I was in a class full of aspiring theologians and the professor asked, “what is the greatest truth of our faith?” We all scrambled to conjure up the most impressive-sounding or profound statements we had encountered. 

 

Our guesses ranged all over: salvation, God’s love for mankind, the Incarnation, the sacraments, and so on. To our dismay, and with all our “wisdom” spent, he kindly shook his head no. Facing our intense stares and knowing he had captured our full attention, he told us that the greatest truth that any person, human or angelic, could know is that God is a Trinity. 

 

Our guesses had been about the attributes and works of God in creation, great truths indeed. But even greater than what God does is who He is in Himself. 

 

The supreme nature of this truth goes beyond the realm of theology. It is the ultimate truth of all disciplines, be it philosophical, scientific, artistic, or scholastic. This is because there is no thought, idea, or reality that is more worthy of contemplation than God Himself. No thing in creation is greater than its creator. 

 

Similarly, because all that exists flows from the Trinity, in some way it ultimately points us back to its source. Our professor used this dramatic approach to impress upon us the significance of what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “the central mystery of Christian faith and life.” (CCC 234).

 

The elements of our faith, our meaning and joy as well as creation itself are the way they are because God is a Trinity. 

 

The New Testament reveals God exists as a dynamic community of self-giving and life-giving love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Jn 14:8-17, 1 Jn 4:8). This love within the Trinity is the reason God creates: so that others might know and participate in that love. If God were not a Trinity, there would be no creation. 

 

Man created in the “image of God” is created for community (male and female) reflecting the self-giving, life-giving love of the Trinity (Gen 1:26). Man, destined by God to participate in the love of the Trinity, is not abandoned when he sins. 

 

God the Father sends God the Son, who gains the grace of our salvation through His paschal mystery. It is then God the Holy Spirit who pours out that grace on us, particularly through the Church and the sacraments. Individually, our new life begins with Trinitarian baptism in which we are recreated as children of God and become living tabernacles of the Trinity. 

 

All of the sacraments are ordered towards living, nurturing, and restoring our intimacy with the Trinity.

 

To revel in the splendor of this marvelous treasure, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity on the first Sunday after Pentecost. Solemnities are our highest celebrations, and this one is uniquely dedicated to adoring God for who He is. In humility and awe, we recognize the Trinity as a mystery. 

 

This does not mean we cannot know and have true intimacy with God. It means the Trinity is so deep and rich we could never exhaust all that there is to know about God. 

 

Beyond the intellectual joy of knowing the most sublime truth in all of creation, Jesus has a greater purpose in revealing “God’s innermost secret” (CCC 221). God is inviting us to enter into the eternal exchange of love. This is the joy of heaven. 

 

“The beatific vision, in which God opens Himself in an inexhaustible way to the elect, will be the ever-flowing well-spring of happiness, peace, and mutual communion.” (CCC 1045). 

 

As we celebrate this solemnity, may you encounter the beauty of God and “taste in advance … the goal of our journey here below” (CCC 163).