The Mysterious Person of the Trinity

The Easter season traditionally ends with Pentecost Sunday. We celebrated Pentecost two weeks ago. It is a major feast of the Catholic Church’s liturgical year. For us it is the birthday of our church. On Pentecost (a Greek word meaning 50) St. Peter gave the first sermon announcing the resurrection of Jesus to Jews and to Jewish converts who had come to Jerusalem from all over the Roman Empire to celebrate the Jewish feast of Shavuot, which commemorated God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. Shavuot was always celebrated 50 days after Passover.  

Emboldened by the Holy Spirit who earlier on the morning of Pentecost had descended on the apostles and about 120 of Jesus’s followers, St. Peter preached to a huge throng of people.  His message was “This man (Jesus) ... you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it. Therefore let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts: 2, 23-36).   St. Luke ends this scene by noting that “those who accepted his message were baptized, and about 3,000 persons were added that day.”  You can see why Pentecost is considered the birthday of our church.  

However, in returning to Ordinary time after Pentecost in our liturgical year, we find two additional feasts immediately after Pentecost which refer to Jesus’ final interactions with his apostles and disciples.  These are Trinity Sunday (May 30 this year) and Corpus Christi (the feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord, June 6).  The times of these Gospel scenes go back to Jesus’ farewell addresses, his great commission in St. Matthew to go and make disciples of all nations and St. Mark’s description of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper.  I have always wondered why our liturgy goes back to these pre-ascension scenes right after the newly established church has just begun its mission on Pentecost.  St. Luke, in his second ascension scene in Acts, even records two angels telling the apostles to stop gawking into the clouds where Jesus has disappeared and “get on with their mission.”

Recently, I have read some commentaries on St. Luke’s writing that may have given me an answer to why our liturgical experts arranged their feasts in the order they did.  St. Luke wrote his Gospel to explain to non-Jewish Christians who Jesus was and why he is the savior of all mankind.  In Chapter 24, the last in his Gospel, having shown his wounds to his apostles and eaten a piece of fish in front of them to show that it really is him and not a ghost, he commands them to be his witnesses to all the nations and says that he will send his “father’s promise” upon them.  He further tells them to stay in the city until they “are clothed with the power from on high.”  Then he leads them to Bethany from where he ascends into heaven.  

St. Luke’s Gospel is about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.  He ends Jesus’ earthly ministry  simply saying,  “blessing them he separated himself from them and was taken up to heaven.”  Then he writes a second book, “The Acts of the Apostles,” to show us what the apostles and disciples of Jesus did with that “power from above” that he and his father gave them at Pentecost and later to members of the church through the sacraments.  In many writings of both the Old and New Testament, that power is called the “Spirit of God” or the “Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit is the mutual love that has existed from all eternity between the father and the son.  It was through the power of this same Spirit that the son of God became man so he could exemplify God’s virtues in his own life, all the way to dying for us and then rising from the dead to show what God intends for us.  

Jesus’ resurrection is a pledge of our own.  All this was done by the power of the divine Spirit of God’s love.  It was demonstrated in the incarnation.  The angel of God, St. Gabriel, said to the Virgin Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.  Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the son of God.”  

The same Spirit of God that covered Mary, creating the son of God in her womb is sent to the apostles and to those who accepted their proclamation at Pentecost of Jesus risen from the dead.  It had powerful effects.  The Spirit emboldened the followers of Jesus who had huddled in fear behind closed doors to proclaim the truth of Christ risen from the dead.  The Spirit brought unity to those from many nations who now shared a common faith in Jesus and a common hope of sharing in his resurrection.  The spirit gave them various gifts necessary to spread the message throughout the world.  As St. Paul wrote:  “There are different gifts but the same Spirit; there are different ministries but the same Lord; there are different works but the same God who performs them all in each one (of us).”

I would have to think that the church in her wisdom placed these feasts of the Holy Trinity and the Body and Blood of Christ immediately after Pentecost to help us understand who is the Holy Spirit and how he brings the power of God to us in our prayers and sacraments, especially the Eucharist.  

Jesus kept his promise to his disciples.  He did not leave them (and us) orphans.  He left the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the father and the son to continue his work in us.       

Father Carville is a retired priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge and writes on current topics for The Catholic Commentator. He can be reached at johnny [email protected].