The Holy Trinity – The Center of Christian Life!

Sunday, May 31, 2026

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Ex 34: 4b-6, 8-9; 2 Cor 13: 11-13; Jn 3: 16-18

Today our Mother Church celebrates the solemnity of the Holy Trinity.

It celebrates the mystery of the ‘One’ God in ‘Three Persons’: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

An Irish legend holds that when nonbelievers found it difficult to understand the mystery of the Trinity, St. Patrick used a shamrock, a three-leafed grass, as an educational symbol to explain it to them. To enlighten his audience on the Trinity, St. Augustine preferred the relationship or coordination between memory, inner vision, and will, which together we call a ‘thought.’ Still others use the image of water to explain the mystery, as it is one element that can be found in three forms: liquid, steam, or ice.

When we explain the Trinity, all three persons are important. If we preach only God the Father, we might tend to believe God as a distant reality or a person up there in heaven living in total isolation away from His people. If we preach only Jesus, we may lose sight of the love of the Father whom Jesus radiated all his life and the role of the Holy Spirit who brings about sanctification. If we preach only the Spirit, we may forget the salvific plan set in motion by God the Father through His Son. Hence, worshipping the Triune God is not losing sight of each of their individuality and uniqueness. Rather, it would mean adoring a perfect relationship and imitating it in our lives. 

Nevertheless, when we think of the Trinity, one important question that should pop up within us is: ‘What does it mean to us that God is three in one?’ In other words, worshipping the Triune God is not to be lost in thoughts of mere devotion, with little realization of its meaning and significance for our daily lives. Hence, celebrating or worshipping the Trinity means ensuring that it profoundly impacts our lives.

Three insights are important in this regard. 

1. We must allow the Trinity to become the center of our lives. If it does not happen, then we give in to distortions. For instance, some tend to use prayer not as a relationship with God but as a bargain chip. Likewise, those who proclaim the prosperity gospel promote the view of God as a vending machine. Similarly, some reduce human life to being a mechanistic version of fate with no consideration for God-given free will and grace. The Trinity helps us understand that God is relational. It is a model relationship where they complement each other with no one person dominating others. When we find God more relational, we turn to our lives. 

2. If the mystery of the Trinity helps us realize that God is relational, we need to ask what animates such a relationship. That is when we discover the selfless and unconditional love that animates the Trinity. The early Church fathers used the term perichoresis (interpenetration, mutual indwelling) to describe the reality of the Holy Trinity. Originally, the term was used for a typical Greek wedding dance, which was performed by at least three persons. The dance was performed in circular movements, not only maintaining the rhythm and synchronization all the while but also keeping the dancers’ individual roles and identities intact and unchanged. Hence, the Church fathers used the term to describe the Trinity as a harmonious set of relationships in which there is mutual giving and receiving. Thus, perichoresis is the dynamic dance of love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

When considering the Trinity as a dance of love, what we must note is the fact that such a love cannot exist in isolation. Love cannot exist by itself. Love needs a lover. As such, the Trinity exists in love and for love. Thus, the Trinity helps us realize that our God, in the depths of His being, is relationship. God is love. Because God is love and relationship, Christian love is not an option but a mandate to live out. The Trinitarian love demands that we be compassionate, forgiving, merciful, inclusive, and caring in a way that others will witness to it. We cannot just romanticize the idea of Trinitarian love without manifesting it in our lives.

3. Witnessing to the Trinitarian love requires an action plan. One important concept of the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel is ‘available’ (disponibilite). More than mere physical availability, the word refers to a habitual attitude and inclination to welcome others into one’s own interiority, into the depths of one’s own being. In our world, Trinitarian love should be translated to the availability that Marcel recommends. When we become ‘available’ to others, we stand with them in their pain, grieve with them in their loss, share their joy, condemn their unjust oppression, and accompany them in their journey to liberation. When we are available, we become all for all. Did not the Vatican II proclaim the same in Gaudium et Spes? ‘The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts’ (No. 1). Martin Luther King Jr. asked Christians, ‘What are you doing for others?’ Hence, celebrating the Trinitarian love is to become responsible for others in love and for love. 

Thus, the Trinity is not a lifeless doctrine but a dynamic love that calls for a faithful response in and through our daily lives. Celebrating the solemnity of the Holy Trinity is not to be lost in festivities but to imbibe the love and disseminate it through our unfailing actions. 

Let us pray to the Father that we may be the change agents in the world through the grace of His Son Jesus and the power of His Spirit.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar