for the feast of the Holy Trinity takes place at
12.30pm on Sunday 11th June
at St Francis of Assisi, Llay
It was God’s good pleasure to make known to us His essence, in order to bring us into closer union with Himself, and to prepare us, in some way, for that face-to-face vision of Himself which He intends to give us in eternity. But His revelation is gradual: He takes mankind from brightness unto brightness, fitting it for the full knowledge and adoration of Unity in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity. During the period preceding the Incarnation of the eternal Word, God seemed intent on inculcating the idea of His Unity, for polytheism was the infectious error of mankind; and every notion of there being a spiritual and sole cause of all things would have been effaced from the earth, had not the infinite goodness of God watched over its reservation.
Not that the Old Testament books were altogether silent on the three divine Persons, whose ineffable relations are eternal; only, the mysterious passages which spoke of them were not understood by the people at large; whereas, in the Christian Church, a child of seven will answer those who ask him, that in God, the three divine Persons have but one and the same Nature, but one and the same Divinity. When the Book of Genesis tells us that God spoke in the plural, and said: “Let Us make man to Our image and likeness,” the ancient Jew bowed down and believed, but understood not the sacred text; the Christian, on the contrary, who has been enlightened by the complete revelation of God, sees, under this expression the three Persons acting together in the formation of man; the light of faith develops the great truth to him, and tells him that, within himself, there is a likeness to the blessed Three in One. Power, understanding, and will, are three faculties within him, and yet he himself is but one being.
Commentary from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805-1875).