The Most Holy Trinity & Father’s Day
To All the Members of the Trinitarian Life of the Epiphany
The Most Holy Trinity Sunday: (La Solennità della Santissima Trinità)
The Mystery of the Trinity: Three Divine Persons, one Truth, one Love, one God
(11th Week, Ordinary Time, John 16:12-15, 15 June 2025)
On this Feast Day in which we celebrate God: the mystery of the one God. And this God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Three persons, but God is one! The Father is God; the Son is God; the Spirit is God. But they are not three gods: it is one God in three Persons. It is a mystery that Jesus Christ revealed to us: the Holy Trinity. Today we pause to celebrate this mystery, because the Persons are not adjectives of God, no. They are real, diverse, different Persons; they are not — as that philosopher used to say — ‘emanations of God’, no, no! They are Persons. There is the Father to whom I pray with the Our Father; there is the Son, who gave me redemption, justification; there is the Holy Spirit who abides in us and inhabits the Church. And this speaks to our heart because we find it encompassed in that expression of Saint John which summarizes all of Revelation: “God is love” (1 John 4:8-16). The Father is love; the Son is love; the Holy Spirit is love.
(Pope Francis, Angelus, 2021)
Dear Beloved Brothers and Sisters in the Most Blessed Holy Trinity, Today is the Solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity. It is one of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith, yet, shrouded in great mystery for the human mind to conceptualize and comprehend and it remains a mystery beyond human comprehension. Today, we contemplate the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity—one God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Far from being merely a doctrine to be explained, Trinity is a mystery to be adored, lived, and shared.
At the heart of the Trinity is relationship. God is not a solitary being but a communion of love. The Father loves the Son; the Son responds in perfect love; and the love between them is the Holy Spirit (Vinculum Amoris)—a bond so real and life-giving that it is itself a Person. This is not abstract theology. It is deeply personal and pastoral. We were created in the image of this Triune God—not as isolated individuals, but as beings made for relationship: with God, with one another, and with creation.
Trinity-The term Trinity or Trinitas (in Latin), is not explicitly found in the bible. It was first used by Tertullian (His original name in Latin is: Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, 160-240 AD, Carthage, Tunisia). He explains that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are “one in essence – not one in Person.” He is the first to use “Person” and “Substance”, with reference to the Trinity. He is known in Church History as the Father of Latin Theology, as he was the First Church Father to write his works in Latin.
Trinitarian Analogies-Saint Cyril Equal of the Apostles, Teacher of the Slavs (Circa 827-869), tried to explain the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity using the Sun as an example. He said: God the Father is that blazing Sun. God the Son is its light and God the Holy Spirit is its heat — but there is only one Sun. So, there are three Persons in the Holy Trinity but God is One and indivisible. His older brother Saint Methodius (Circa 815-884), were Slavs, and these two brothers were born in Macedonia in the city of Thessalonica.
Saint John Maria Vianney (1786-1859) was a French Catholic priest often referred to as the Curé d’Ars (the Parish Priest of Ars). He explains Holy Trinity using Lighted Candles and Roses on the Altar and Water in the Cruets: “The Flame has color, warmth and shape. But these are expressions of one Flame. Similarly, the Rose has color, fragrance and shape. But these are expressions of one reality, namely, Rose. Water, Steam and Ice are three distinct expressions of one reality. In the same way one God revealed Himself to us as Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
Saint Anslem of Canterbury (Circa 1033-1109) is a Bishop and Doctor of the Church and earned the Title the Father of Scholasticism. His dictum perfectly captures the process of understanding the Blessed Trinity when it says: Fides quaerens intellectum (Faith that is seeking to understand itself). It can only be grasped through the light of faith and not just by reason alone.
Saint Anselm teaches us that there are three distinct Persons in one God, sharing the same Divine Nature, co-equal and co-eternal. Our mind cannot grasp this doctrine which teaches that 1+1+1 = 1 and not 3. Nevertheless, we believe in this Mystery because Jesus, who is God, taught it clearly, the Evangelists recorded it, the Fathers of the Church tried to explain it, and the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople defined it as a dogma of Christian Faith.
Foreshadowing of the Trinity in the Sacred Scripture
In the Book of Genesis 1:1, the Hebrew text uses Elohim to address God. This rendition of Elohim comes in a plural form of El (God). But it denotes singularity in plurality. It became clearer in Genesis 1:2, where the Spirit of God was hovering over the water. And in Genesis 1:3, the creative power of God’s word that took flesh in Jesus was made manifest (John 1:3,14).
In the Book of Genesis 1:26, the Scripture captures God not as a monad, but a community: Let us create man in our own image and likeness. That US is remarkable, and not addressed to the angels, because a creature cannot create, but can discover and procreate.
