Homily on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C

Credo In Unum Deum

Rev. Marcel Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, June 15, 2025

In the Nicene Creed, we say, “Credo in unum Deum,” which means, “I believe in one God.” If I believe in one God, why are we talking about the Trinity? Where does this doctrine come from? From Jesus himself! Throughout his public ministry, Jesus consistently referred to himself as one whom the Father sent: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). Although biblical figures like Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc. were also sent, there is something qualitatively and altogether unique about Jesus. There is something that sets him apart from those figures. He spoke and acted in the very person of God. Jesus was sent by another, whom he called in his beautiful Aramaic, “Abba,” that is, Daddy, and whom we acknowledge as divine. And Jesus himself is divine. As he was coming to the end of his public ministry, Jesus repeatedly spoke about another, whom he would send— the Holy Spirit. In John 16:7, he says to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” Jesus promised that He and His Father would send the Spirit who would lead the church into the fullness of truth (John 14:26). It was this divine Spirit who invaded the church at Pentecost, who sustained the early Christian community, and continues to guide the church in the present day. 

Christianity is a monotheistic religion. From ancient Israel, it inherited its monotheistic faith in the one God: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God is God alone.” Therefore, any movement in the direction of multiple gods, of polytheism, is ruled out completely. Check this out! The first Christians were all Jews trained in the strict monotheism of Israel. All of them believed in the existence of one God, not many gods. Yet, they believed passionately that the one God had revealed something new through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. They believed in the Trinity of one God. What is Trinity? A good definition of the Trinity is that there is one true God who exists in three persons— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit— one in nature, equal in glory, and distinct in relations. The Trinity is not about what God has done in human history, like the creation, the Incarnation, the institution of the Holy Eucharist, atonement of sin on the cross, the Resurrection, etc., but about who God is in himself. 

A lot of people, Christians included, are uneasy with the language of the Trinity. Why? Because it seems so abstract, so rationalistic, so out of touch. How should we understand the Trinity? When we say that “God is love,” everyone is relaxed and happy. What if I tell you that the idea of the Trinity is the explicit declaration of what is implicit in the claim that “God is love.” How come? The biblical claim is that God is love, which means that love is not just something that God does; it is not just an attribute of God, but rather what God is through and through. Other religions, spiritualities, and philosophies might say that God loves. Christianity says it, too, but much more. According to G. K. Chesterton, when we say that “God is love,” it means that in God’s own nature, God is love; within God’s unity, there must be a lover, beloved, and shared love. In other words, you cannot really say that “God is love” without affirming the Trinity. 

Furthermore, another basic claim of Christianity is that God has spoken. In the book of Hebrews, we hear, “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; but in these last days, he spoke to us through a Son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe” (Hebrews 1:1-2). For the Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, if God has spoken, there must be within God a speaker and a divine Word spoken. Who is going to interpret the divine Word to our little, fallen, and compromised finite minds? asked Karl Barth. It is the Holy Spirit. In today’s Gospel, Jesus, the Word spoken, says,  “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth…Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason, I told you that he (the Holy Spirit) will take from what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:12-13 and 14). The Holy Spirit is called “parakletos,” in Greek, which means, “someone who is called alongside.” And in Latin, he is called an “Advocatus,” which means “an attorney or an advisor.” Karl Barth said that if we accept that God has spoken, then there must be a speaker, which is the Father, there must be the Word spoken, which is the Son, and there must be the interpreter of the divine Word, the Holy Spirit, who is the “parakletos” and “advocatus.” 

Why do we need the Holy Spirit? Jesus knew that a lot of what he said and did during his public ministry would take his followers time to grasp, understand, and make sense of. He said, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now….” (John 16:12). In his seminal work, “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine,” St. John Henry Newman argued that Christian doctrine unfolds over time, becoming more detailed and explicit while remaining consistent with earlier statements. This development, he said, is not a corruption of doctrine, but rather a natural and beneficial consequence of reason working on revealed truth. Did the first disciples of Jesus understand the Eucharist the way we do today? I doubt! Did they understand the inner relationship of the Trinity the way we do today? I doubt! So, the understanding of doctrines unfolds over time due to the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus sends the Holy Spirit so as to guide us in the understanding of the truth. If we believe that God has spoken, then there must be a divine speaker, and we call him the Father;  there must be a divine Word spoken, and we call him the Son. And then a divine Interpreter, whom we call the Holy Spirit. If God is love, we must speak of the Trinity. And if God has spoken, we must speak of the Trinity, as well. 

The final template for understanding the Trinity is in the book, The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination, page 43, where we find this beautiful prayer to the Trinity: “O Father who sought me; O Son who bought me, O Holy Spirit who taught me.” The sentiment on full display in that short prayer is that God is Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is the Father who has been seeking us from the beginning. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, God has been seeking us. Seeking, not in the sense of not knowing where we are, but seeking in the sense of reaching out to where we are. The late Pope Francis has expressed the belief that God’s presence and light are always there, even in the darkest parts of the world. In those dark corners of the Northside of Minneapolis and elsewhere, where young people are peddling drugs, poisoning themselves with drugs and hard liquor, in those horrific places where heinous crimes and sins are being committed, our heavenly Father is there searching for his lost children. In Jesus, the Son of the Father, we are bought at a great price. In Psalm 49:8, we hear, “No one can ransom even a brother, or pay to God his own ransom. The redemption of his soul is beyond him.” One of the greatest revelations of Jesus is that God is our Father. Jesus himself called him “Abba,” an Aramaic word, which means something like Daddy. By that, Jesus is urging us not to view God as being distant from us. He is Abba; he is our Daddy. He is close to us and cares about us. He is someone we can turn to in good and bad times. He listens to us because he wants our good. You are worth as much as the precious Blood of Jesus Christ because that is the price God paid for you— the Blood of Jesus. The Blood of Jesus is priceless, so you are priceless. If God the Father is seeking us, he is finding us in and through the Son, Jesus Christ. And he is teaching us and drawing us into unity through the Holy Spirit. 

God bless you!