Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, peace be with you. Today we stand in awe before the central mystery of our faith: that God is one God in three Persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is not a puzzle for the mind alone, but a living mystery that shapes how we see God, ourselves, and the world. The Trinity is love — love shared perfectly within God and poured out upon creation, but which is so grand that we can never exhaust its depths and beauty. God is a continual stream of inexhaustible goodness, beyond anything our minds and hearts can ever comprehend — much like Saint Augustine’s encounter with the angel who disguised himself as a little boy on the beach, who told him that to understand the Trinity completely would be like emptying the ocean into a little hole in the sand that he had dug. Augustine was trying to write a most comprehensive treatise on the Holy Trinity.
In our first reading, from the Book of Proverbs, we hear the voice of divine Wisdom, present with God before the world was made: “When the Lord established the heavens, I was there… playing on the surface of his earth; and I found delight in the human race.” The early Church Fathers saw this figure of Wisdom as the Son, the Word through whom all things came to be. And so, from the beginning, God’s plan was one of relationship — a joyful, overflowing love that delighted in creation, especially in humanity. He created all things and “saw that it was good.”
Saint Francis of Assisi grasped this intuitively. For him, all creatures were brothers and sisters because they all flowed from the same loving God. He saw creation not as random or separate from God, but as a mirror of the Trinity’s goodness. In every bird, in Brother Sun and Sister Moon, in the poor and the leper, Francis glimpsed the beauty of the Triune God and responded with praise: “Laudato si’, mi’ Signore — Praised be You, my Lord!”
Saint Paul, in our second reading, reminds us that this Trinitarian love is not distant: “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Here, Saint Bonaventure would have us see the Trinity as a fountain of love — the Father eternally giving himself to the Son, the Son returning that love, and the Spirit as the living bond of their union. And what is astonishing is this: the same Spirit who unites Father and Son has been poured into our hearts, drawing us into the life of the Trinity, making us children of God, and giving us hope that does not disappoint.
In the Gospel, Jesus promises that the Spirit will guide us into all truth: “Everything that the Father has is mine; the Spirit will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” The Trinity is not closed in on itself, but longs to share its life with us. Blessed John Duns Scotus reflected deeply on this. He taught that the Incarnation — the Word becoming flesh — was always part of God’s plan, not simply because of sin, but because God’s love is so generous that he willed, from the beginning, to unite himself to us in Christ. The Trinity’s love overflows so abundantly that it draws creation — and especially humanity — into communion with God.
Today, as we contemplate this mystery, let us not be content merely to speak of the Trinity, but to live in its light. Like Saint Francis, let us praise God in creation and in one another. Like Bonaventure, let us see the Trinity’s love as the source of all beauty, and let that love overflow in compassion and service. Like Scotus, let us stand in wonder before Christ, God’s perfect gift to the world. And let us rejoice that, through the Spirit, the Trinity’s love dwells within us, guiding us into truth, filling us with hope, and inviting us to share that love with the world. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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