In the Book of Genesis 11:7, the confusion at the Tower of Babel was aggravated by the community clarion call and response: Come let us go and confuse them. In the Book of Genesis 18:2, describes how God visited Abraham in the likeness of 3 men.
At the Annunciation, God the Father sends His angel to Mary, God the Holy Spirit comes upon her, the power of the Most High overshadows her, and God the Son becomes incarnate in her womb (Luke 1:34-38).
At the baptism of Jesus, the Father’s Voice is heard, and the Holy Spirit appears as a Dove (Mark 1:8-11). At the As-cension, the Missio Ad Gentes (Mission to the World) was commissioned to baptize those who believe in a Trinitarian Formula: in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Mathew 28:19-20). In the Gospel of John, Chapters 15:1ff –18: 1ff., are replete with Jesus’ detailed teaching of the role of each Person of the Holy Trinity: God the Father creates, God the Son redeems us and God the Holy Spirit sanctifies us.
The Trinity as Relational Being-The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity reveals to us a foundational metaphysical truth: Being itself is relational. God, the fullness of being, is not monadic but triune—a communion of Persons who exist not in isolation, but in perfect and eternal relation.
The Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Spirit; yet each subsists in perfect unity of essence. The Father eternally generates the Son in an act of absolute self-gift. The Son, in receiving Himself entirely from the Father, responds in total self-surrender. The Spirit proceeds as the personal act of love between them (Vinculum Amoris)—a love so absolute that it is not merely a dynamic, but a divine Person. Here, love is not accidental to God’s being. It is constitutive.
Thus, if God is ipsum esse subsistens—subsistent Being itself—then relation is not a secondary category of existence. It is coextensive with the highest mode of being. God is love (1 John 4:8), not merely by action, but by essence.
Love as the Ground of Reality-The Trinity teaches us that to be is to be in relation. This contradicts every vision of human life that treats the person as a self-enclosed unit. Divine Being is not self-absorbed; it is ecstatic—literally ek-static, going out of itself. In the Trinity, we encounter a relational ontology, in which selfhood is fulfilled in self-gift. As such, love is not merely ethical. It is ontological. It is the mode by which divine Persons exist and relate eternally, and therefore the highest form of be-ing possible. Love is not a moral ideal; it is metaphysical truth.
Human Participation in Trinitarian Life-Created imago Dei, we bear the image of this relational God. The human person, therefore, is not merely a rational animal, but a being whose nature is fulfilled in communion—with God, with others, and with creation.
Through baptism, we do not merely enter a covenant; we are ontologically configured to participate in the Trinitarian life. The sacraments are not just signs; they are real participations in God’s own life. In the Eucharist, we are united with the Son, offered to the Father, in the power of the Spirit. We are taken up into the divine perichoresis—the eternal dance of giving and receiving that defines the inner life of God. This is not mystical poetry. It is metaphysical reality. We are invited to share not only in God’s activity but in His being.
The Trinity as Archetype of Human Community-The Trinity offers the archetype for all genuine human communion. In a world where the dignity of the person is often reduced to autonomy, the Trinitarian God reminds us that freedom is fulfilled in mu-tual self-gift, not in self-assertion.
Unity in the Trinity is not uniformity but harmony. Each divine Person is distinct, yet each is entirely given to the other. The Church, the family, and society at large flourish when modeled on this logic of distinction-in-unity. Community without co-ercion; individuality without fragmentation. In this way, the Trinity becomes a critique of both individualism and collectivism. Neither the isolated self nor the dissolved self reflects divine reality. Rather, the person-in-communion is the image of God.
A Concluding Reflection-There is a profound philosophical insight in the words of a child who once said: God is the love be-tween my mom and dad when they forgive each other. This is not naiveté, but a profound grasp of reality. Forgiveness, com-passion, unity—these are not mere moral gestures. They are the manifestations of Trinitarian life within our temporal exist-ence.
Every time we forgive, we echo the Father’s mercy. Every time we accompany another in suffering; we mirror the Son. Every time we reconcile and build peace; we embody the Spirit.
Final Exhortation
Dear Epiphany, the Trinity is not an abstract mystery for theological speculation alone. It is the very structure of re-ality, and we are invited not only to contemplate it but to participate in it. God is not distant. He is nearer to us than we are to ourselves, because we are made by and for Him.
Let our lives, then, become transparent to this mystery. May our Epiphany families, Epiphany community, and Epipha-ny Parish become icons of Divine Communion. And in doing so, may we become, in the words of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity: Another Praise of Glory of the Triune God.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!
Fraternally
Fr. John Peter Lazaar SAC, Pastor