s Gospel because word means concept or God’s idea of Himself.  And God after seeing a Perfect Image of Himself in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, He then falls in love with that Perfect Image, to the extent that it gives birth so to speak with another Person, and that would be the Holy Spirit who is the love-image between the Father and the Son.  That’s why the Holy Spirit is sometimes called the Spirit of Love because He is the product of the love between God the Father and God the Son.  And this all happens in eternity and that would make that a mystery because it does not happen over time like there is gestation or pregnancy period to give birth to the Son and Holy Spirit.  The Holy Trinity is a mystery because we are talking about God Himself a Being that is indescribable.  St. Thomas would say that we know who God is not, but we cannot fully know who God is.

We might not be aware of it, but we deal with each Person of the Blessed Trinity in the manner that we pray.  When we acknowledge ourselves as children of God, we refer to God the Father.  When we try to imitate God who told us, “Be holy for I am holy” (1 Pet 1:16), we are trying to emulate Jesus Christ, God the Son, who is our model in the spiritual life.  And when we ask God for an inspiration, in doing the right thing or when we are confused and not sure what to do on certain situations, we are actually asking light from God the Holy Spirit, who is the Counsellor of each Christ follower.  And perhaps as a resolution to grow in our devotion to the Blessed Trinity let us heartily say the “Glory Be” prayer and in the doing the “Sign of the Cross,” specific prayers addressed to the Blessed Trinity.