First Sunday after Pentecost--Trinity Sunday

Photo of Prayer Card of the Holy Trinity licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Pentecost signals the end of the Easter Season. But there are more solemnities that occur throughout Ordinary Time; the first of these is Trinity Sunday. The Trinity is the most fundamental dogma of the Church because it is about God. The Church in the fourth-seventh centuries dealt with the Arian Heresy, which stated that Jesus was not the same substance as the Father, in other words, Jesus was not God. This resulted in much tribulation in the Church. St. Jerome once wrote: “The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.” The Council of Nicea in A.D. 325 and the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381 brought forth the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, which is recited at every Sunday Mass. This contained the key word, homoousios, which is translated into English as “consubstantial.” God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three persons in one God, a “triunity.”

The great defender of orthodoxy, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, taught: “We acknowledge the Trinity, holy and perfect, to consist of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  In this Trinity there is no intrusion of any alien element or of anything outside, nor is the Trinity a blend of creative and created being. It is a wholly creative and energizing reality, self-consistent and undivided in its active power, for the Father makes all things through the Word and in the Holy Spirit, and in this way the unity of the holy Trinity is preserved.”

At every Mass we have the great doxology before the Great Amen: “Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours almighty Father, forever and ever Amen.” We are united in our faith in God, who created us and saves us.