June 10, 2001
Year
C - Feast of the Holy Trinity
Jn.
16, 12-15
A priest met a humble and simple man, but who was intensely devout in his faith. “What prayers do you say, my son?” the priest asked. “I cannot read nor understand,” he replied. “All I can say is ‘amen, amen, amen.”
“Why do you say, ‘amen’ three times.”
“I have been told that there are millions of people praying to God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit; since they know how to pray and I don’t, I say to the Lord, ‘Amen, amen, amen’, Listen to them, God. I don’t know how to pray but let their prayers be mine too.”
Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Trinity, the special day dedicated to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity is one of the core dogmas of our Christian faith. Perhaps, it will not be easy for us to understand no matter how much we do research about it. But that is exactly what we human beings are, we are limited while God is unlimited. Logically, we can only have a very little knowledge about the Triune God. However, like the humble man in the story we can also say “amen, amen, amen”.
What is the significance of the Holy Trinity in our lives? We believe that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is ONE God but three different Persons. Being ONE means unity. Unity is one good characteristic of a community. Yet, when we belong to a community, we don’t lose our being a unique person. We are still individuals. We are individuals of different temperament, different culture and different upbringings. No two persons are similar. There might be twin brothers and sisters but in many ways they are still very different from each other.
Secondly, in a war, there is a good technique to defeat the enemy. They call it “divide et impera” or “divide and conquer”. This is the worldly method that has caused many conflicts and disunity. How is this “divide and conquer” works? Let’s take Jesus’ community of apostles as an example. Jesus and his disciples was in good relations with each other in spite of the usual arguments happening in their group. But when the chief priests gave money to Judas Iscariot, the apostolic company became divided. As a result, the apostles were dispersed.
“Divide and conquer” subsequently led to the isolation of peoples, separation of communities and the estrangements of the person from himself and others. And if there would be more and more misunderstandings in the world today, it is because we do not learn to become a community of unique persons. We are not asked to conform to others in order to form a community. We are rather encouraged to respect the different persons in our community. RESPECT is the key to unity in the community.
The Holy Trinity is the model of a true community. The Father is different from the Son and Holy Spirit. The Son is different from the Father and the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is also not the same to the Father and the Son. However, though they are different from each other, they are one. They are the Triune God, three different Persons but One God. Amen.