We build life giving joyful communities by inviting and encouraging each member to contribute
Trinity Sunday – June 15, 2025
The Holy Trinity is a central teaching of the Catholic Church: called a DOGMA. But it’s a teaching which can bring much confusion to us if we try to understand it using human logic.
Sacred Scripture teaches us who is God: THREE persons as ONE Being. We get a hint of this in Genesis when Scripture says: “let us make man in our own image:” our, is plural, more than one. Then John’s Gospel reveals that Jesus said: the Father and I are one.
There are many other Sacred Scripture references which reveal the Trinitarian nature of God, including the 1st Reading that explicitly speaks of Wisdom being before anything was created.
Human language cannot properly describe God. Some say it’s arrogant to even try. However, by wrestling with the meaning of Trinity, we can come closer to knowing God.
Unfortunately, some people have presented human analogies as the full story of who God is in the Trinity: these are called heresies, or false teachings. Here are a few:
Modalism: Father, Son and Spirit are three forms of God: operating in three different ways; a bit like the three phases of water (steam, liquid, ice).
Partialism: God is divided into three parts: like the shamrock or three leaves on a stem.
Tritheism: Three different Beings that work together; like the peace symbol.
Subordinationism: The Son submits to the Father for eternity.
However, each Person in the Trinity is fully God, and not subordinate to the other(s). There may be confusion for some people because the Sacred Scriptures do say that Jesus submitted to the Father’s Will. However, Jesus is fully human and fully divine.
So, while the humanity of Jesus submitted to the Father it does not mean that the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity submitted to God. Confusing isn’t it?
Here is a good summary of the Trinity: Within the Trinity there is both unity and diversity: unity without uniformity, and diversity without division.
Essentially, and most importantly, the Holy Trinity teaches us that God is a community, and only by living in community can we find true happiness and meaning in our lives. The most important form of community in our world is family: mum, dad and children.
And it connects well with St Paul in our 2nd Reading, who talks about our sufferings, and the virtues of patience, perseverance and hope (gifts of the Holy Spirit).
“These sufferings bring patience, as we know, and patience brings perseverance, and perseverance brings hope, and this hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us.”
Each experience or feeling only makes sense if we live in a community, and live to make our community healthy: especially in family life we do have suffering, and we do need those virtues of patience, perseverance and hope. Mums and dads need each other for support to raise the children. But, children, are the blessing that give mum and dad meaning in life.
The Trinity teaches us that the perfect number of three is what forms a life-giving community able to withstand the challenges and sufferings that families face. A partnership of two is not as life-giving as a community of three. Partnerships endure for a time, but there comes a time when a partnership needs new life in order to enter into higher levels of joy.
The addition to a partnership in family life, ideally, is a child or many children. However, where that is not possible, the partnership can be open to nurturing the wider community: volunteering, caring for elders, fostering children, etc.
There are two more lessons we can learn from the Trinity:
1) community is the foundation of our lives, not just an addition when we feel lonely.
2) community only works when each person in the community contributes something.
In the Trinity we see the Father’s creative contribution, the Son’s redeeming contribution and the Holy Spirit’s contribution as the bringer of Truth, who guides us to the real truth.
Is building community the core of your life? Do you, do I, contribute significantly to our communities where we live and work: family, work-place and local community?
Today, instead of being confused by the technical details of the Trinity, the Church is encouraging us to see the importance of Community life to our present and future happiness. How we live our lives as community, today, determines whether our community will be joyful or sad tomorrow. Let us pray for the courage to persevere in building Community by empowering others. St Eugene, patron saint of broken families, Pray for Us.
By Gerard Conlan, OMI
