The Sunday after Pentecost is celebrated as the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, in which we reflect on the most central and important article of faith – the Trinitarian God – The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. During the Easter season (for exactly fifty days), including our focus on the person of the Resurrected Christ last Sundayduring the Feast of the Pentecost, we reflected upon the significance of the Holy Spirit, especially in the birth of the Church and its continuation of the mission started by Christ. This Sunday, we celebrate them all together with this Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. What exactly do we mean by mystery in the eyes of the faith? When we speak of mystery like the Trinity, we don’t mean something that cannot be explained by reason; it does not mean that there is nothing to say about it, but rather the profundity of its meaning and reality cannot fully be exhausted by human reason. We can comprehend and say something about it, but we cannot grasp the totality of the truth behind it. St. Augustine, one of the brilliant minds of the Church and known for his work on the Trinity, wanted to explain and understand what the whole mystery of the Trinity was all about. One time, when he was exhausted thinking and figuring out what the mystery of the Trinity was all about, he went to the shore to take a walk. He saw a boy, digging a hole along the shore and running back and forth to the sea to fill the hole with water. Augustine asked the boy what he was doing, and the boy replied: I want to empty the sea and put all the water into this hole. Augustine replied: that is impossible! And the boy answered him: Impossible, just like to understand everything about God! Augustine says that he learned his lesson from that moment on; he walked away, saying that that was what he was trying to do. He was trying to fill this little hole of his human mind and great intellect, though it was, with the vastness of the ocean of who God is and what God can do. For indeed, if we already understand everything about God, then we become God ourselves.
To celebrate the Trinity is not to solve a mystery or a puzzle, but rather to reflect on how this interior
communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit becomes a perfect model for our own relationships. Our nature as relational beings stem from the fact that our God is a God who wants to be with another. He is a God of communion. God could have presented himself in an entirely different way. He could have chosen to be a lone ranger — he doesn’t need anything outside himself— but he did not. He has shown us through the Trinity that to be fully human is to realize that we have a responsibility to others, and that the plight of others is important to the realization of our own humanity. The Trinitarian relationship shows powerfully the unconditional love that binds the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And, of course, this unconditional love was made manifest when he gave us his only Son as a ransom for our sins as the Gospel today proclaims. Communion, unity, and relationships are the primary messages of the Trinitarian model. It is not just a lofty doctrine, but truly a foundation in our own Christian
witnessing. If the Trinity is the center of our Christian faith, then how do the important core elements of the Trinity like communion, unity, and diversity take flesh into our own life? Am I a person that promotes
communion and unity within my own family, in my workplace, and with others? Do I even bother to
examine the quality of my present relationships with my family right now? Do I exert effort or even care to
understand the diversity of things around me so that I can better appreciate others and thus enter into relationships with them? A contemporary theologian, Herbert McCabe, put this succinctly — he said: “Our confession of our faith in the Trinity is not the assent to an obscure doctrine, remote from ordinary life, celestial mathematics: it is a declaration of the true nature of all love, our share in the perfect, equal love of Father and the Son which is the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity challenges us to get rid of our loves and friendships that are dominating, patronizing, selfish and exploitative.” As ardent believers of and in the Trinity, what are the practical ways we can conform our lives more and more to the Trinitarian love?
Next weekend, we will be celebrating the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, known as Corpus Christi. As announced for the past weeks, we will be having a Corpus Christi procession next Saturday morning (May 28). We will begin with a rosary at 7:30am and the usual 8am Mass followed by the procession. A group of parishioners have been working on this for several months, coordinating with the various ministries concerned and also with the Beaverton police. It’s approximately a mile in total for the procession route. I am incredibly thankful to our parishioners who took the initiative to plan this celebration. I know that the logistics for an event like this are not easy, but we are able to pull them together with the participation of various groups in our parish and the generosity of some of our parishioners. It’s a wonderful way to bless our city and also to share the most valuable treasure that we have, the Eucharist. I highly encourage you to take part in this wonderful tradition. - Fr. Cary