By Fr. Roy Cimagala
WITH the celebration of the Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity, what we are reminded of is the truth of our faith that we too have to pattern our life after the Trinitarian life of God. In other words, that our life should also be Trinitarian, channeling the very forces of truth and love that eternally operate in the 3 persons of the one God.
This Trinitarian life, of course, is shown to us by Christ who did everything always in obedience to the will of the Father and under the power of the Holy Spirit. He did nothing outside of this loop which, we can say, is the very life and nature of God.
The Trinitarian life of God is the most important mystery of our faith, the fount of all the other truths and mysteries of our faith, since it shows us the inmost, intimate life of God in himself, even before being the Creator of the universe.
The relevance of this mystery in our life stems from the basic truth that we, as man, are created in God’s image and likeness, adopted children of his, and therefore made to reflect and, in fact, participate in this very Trinitarian life of God. The implications and consequences of this truth are endless, but let’s tackle at least a few of them later.
Through this mystery, which was revealed to us in full by Christ, we are told that God, though one, are three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, because the absolutely one and simple God is never an idle God, nor a lonely God.
He is rather a God who is full of dynamism, an eternal dynamism of knowing and loving. His knowing and loving are no mere acts that begin and end, that come from potency to act, but are so perfect that they create the three eternal persons in that one God.
God’s eternal knowing and loving give rise to the eternal relations within God. The God who knows and who loves is the Father. The same God who is known and is loved is the Son. The same God who is the very love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are eternally inseparable in their eternally dynamic life of knowing and loving.
With respect to God’s creation, the three persons are also all involved, with the Father being the decider or author of it, the Son as the pattern of creation with us, man, as the masterpiece since we are his image and likeness, and the Holy Spirit as the implementor and the keeper of creation, and thus our sanctifier.
The whole God is involved in our creation and keeps it according to his will, his designs and the natures in which each creature is created. In our case, God created us with the power to know and to love through our intelligence and will, which precisely make us his image and likeness.
Since we are God’s image and likeness, we have to reflect and channel God’s Trinitarian life in our lives. The key to it is simply to follow God’s will and commandments. Another way of saying it is to follow Christ, “the way, the truth and the life.”
The implications of this truth of our faith are endless. For one, we really should try our best to know and love everyone irrespective of how they are to us, the way Christ knows and loves everyone.
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
