In Festo Sanctissimæ Trinitatis - Responding to the Love of God

PRESENTATION: The Trinity is a Mystery

The Blessed Trinity is an incomprehensible mystery.

I am sure we have all heard the story of St. Augustine contemplating the Trinity on the seashore. A written account is found in an English translation of the so-called Legenda Aurea or ‘Golden Legend’. This was a collection of saints’ lives put together by an Italian Dominican named Jacobus De Voragine around the middle of the thirteenth century.

To refresh our memories, the story goes as follows:

While Augustine was working on his book On the Trinity, he was walking by the seaside one day, meditating on the difficult problem of how God could be three Persons at once. He came upon a little child. The child had dug a little hole in the sand, and with a small spoon or seashell was scooping water from the sea into the small hole.

Augustine watched him for a while and finally asked the child what he was doing. The child answered that he would scoop all the water from the sea and pour it into the little hole in the sand. ‘What?’ Augustine said. ‘That is impossible. Obviously, the sea is too large and the hole too small.’ ‘Indeed,’ said the child, ‘but I will sooner draw all the water from the sea and empty it into this hole than you will succeed in penetrating the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your limited understanding.’

Augustine turned away in amazement and when he looked back the child had disappeared.

Why then worry about this mystery at all, if it’s beyond our comprehension, why give us this feast day, and why have priests preach on something beyond our understanding?

Because, as many of the saints remind us, especially St. Alphonsus Liguori, whom we will hear from in a moment, the Blessed Trinity is a revelation of God’s love.

EXPLANATION: The Trinity is the Love of God

Our God is not a lonely isolated being demanding our love for His own fulfillment, He is a communion of persons whose very essence is Holy Charity, and who desires to share that with us.

As St. Alphonsus says:

Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year Sermon XXIX.—Trinity Sunday: On the Love of the Three Divine Persons for Man

Faith teaches us how much the Three Divine Persons have done through love to man, and to enrich him with heavenly gifts. In saying to his apostles, “Teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” Jesus Christ wished that they should not only instruct the Gentiles in the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, but that they should also teach them the love which the adorable Trinity bears to man.

God the Father has shown His love for us in our creation, again St. Alphonsus tells us:

Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year Sermon XXIX.—Trinity Sunday: On the Love of the Three Divine Persons for Man

God has loved you from eternity, and through pure love, he has selected you from among so many men whom he could have created in place of you; but he has left them in their nothingness, and has brought you into existence, and placed you in the world. For the love of you he has made so many other beautiful creatures, that they might serve you, and that they might remind you of the love which he has borne to you, and of the gratitude which you owe to him.

God the Son has shown His love for us in our redemption:

Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year Sermon XXIX.—Trinity Sunday: On the Love of the Three Divine Persons for Man

And what greater love and goodness could the Son of God show to us, than to become man and to become a worm like us, in order to save us from perdition? What astonishment would we not feel, if we saw a prince become a worm to save the worms of his kingdom! And what shall we say at the sight of a God made man like us, to deliver us from eternal death?

God the Holy Ghost has shown His love for us in our sanctification:

Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year Sermon XXIX.—Trinity Sunday: On the Love of the Three Divine Persons for Man

The Eternal Father was not content with giving us his Son Jesus Christ, that he might save us by his death; he has also given us the Holy Ghost, that he may dwell in our souls, and that he may keep them always inflamed with holy love. In spite of all the injuries which he received on earth from men, Jesus Christ, forgetful of their ingratitude, after having ascended into heaven, sent us the Holy Ghost, that, by his holy flames, this divine spirit might kindle in our hearts the fire of divine charity, and sanctify our souls.

The revelation of the Blessed Trinity is the revelation of the love of God for man, but like all love, it should inspire in us a love of God in return.

IMPLICATION: Returning love for love

St. Thomas Aquinas, when commenting on the precept to love God with our whole heart, points out that love can be fed by two sources: by our feelings and by our reason.

Love for God, however, is not a question of sensible feelings. Love consits above all in the complete identification of our love with God’s will.

St. Teresa of Avila writes:

The Interior Castle Chapter I: The Saint Speaks of the Difference Which Exists between Sweetness and Tenderness in Prayer

Perhaps we do not know what love is; and I do not wonder at it, for it consists not in having greater delights, but greater resolutions and desires of pleasing God in everything, and in endeavouring, as much as possible, not to offend Him, and in beseeching Him that He would promote the honour and glory of His Son, and extend the bounds of the Catholic Church. These are signs of love.

If we wish to love God with a pure heart, we must break any attachments that lead us “to drink from the puddles of worldly consolations,” as St. Josemaria Escriva writes.

An impure heart is not only tied down by the disorder of sensuality, but is also marred by immodrate desires for material goods; by the readiness to see others with distrust and envy and to hold grudges; by the selfishness that leads to thinking about oneself and overlooking others; by interior laziness that give rise to daydreams and fantasies and hinders the presence of God.

If we want to return love for love, to love God as He deserves, knowing His great love for us; if we find that our hearts are cold even when we are reminded of the love God has for us, then we need to focus on three things.

The first is self-knowledge. We must recall that everything good we have comes from God, and therefore see the need to give thanks and purify our hearts.

The second is docility. Being docile to God’s grace means striving, with God’s help, to carry our what the Holy Ghost suggests to us in the intimacy of our heart. It means fulfilling our duties faithfully, first and foremost our commitments to God. It also means accepting normal difficulties at work and in our interactions with others, and it means avoiding deliberate venial sins and faults.

The third is being faithful in little things: small mortifications in our work or in family life, going to Confession on the day we have set for this, making a careful examination of conscience to see where we have failed and where God wants us to struggle the next day, getting up on time in the morning, and changing the topic (or at least keeping quiet) in conversations when an absent person is not spoken well of.

As we receive Our Lord in Holy Communion this day, let us offer our thanks for the great revelation of God’s love in the Blessed Trinity, and beg of Him the grace to love God with all our hearts in return.