The Feast of the Holy Trinity

The Feast of the Holy Trinity

Trinity Sunday/First Sunday after Pentecost

Taken from, “Divine Intimacy,” by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., pp. 585-587.

PRESENCE OF GOD – “I return thanks to You, O God, one and true Trinity, one sovereign divinity, holy and indivisible unity. (RB)”.

MEDITATION

1. From Advent until today, the Church has had us consider the magnificent manifestations of God’s mercy toward men: the Incarnation, the Redemption, Pentecost. Now she directs our attention to the source of these gifts, the most Holy Trinity, from whom everything proceeds. Spontaneously, there rises to our lips the hymn of gratitude expressed in the Introit of the Mass: “Blessed be the Holy Trinity and undivided Unity; we will give glory to Him, because He has shown His mercy to us”: the mercy of God the Father, “who so loved the world that He gave it His only-begotten Son” (cf. Fn 3, 16); the mercy of God the Son, who to redeem us became incarnate and died on the Cross; the mercy of the Holy Spirit, who deigned to come down into our hearts to communicate to us the charity of God and to make us participate in the divine life. The Church has very fittingly included in the Office for today the beautiful antiphon inspired by St. Paul: “Caritas Pater est, gratia Filius, communicatio Spiritus Sanctus, O beta Trinitas!”; the Father is charity, the Son is grace and the Holy Spirit is communication: applying this, the charity of the Father and the grace of the Son are communicated to us by the Holy Spirit, who diffuses them in our heart. The marvelous work of the Trinity in our souls could not be better synthesized. Today’s Office and Mass form a veritable paean of praise and gratitude to the Blessed Trinity; they are a prolonged Gloria Patri and Te Deum. These two hymns-one a succinct epitome, and the other a majestic alternation of praises-are truly the hymns for today, intended to awaken in our hearts a deep echo of praise, thanksgiving, and adoration.

2. Today’s feast draws us to praise and glorify the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, not only because of the great mercy They have shown to men, but also and especially in Themselves and for Themselves: first, by reason of Their supreme essence which had no beginning and will never have an end; next, because of Their infinite perfections, Their majesty, essential beauty and goodness. Equally worthy of our adoration is the sublime fruitfulness of life by which the Father continually generates the Word, while from the Father and the Word proceeds from the Holy Spirit. The Father is not prior to, or greater to the Word; nor are the Father and the Word prior to or greater than the Holy Spirit. The three divine Persons are all co-eternal and equal among Themselves: the divinity and all the divine perfections and attributes are one and the same in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. What can man say in the presence of such a sublime mystery? What can he understand of it? Nothing! Yet what has been revealed to us is certain, because the Son of God Himself, “who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him” (Fn 1, 18). But the mystery is so sublime and it so exceeds our understanding, that we can only bow our heads and adore in silence. “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways!” exclaims St. Paul in today’s Epistle (Rom 11, 33-36). He who, having been “caught up into paradise,” could neither know nor say anything except that he had "heard secret words which it is not granted to man to utter” (2 Cor 12, 2-4). In the presence of the unspeakable mystery of the Trinity the highest praise is silence, the silence of the soul that adores, knowing that it is incapable of praising or glorifying the divine Majesty worthily.