In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Today we celebrate this Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.
And this day we celebrate the principal mystery of our Christian faith,
that mystery which has the very first place, the mystery of God himself,
the fact that God is three persons in one divine nature,
that the Father is true God, that the Son is true God,
and that the Holy Spirit is also true and eternal God.
And yet, there are not three gods, but only one true God.
And this mystery separates us from all of the other religions of the world,
the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
And it's a mystery that we don't have a claim to,
that is, we don't have rights on it.
In a certain sense, we didn't deserve to know it.
And we could not know it,
unless God decided of his own free will,
out of his goodness and out of his love,
to reveal it to us.
We can come to the knowledge of the existence of God
with the use of our own human reason.
But we could never come to the knowledge of this mystery of the Trinity
unless God had revealed it to us.
And this demonstrates God's love for us.
It's like in any other relationship,
in a human relationship,
a relationship of love,
what do lovers do?
Well, at first, they have confidence in one another.
They reveal things to one another
which they don't reveal to anyone else,
except to that person who they love
and who they want to be loved by.
And so that's what God does with us.
He has revealed this mystery,
this intimate mystery of his own being to us.
Why?
Because he loves us.
And he wants us to have a more intimate knowledge of himself
so that we may then in turn love him that much more.
Now, this mystery of the Trinity
wasn't revealed in an explicit way right from the beginning.
But rather, it was revealed gradually,
gradually.
We see in the Old Testament
that there's mere shadows of this mystery of the Trinity,
that there's a partial revelation,
that it's implicit in the Scriptures.
We go back to the book of Genesis
when God made man in his own image and likeness.
And what did he say?
The Scripture says,
let us make man according to our image and likeness.
He uses the plural there.
Let us make man.
Again, that's a hint.
That's a reference to the plurality of persons,
but of course not to a plurality of gods.
Then we have the mysterious apparition before Abraham
when he's out in the desert near the oaks of Mamre.
And these three mysterious men appear and they come to him.
And what does Abraham do?
He falls down on his knees.
And he addresses these three persons,
not in the plural,
but then in the singular.
He says,
my Lord,
referring to all three.
Again, a shadow,
a hint of the mystery of the Trinity.
And then we also have the vision of Isaiah the prophet
when he sees the seraphim who do nothing else
but stand before the throne of God
and praise him continuously.
And what do they continue?
They continually repeat,
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.
God who is three times holy.
Again, a little hint to the mystery of the Trinity.
But it's not revealed explicitly and fully
until the fullness of time
when God sends his son into the world.
When the second person of the blessed Trinity
takes to himself a human nature,
then it becomes revealed explicitly.
That's when God wants to reveal the fullness of his love
in the fullness of time
by sending his son to die for us and redeem us
and also to reveal the intimate inner life
of his own Godhead.
We see already at the Annunciation,
the archangel Gabriel says,
the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Spirit will overshadow you.
There's the third person mentioned.
And the power of the Most High will come upon you.
There's the first person.
For this child will be called the Son of God.
That's the second person.
And then we remember when our Lord goes out to be baptized
as he comes forth from the water,
the Holy Spirit,
the third person descends upon him
in the form of a dove,
and we hear what?
The voice of the Father saying,
this is my beloved son.
Again, we have everything revealed.
We also have the very words of our Lord
saying that he and the Father are one.
That is, they're one God,
but of course, they're two distinct persons.
And that both of them will send forth the Holy Spirit.
So again, this is all to increase,
our love of God.
And now on this day of the Holy Trinity,
we should also remember the one person
who has a unique and special relationship
and is a model for us all
with respect to the Blessed Trinity.
And that is our Blessed Mother.
She was called by the fathers of the church,
the complementum Trinitatis,
the complement of the Trinity.
The Trinity.
St. Francis called her.
She is the daughter,
the beloved daughter of the Father,
the mother of the Son,
and the spouse of the Holy Spirit.
Now when we get to heaven,
we're all going to have greater knowledge, of course,
of God and the Trinity,
but we'll never be able to get
our intellectual arms, so to speak,
around this mystery.
It's too big.
We'll have all eternity to contemplate it.
But no one knows the three persons of the Trinity.
No one understands this mystery
greater than Our Lady.
Because with grace, with love, with charity,
comes a corresponding degree of knowledge of God.
The more we seek to love God,
the more we seek to love our neighbor
for love of God,
the more this mystery,
will be revealed to us,
the more light we will have.
And for this reason, Our Lady,
who is full of grace,
who is full of charity,
who is full of love,
also is full of knowledge
of the Most Holy Trinity.
So this day,
let's approach our Blessed Mother
and ask her to increase in our lives
love for God
and also our knowledge,
a deeper knowledge of the Trinity,
the knowledge of this mystery of the Holy Trinity.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.