At home with the Blessed Trinity

At home in the Faith

There is perhaps a danger we might consider the Blessed Trinity to be such a vast and sublime mystery that we would fail to engage with it to our fullest. While the reality of the triune God is of course well beyond our understanding, it is however natural for us to delve into this mystery to the best of our ability and to savour its richness. In fact it might be said that the Blessed Trinity is our true “home”, the place where we belong and find our ultimate rest. The Trinity can be seen as “home” from different perspectives.

Firstly this mystery is the “home” of all other mysteries of the Faith. “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the hierarchy of the truths of faith. The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 234).

The mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption, of the Church and the sacraments, of the origin and end of Creation all have their source “at home”, in the Trinity.

At home with our identity

Being made in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:27) means being made in the image of the Blessed Trinity. Every human person bears the image of the Trinity in his or her very being. St Augustine gave expression to the so-called “psychological analogy”. God knows himself perfectly and this knowledge is the second divine Person, the eternal Word. God loves himself perfectly and this love is the third Person, the Holy Spirit. In the human person the faculties of intellect (knowing), and will (loving), mirror the divine Persons in the one God. In his very being each human person reflects the Trinity in whose image and likeness he or she is made, while the Trinity is the “home” of the true understanding of human identity.

The social nature of human beings, our need to be loved and to love, and the desire to communicate and socialise are also a reflection of life “at home” in the communion of love which is the Trinity. God is eternal love and communication between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Moreover through the Incarnation of the second divine Person, we too share in that life and love of God one and three. The human person needs family and the Blessed Trinity is the original family (cf. Eph 3:14). In these unusual times we are urged to practice “social distancing” precisely because “we are in this together”. The fundamentally relational nature of each human being is a reflection of life “at home” in the God who “is one but not solitary” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 254).

At home with our family

It could be said that our gateway into the Trinity is Jesus Christ, true God and true man. As the “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” leads us to the Father by the Holy Spirit (1 Tim 2:5). In Christ we are daughters and sons of the Father, who we can truly address God as Father. This we do by the working of the Holy Spirit as St Paul teaches: “When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom 8:16). The term “Abba” is one of untold confidence and intimacy. The Aramaic for father was ab, to which little ones tended to add “a” much as their counterparts now add “y” to Mam and Dad in English.

Through and in Christ we are made truly “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4) and interlocutors with God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Christian life is a matter of coming to know and love the divine Persons with their unique personalities, through the sacraments, prayer, and contemplation in daily life and ordinary work. In his homily “Towards Holiness”, St Josemaría speaks of the dynamism of Christian prayer in these terms: “Our heart needs to distinguish and adore each one of the divine Persons. The soul is, as it were, making a discovery in the supernatural life, like a child opening his eyes to the world about him. The soul spends time lovingly with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and readily submits to the work of the life-giving Paraclete, who gives himself to us with no merit on our part, bestowing his gifts and the supernatural virtues” (Friends of God 306).

At home in the Church

We participate in the Trinity not only as individuals but also as an intimately united family which is the Church, the mystical Body of Christ. “For all who are in Christ, having His Spirit, form one Church and cleave together in Him” (Lumen Gentium 49).

What is the Church then if not a participation in the life of the Trinity? Indeed as the Second Vatican Council states, citing words of St Cyprian of Carthage (+258), “the Church has been seen as a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Lumen Gentium 4). The communion of the Church is not just a symbol or a reflection of Trinitarian communion, but rather its presence here and now. For the baptised, the Church is mother and home, and this home is a sharing in the ultimate home which is God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Liturgy describes the Trinitarian nature of the Church in Preface VIII of the Sundays in Ordinary Time. Here the Church at prayer addresses God the Father:

“For when your children were scattered afar by sin,
through the Blood of your Son and the power of the Spirit,
you gathered them again to yourself,
that a people, formed as one by the unity of the Trinity,
made the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit,
might, to the praise of your manifold wisdom,
be manifest as the Church.”

Inviting everyone home

The evangelising mission of the Church is nothing other than the invitation to all people to come and share in the life of the Trinity. As the Council teaches: “The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father” (Ad Gentes 2). The mission of the Son, who came to us by becoming man at the Incarnation, and the mission of the Spirit at Pentecost and continuously now, are made present and as it were constitute the life of the Church.

The apostolic or evangelising activity of the Church and of each member of the faithful is nothing other than the continuation through history of the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The “home” from which we apostles are sent and to which we return, hopefully in the company of many others, is the holy Trinity.

Indeed the Trinity is the home from which we all come and to which we are all called to return, when Christ will restore all to the Father, by the working of the Holy Spirit, when “God may be everything to everyone” (1 Cor 15:28).

The Blessed Trinity. Not an abstraction, but home to our identity, our family, our destiny.

Home sweet home.