Last Sunday we celebrated Pentecost; Today we celebrate the Feast of the Trinity and next Thursday we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. The faith in Trinity does not mean that we believe in three gods. It means that we experience God in three persons namely in three ways or forms. In Hinduism god has millions of forms.
In Christianity three specials forms are depicted as persons in order that humans can experience God personally and very intensively. All the three persons are equally important. This is the mystery of God. These three persons are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We cannot experiment the mystery of God but we can experience the mystery of God. God will let us to experience Trinity. We believe in the revelation of God as Trinity.
In the sermon I do not want to explain in detail the doctrine of the Trinity of God and give an appropriate answer to the question about the nature of the Trinity of God, it would take too much time. In the priestly training, compulsory participation in the lectures on the Trinity of God is at least 30 hours. This means that there is a lot taught and spoken about the Trinity of God. There are thousands of doctoral theses on the Trinity of God, starting with the concept of the Trinity in the Old Testament and the New Testament, in the Church Fathers and then with new studies on the experiences of the Trinity in non-Christian and natural religions. In worship, the only important question is whether we experience the Trinity of God in our Christian life and worship, and how we can pass on this experience to our fellow humans.
The New Testament contains only a few passages about the Trinity of God. In today’s Gospel we heard that Jesus talks about the Trinity of God and commissions his disciples to missionize the whole world and to baptize all people in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit. God as Father, Son and Spirit is an experience of God that people can experience in their own family as the father, mother and children. Through father, mother and children, God can be experienced in his relationship and togetherness and the experience of God can be experienced in the family. At the same time, it is an indication that the experience of God in heaven can be an experience similar to the experience in the family.
But where family is torn apart and intimate friendship is not experienced in the family, how can God be declared to be the model for human experience? How can family be the model of God? But the God of the Trinity is also the model of all friendships, all communities and relationships. God as love is revealed as community in the mystery of the Trinity. Jesus’ words that he will be with us always until the end of the world shows the presence of God in and in all situations of our lives and it is the certainty that we will always be protected and accompanied by God.
We experience this triune God in prayer and in every service. As we celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi this week, we experience the same Triune God who came into the world as Jesus Christ and who was given to us as the Bread of Life. Our faith in God is faith in the triune God, whom we proclaim and in the name of whom we were baptized. We are called to be missionaries of this faith and to pass this faith on to many people. I wish you courage and trust to be missionaries of the Holy Trinity.
Fr. Joseph Pandiappallil MCBS