Solemnity of the Holy Trinity - Sunday 26 May 2024

1. Who is God? Mankind has always asked this question and there are various paths to seek an answer. Two especially: to struggle alone, but this presupposes that the mystery of God is within our grasp, which seems highly unlikely, or to let God Himself manifest Himself.  In the Old Testament, the Lord creates man through the 'ruah', the breath that gives life, the divine breath that little by little reveals who God is in a gradual process that reaches, at the culmination of the journey, the mystery of the Trinity: God One and Trinity.  Israel, chosen to be God's people, had to walk the long road of the Old Testament, thanks to the unceasing work of the prophets, to free itself from polytheism and come to believe in the one God. However, pure monotheism was not achieved in one fell swoop and an intermediate stage was that of henotheism: that is, a single God of Israel was professed, meaning that other peoples had their own gods. It was probably during the Babylonian exile that the God of Abraham and Moses was discovered as the only God of the entire universe. The profession of faith 'Shema Israel, Hear Israel, our God is Lord One' has then taken on its full value. But this oneness of God appears completely incompatible with the recognition of the Spirit 'ruah' as a person. This will happen with Pentecost and will mark the experience of the first Christian communities. As for the Son of God, this title usually given to each king on the day of his coronation in no way signified a generational link. It was Jesus himself who revealed this, but even his words were only understood in the light of Pentecost.

2. The understanding of the mystery of the Trinity, despite every human effort, is still not totally perceptible with the intelligence, but is only accepted in the adherence of faith. The Holy Trinity - One God is thus the final stage of God's self-revelation and helps to understand at the same time the Trinitarian structure of our own personal existence: we have been created in the image and likeness of God, body, soul and spirit. 

In the first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, composed late in the Bible, the divine plan of his revelation is presented: He is both the God of the chosen people and the God of all peoples because he is the one and only true God. For Israel, freed from polytheism, it was impossible to conceive of a One and Three Persons God, and the first stage of divine pedagogy, which marks the entire Old Testament, was the self-revelation of God as the One God.  The passage from Deuteronomy (the first reading) summarises in a few words the catechism of the people of Israel, that is, the first stage of divine pedagogy: "Know therefore this day and meditate well in your heart that the Lord is God up there in heaven and down here on earth: there is no other.  In other words: there are not many gods, but God alone is God, without giving a definition or description of God. On the other hand, the wonders and marvellous works performed by him are recounted: "Question the ancient times when God created man on earth, and from one end of the heavens to the other was there ever such a thing as this, and was there ever heard such a thing as this? ". God will give his people the promised land and the commandments as a code of happiness: "Observe therefore his laws and his commands that you and your children may be happy". The people react to this unexpected revelation of God with wonder and surprise. One could think of a creator and powerful God, but how can one imagine a God who reveals himself, who speaks of himself, who chooses a people and takes an interest in them, intervenes on their behalf in many ways? Yet God did not make himself known as the distant God and the God of power the Elohim, but as the Lord, that is, the God of presence who reveals to Moses his name made up of four consonants: "YHVH". It will remain to be understood that his presence is not only for Israel, but for all peoples, and the chosen people will have to understand that they have been chosen not to conquer others, but to place themselves at the service of all mankind.  As a covenant people Israel is destined - notes André Chouraqui - to become the future instrument of the covenant of peoples.

3. The concluding page of Matthew's gospel, which we meditate on today, presents Jesus at the end of his stay on earth, as he entrusts the apostles with the task of continuing his own mission: "Go and make disciples of all nations" and reassures them: "I am with you always, until the end of the world". The Master trusts to send them to all parts of the world for a mission that will last until the end of time, a mission full of risks to witness Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man. In fact, announcing Jesus Christ dead and risen as God was a scandal and blasphemy for the Jews, while the pagans considered it human foolishness, as St Paul notes in the First Letter to the Corinthians: "Christ crucified is a scandal to the Jews, foolishness to the Gentiles, but to those who believe he is power, the wisdom of God!  

The Master closes his earthly mission by entrusting his followers with the task of setting the world on fire with the fire of his love: "Go and baptise all peoples in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Here we have the first presentation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. By using the expression in the name of the Father, which recurs frequently in the Bible, it is clearly evident that we are dealing with one and the same God; at the same time the three Persons are named distinctly: in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. In biblical language, the noun indicates the person and the verb to baptise means to immerse: it is therefore understood that baptism immerses us forever, as in a bath of eternal salvation, in the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. Moreover, Jesus' command is precise and peremptory: "Go!". For how can we not be caught up in the rush when we understand such an important and exciting mission that constitutes the secret of human happiness and that is for every person of different cultures and races, until the end of time?

4. Through baptism each of us has been immersed in God, the Holy Trinity: Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and we are reborn to immortal life to bear witness that Christ is alive. From the very beginning, the Trinitarian formula of baptism represented a real revolution for the first Christian communities, which, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, had to suffer misunderstandings and persecutions by the Jews, persecutions that even seemed inevitable precisely to defend the oneness of God. Jesus predicted it well: they will drive you out of the synagogues and persecute you; worse still, they will kill you, imagining that they are thus truly worshipping God. And they will do all this because they have known neither me nor the Father (cf. Jn 16:2-3). Then, as now, the mission that the Master entrusts to Christians is humanly insane and it remains impossible to explain with human reasoning how God is One and Triune. So what? Every true conversion occurs when, although one considers it necessary to search for God with the human intelligence, one humbly recognises that it is inadequate to grasp the mystery of the One and Triune God, and with trust one surrenders oneself into the heart of God, allowing oneself to be transformed by His love: Holy Trinity, life of love and path of the saints. St Anselm of Aosta, in the year 1000, making his own an expression of St Augustine, concludes his research in this way: 'I believe in order to understand, I do not understand in order to believe'. And he adds, praying: "Lord, teach me to seek you and to show you that I seek you. I cannot seek you if you do not teach me, nor find you if you do not show yourself. May I seek you by desiring you, may I desire you by seeking you, may I find you by loving you, and may I love you by finding you."

 + Giovanni D'Ercole 

P.S. I conclude with an episode from the life of St John XXIII. A few days after his election as pope - we are in October 1958 - he receives a visit from a friend who says to him: 'Your Holiness how heavy is the load you have accepted to carry!'  The Pope replied: "It's true, in the evening when I go to sleep I think "Angelo you are the pope" and I struggle to sleep; but after a few minutes I say to myself "Angelo, how stupid you are, the person in charge of the Church is not you, but the Holy Spirit, and a little later I turn away and fall asleep". Even if we do not come to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity, we can sleep peacefully without anxiety. Evangelisation is our mission, but Jesus made it very clear that all power was given to him in heaven and on earth. He adds to reassure us: I am with you all days until the end of the world. The God who revealed his presence to Moses in the burning fiery furnace and Emmanuel, the God with us, promised in the prophecies of Isaiah are none other than the Spirit of Love that unites them, the Spirit that guides the Church and the mission of every believer. The commitment is to make visible with life this loving presence of God-Trinity.