If someone were to ask us after Mass today, “Can you explain the Trinity?” most of us would probably hesitate.
For centuries saints, theologians and scholars have tried to describe the mystery of the Trinity. St Patrick used the shamrock. St Augustine spoke about memory, understanding and will. Yet every comparison eventually falls short.
That is because the Trinity is not simply something to be explained. The Trinity is Someone to be encountered.
Today’s Gospel gives us the key. Jesus does not begin with a lesson about theology. He begins with love:
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.”
The Trinity begins with love. The Father loves the Son, the Son returns that love, and the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between them. Before there was creation, there was love. And because God is love, he creates, saves, and calls us into communion with himself.
In his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo reminds us that human beings can only understand themselves when they understand the God in whose image they are made.
He writes:
“Created for relationship, every human person is planned and willed by God to enter into communion with him, with others and with creation.”1
Created for relationship. That simple phrase explains so much about our lives. We are made for communion. We are made for love. We are made for one another. That is why loneliness and division hurt so deeply, and why we long to belong and to be loved.
Pope Leo also warns that despite our technological progress, we must not lose sight of what makes us human. He writes:
“The primary choice is not between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem.”2
Babel represents pride and self-sufficiency; Jerusalem is where God dwells among his people. The Trinity always leads us away from isolation and towards communion.
The Father sends the Son. The Son gives himself for the world. The Spirit gathers the Church into one body. Everything God does is an act of self-giving love.
As we make the Sign of the Cross today, let us remember who we are. We belong to the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
May our homes and our parish reflect that divine communion, and may our lives proclaim the deepest truth of all: God is love.