There Is More to the Mystery

What is the Trinity?  If you were a child asking this question, you usually were first told that the Trinity is a mystery.  Then, if you pressed a bit further, you were told that the Trinity is one God with three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.   Having heard that, you probably wished you would have left things as a mystery.

In attempts to explain the concept of one God with three distinct persons, analogies were often used.  The Trinity is like a shamrock, one leaf, with three distinct parts.  Or the Trinity is like an apple, one apple with a skin, the meat and the seeds.  God as shamrock and apple.  It may have stopped the questions, but not all that exciting.

The truth is, our Catholic belief in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the very foundation for everything else we believe.  Yes, it is a mystery and as the commercial goes, “But wait, there’s more.”  Much more.

What is the Trinity?  The Trinity is the almighty, invisible God of the Old Testament seeing humanity destroying ourselves by our sinfulness and sending his Son to become one of us. The Father, the invisible God without a face sending his Son, Jesus, to give his life for us so that our sins would not destroy us. Now God has a human face, the face of Jesus. Then Jesus returned to his Father and sent his Spirit to create a Church so that his face would live forever in the world on the faces of those who believe.

Who are those faces?  Those faces are the faces of Christ Cathedral. They are the faces of those in the parishes of the Diocese of Orange.  They are the faces of the members of the Church throughout the world.  Those faces are our faces, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit making Jesus present to the world. Now that’s exciting!