Perhaps most characteristic of Christianity is the doctrine of the Trinity: God is one, yet three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Of course, the center of our Christian experience is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Mary, the Incarnate God, the Word made visible, the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of Man, the Lamb slain for our offenses who is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the center of our Christian experience because it was in his person that God walked on this earth and is now taken up into heaven so that we, like Him, will one day be with Him for all eternity.
Have you ever, though, listened at Mass and realized how the Sacrifice of the Mass is offered to the Father? Our prayer is directed to the Father, through the Son. The Lord’s prayer is directed to the Father. All that Jesus did, and continues to do, is done with the Father, directed to the Father and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Our Eastern Rite Catholic brother and sisters have a deep awareness and appreciation for the Holy Spirit and in their liturgies are drawn up into the mystery of the Trinity. Their icons depict the Trinity. Their ecclesiastical apparel and the design of their churches draw one up into this mystery.
We in the Latin Rite often, I think, fail to develop a visceral understanding, or should I say, experience, of the Trinity. We have a gut sense of who Jesus is. We have only a ephemeral notion of the Holy Spirit (except, perhaps, a gifted few). Our experience of the Father is whatever our experience was of our own fathers.
I wonder if we are able to put it all together into a unified sense of the Trinity as Father, Son and Spirit. Part of what is inhibiting us is a declining sense of reverence and awe in our daily lives and even in the liturgical life of many Catholics. How can we approach a mystery as deep as the Trinity if we do not have a consistent experience of reverence and awe, a liturgical culture that fosters this, a well developed experience of quiet and rest, and a lived commitment to someone or something greater and more important that “me”?
When we are baptized, we are baptized into the Trinitarian life. If we die in a state of grace and purified of all stain, we will be taken up into the glory of the Triune God.
Let us do what we can, starting today, to develop a sense of awe and wonder, as spirit of reverence in our lives. The Holy Spirit will assist us here. Let us meditate upon, and enter into, the great mystery of the Trinity.
