The Revelation of God as Trinity
by Pat Gohn in Faith on Monday, June 21, 2010 6:00 AM
Growing up Mom used to say, “Actions speak louder than words.” A person’s actions disclose hints about the truth of who they really are. The better we know a person, the more likely we will understand their actions, and what is communicated by those actions.
Applying Mom’s wisdom, the reason Christians know about the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is due to the actions of God breaking into human history. God chose to reveal the truth about Himself, and hence, the Trinity, over time.
Today we have the beauty of hindsight. But it is important for us to know the sources of this belief in the Trinity.
For centuries before the arrival Jesus Christ on earth, God’s identity as a Trinity was veiled. The Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs us about this hidden mystery.
CCC 237:
To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
Beyond the Old Testament, the central mystery of Christianity – the three Persons in One God – became known through the coming of Jesus Christ the Son, and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
If you were an Israelite living before the time of Christ, you would understand the One God as a Father. After all, He was father of everything as the Creator of the world, and the Author of the Covenant with Israel. The fatherhood of God was also well established through his relationship with the kings of Israel, and in his care for the poor.
Jesus came into the world ushering in a new and wondrous revelation regarding the identity of the One God.
CCC 240:
Jesus revealed that God is Father in an unheard-of sense: He is Father not only in being Creator; he is eternally Father in relation to his only Son, who is eternally Son only in relation to his Father: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him [Mt. 11:27].”
When I consider this, I begin to understand why the Apostles were sometimes “slow” to catch on to Jesus’ message. His message about the Father was groundbreaking. But Jesus always backed up his words with actions. His miraculous deeds revealed that He was, indeed, the Son of God; it was a radical new revelation to the people who witnessed it. (It was centuries later when the Church would formulate vocabulary words like “consubstantial” to define Jesus, as the Creed says, “one in Being” with the Father.)
Even more fantastic, the revelation of “who God was” interiorly did not stop with Jesus.
Toward the end his public ministry, in the moments before Passover, Jesus announces the presence of yet another divine Person: the sending of “another Paraclete” (Advocate), the Holy Spirit (Cf. Jn 14:16ff).
CCC 243:
At work since creation, having previously “spoken through the prophets”, the Spirit will now be with and in the disciples, to teach them and guide them “into all the truth”.
Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he left his disciples with the command to baptize future disciples in the name of all three Persons of the Trinity: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19).” After the Ascension, the Apostles and the early church learned firsthand of the Holy Spirit by his powerful actions. From the fire of Pentecost to the amazing works done by the Apostles using the Name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit’s actions revealed Itself, as foretold by Jesus.
This is why the Catholic Church baptizes in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: to put a person in communion with the reality of the Trinity.
CCC 233:
Christians are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: not in their names, for there is only one God, the almighty Father, his only Son and the Holy Spirit: the Most Holy Trinity.
In baptism, the formulaic words describe the action, and the action speaks of the truth of what is at hand. Baptism reveals the divine inner life of the Trinity as the destiny of the baptized.
As a Christian grows in their relationship with God, they go deeper in knowing the mystery of the Trinity. One can only hope that their actions speak of that relationship.
Want to read more?
CCC 265:
By the grace of Baptism “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, we are called to share in the life of the Blessed Trinity, here on earth in the obscurity of faith, and after death in eternal light (cf. Paul VI, Credo of the People of God, par. 9).
—Pat Gohn is a wife & mother celebrating 27 years of Catholic family life. Her Catholic writing, podcasting, and ministry life are found at PatGohn.com.
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