Our faith in God, the Blessed Trinity

It has been an inborn custom of Filipinos to start prayer, before meals, work, play, any activity, before making crucial decisions, before engaging in competitions to make the Sign of the Cross "in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit". Jeepney and taxi drivers do that when they pass by a church. Our grandmothers cross the newly-cooked rice before scooping it into the service platter in the same Name of the three Divine Persons in God. travelers do the sign invoking Father, Son and Holy Spirit before a journey. Most people cross themselves when they are in dangerous terrain or when on a bus and the roads become dangerous.

The custom must have come from a tradition of catholicity imbibed by ancestors from Spanish evangelizers. I am sure, most of the masses who have imbibed the custom have not even been catechized; neither do they fully understand the great mystery in the prayer which blesses all thoughts and acts and even objects in the name of one God in three Persons. And yet they believe in the power of making the Sign of the Cross at the same time honoring an incomprehensible truth – the mystery of three Persons in one God whom we call the Blessed Trinity. But that even unschooled people devotedly pray to the Trinity because they believe in faith that their life depends on it proves that God can hide truths from the wise and learned and reveal them to little ones. But that these lowly ones who even if they have not studied Trinitarian theology can confess that we have been blessed with God’s grace in the Father, Son and Spirit is already to confess our faith in the Blessed Trinity.

Today celebrates the solemnity of the most Blessed Trinity, the greatest mystery of our Catholic faith. It is truth which is not meant for us to grapple with and seek to explain in logical propositions. This is a truth that is revealed to us. We simply accept the truth in faith that the Persons we call Father is the source of perfect knowledge which is given to the humankind through the Son who is the WORD made flesh who dwelt among us, the perfect expression of the Father’s knowing, Perfect Love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. The life of the Trinity is a life of perfect knowing and perfect loving. The life of the Trinity is relational. The Holy Spirit who is the love of the Father and the Son binds the three Persons into a perfect unity.

We have been made into the image and likeness of God in that we are all gifted with the faculty of knowing the object of which is the truth, and loving the object of which is the good. This is the life of God in us when we are in state of grace. It is the life of the Trinity in us which we call sanctifying grace. No one enters heaven without this grace which we lose when we commit a really grievous sin which is revolting to God. No one can be united to God unless the very life of the Trinity is in him. The undwelling of the Trinity in our souls alone can unite us to God whereby we possess eternal life. This is life in God, the very life which gives Him glory. "The glory of God is man fully alive," said St. Irenaeus.

Jesus, before His ascension to heaven testified to His Trinitarian roots: "...the Spirit of truth, He will guide you in all truth... He will glorify Me because He will take from what is Mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is Mine; for this reason I told you that He will take from what is Mine and declare it to you." (John 16:12-14).

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, John 16:12-15