Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
Having contemplated the action of God in the history of the universe and our own personal history, this Sunday the Church invites us to contemplate the very nature of God, the Most Holy Trinity.
To contemplate the work of God in history is, of course, to contemplate the Most Holy Trinity too. The only true God who is a communion of persons is the one acting in history. Theologians use the expression Economic Trinity to designate the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity in its relationship with creation, whereas the expression Immanent Trinity refers to the study of the nature of God Himself and the relations that exist between the three Divine Persons.
When we talk about the things of God, we are always dealing with a mystery. It is important to define a mystery because we do not quite use the word in the same sense that we do in ordinary speech. In our daily use, the word mystery designates a problem to be solved, a matter of detectives, something that we do not know. In the Church, however, when we state that something is a mystery we mean that this reality is so vast, so deep, so profound that even though we may know a great deal about it, our knowledge is not exhaustive. There is a lot more to learn about that reality because it exceeds us, it is superior to the powers of our intellect. A mystery is a reality that is not only known but lived. We participate in a mystery.
