Solemnity of the most Holy Trinity

When we celebrated the Solemnity of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday, so many of us thought that it would be last feast of the Catholic Church, but today is another feast, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, and today’s gospel reading comes from John 16: 12-15.

“12 I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

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Today’s gospel reading gives you an idea that no matter what our Lord has spoken to his disciples, they still find it hard to understand what he is teaching them. For instance, how did they fathom the reality that Jesus Christ who was truly innocent, loving, and a very generous person who healed the sick and the lame would end up being tried like a common criminal and crucified like one? As most of his disciples wanted a savior king to rid Israel of Roman rule. But instead, Christ himself submitted to Roman aggression and cruelty.

So when our Lord tells his disciples, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine.” From this statement alone, you can hear that God isn’t a simple character but a complex one. You can read that our Lord was talking about the Holy Spirit and saying that what belongs to the Father also belongs to him. Hence this is a clear reference to the Holy Trinity.

To gain a better understanding of this reading, I suggest you study Lecio Divina, which in Christian teaching is simply “Divine Reading”. It is a monastic practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and not to treat scripture as an ordinary text, but rather a living word. It has four basic steps; read, meditate, pray, and contemplate, when you are confronted with the message of our Lord. This is what happens when people who belong to religious orders gather to pray by reading the scripture.

There is no question that when a priest or pastor talks about the Holy Trinity it is not easy to explain, but to be totally honest it is very simple to explain. As our Lord himself uses agricultural issues when he speaks to his disciples we too can have a simple explanation of the Holy Spirit by describing a mango fruit which is composed of three items; the skin that covers the entire fruit, the meat, and the seed. They are three items, but when one looks at the mango he knows that it is only a mango. It is that simple yet it is so complex that for man to totally understand the Holy Trinity, he first has to die and go to heaven where God can explain these to him so as to enlighten him with the divine truth.

For instance, we know that we all live in a three-dimensional world, yet we are all different in many ways as we are all the same human beings. At the time of our Lord when he was with his disciples, he taught them everything that they needed to know but after his resurrection, they were all so scared to go out and spread the Good News of our Lord that he wanted them to tell to all the people of the world. But as our Lord Jesus Christ promised them he sent them the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Day, which was the Sunday gospel last week, and we learned that 3,000 Jews were converted that day. With the coming of the Holy Spirit God has finally introduced himself to us as the Most Holy Trinity, the Triune God.