Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
[In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.]. Throughout the history of the Church, as people have tried to explain the Most Holy Trinity, whom we celebrate today, more often than not they have fallen into some kind of heresy. Some have advocated that our one God appeared in three forms, which is the heresy of modalism. Or others have advocated that God the Father, our one God, created the Son and the Holy Spirit, but made them like Himself, which is the heresy of Arianism. The best route has always been sticking with what God has revealed through Sacred Scripture (that God is one, and yet God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are somehow one God), and using the terms given to us by the early Church, especially the term Trinity, by which we confess that God is one, but is also Three Divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God desires our oneness or unity to be based in Him. God wants all human beings to believe rightly about who God is and who we are. God desires that we confess one faith that properly professes right belief and advocates right action. God desires that we be united in the truth and in the love which we call charity (the love of God). From the beginning, God has sent us out to make disciples of all nations, and bring them into the unity of the Church, rightly believing in, living by, and worshipping the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We desire all people to become Catholic, not by force or compulsion, but by the free assent of the mind which recognizes the truth and the freedom that comes from living according to God’s plan. And until that happens, our work of spreading the Gospel is not done. Until all people not only believe the Catholic faith with their mind and heart but also live in such a way that reflects what they believe, we can grow in our manifestation of the oneness of God.
At the same time, oneness in faith does not mean that we are all automatons who look the same, who all have the same vocation and avocations, and who give up our individual identity to a corporate identity. Yes, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, and yet the Father is not the Son, the Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit. They are different divine Persons, united in the one Godhead, or consubstantial.
That is why the Church, from the beginning, has welcomed people of all nations, not just Jews, to follow our Trinitarian God. Indeed, on the day of Pentecost, there were Jews of many nations gathered in Jerusalem, who heard the Gospel proclaimed in their own language. Very early on even Gentiles, non-Jews were baptized. People of different skin color, of both genders, slaves and free, rich and poor, and any other grouping you can think of were invited to change their beliefs and the way they lived their lives to the way that God teaches us through His Word and His Church.
This diversity is also a reflection of God, who is not one Person, but three. Each participates in the one work of salvation, but each does so with the identity of the Person, so that we can say that the Son suffered death, but we cannot say that of the Father. We can say that the Holy Spirit was spirated or breathed-forth, but we cannot say that of the Son.
In our own day, we tend to emphasize one or the other quality of God, unity or diversity. But an overemphasis in our reflection of these attributes of God leads to a disfigurement and poor reflection of who God is, just as the early heresies which emphasized either the unity of God or the diversity of God in one way or another did not lead to the true faith, but marred our understanding of who God is.
The temptation to overemphasize unity can often be seen in the Mass. The Mass is supposed to have a certain unity to it, a way that all people can relate to what is going on within that one rite. But there are 23 different rites or churches who celebrate Mass in a particular way, including the Latin Rite (ours), the Chaldean Rite (from Iraq), the Syro-Malabar Rite (from India), the Coptic Rite (from Egypt), the Maronite Rite (from Lebanon), and the Byzantine Rite (from modern-day Turkey), just to name a few. We also have diversity in our vocations and the roles those vocations have. The vocation to consecrated life (religious brothers and sisters, monks and nuns, hermits, and consecrated virgins) show in a most excellent way the priority of the heavenly life following Christ who was poor, chaste, and obedient. The priesthood continues the sacramental life of the Church, especially the Eucharist and Penance, in a way that no other vocation does. And married life creates new life through a sacrament which reflects the life of the Trinity in a way that consecrated life and ordained life cannot. The diversity of rituals and vocations are just two examples of how our differences can be beautiful and express the life of God in a way that only one does not.
At the same time, there is a temptation to overemphasize diversity, which weakens the unity of the Church and does not reflect God. We did not allow diverse teachings about who God is, because some of those teachings are wrong. We do not allow diversity when it comes to recognizing that life is sacred and a gift from God, from conception to natural death. The diversity of belief that women should be allowed to be priests or that marriage between two persons of the same sex is not based in God, and is not welcomed into the Catholic Church, because it is not as God has revealed reality to us. For diversity to be a benefit, there has to be some commonality that binds everyone together, not a free-for-all and scattering based on wrong understanding of who God is or how God has called us to live.
Just as with the false understandings of the Trinity, so with the human person and the Church today: either unity or diversity is emphasized over and against the others. Some, in order to advocate unity, would suggest that all Catholics should do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. Others, in order to advocate diversity, would suggest that it doesn’t matter what you believe or how you live. In reality, our Triune God shows us that both unity and diversity are realities of who God is, and that if we wish to live as those created in His image and likeness, we, too, need the unity and diversity of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
