The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Loved by the Father, Saved by the Son, Never Abandoned by the Holy Spirit

One of the challenges of Trinity Sunday is this: people sometimes expect the priest to explain the Trinity. And the truth is—if someone ever tells you they completely understand the Trinity, they probably don’t.

Today is not really about solving a mystery. It is really about coming to know the God who has shown us who He is.

In the first reading, Moses encounters God on the mountain. And what does God reveal? Not first His power. Not His greatness. But His heart. The Lord passes before Moses and says He is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.”

The first thing God wants Moses—and us—to know is this: God is not about fear. He is about mercy. Not distance—He is about closeness.

Then in the Gospel, Jesus tells us: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” Think about that. God did not give up on the world. He entered into it.

The Father sends the Son. The Son comes to save. And Jesus says something important: God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

I think a lot of people walk around believing God is disappointed in them—that He is waiting for them to fail, waiting to point out everything they have done wrong. But that is not the God Jesus reveals.

Yes, God calls us to conversion. Yes, sin matters. But God’s first movement toward us is love, mercy, and invitation.

And maybe this is where the prayers of the Mass help us.

As we continue with the Mass, right before we sing the “Holy, Holy, Holy,” there is a prayer the priest prays. Most people probably don’t know its name—it is called the preface—but we hear it at every Mass.

And on Trinity Sunday, the Church gives us one of the clearest ways of speaking about who God is. The prayer says that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are “one God, one Lord… not in the unity of a single person, but a Trinity of one substance.”

That can sound a little confusing. But the Church is really saying something simple: the Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. Not three gods—one God. And yet three distinct Persons living in perfect communion.

But listen to what the prayer says next. It says that what has been revealed to us of God, we believe equally of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Meaning this: if God is merciful, as we hear in the first reading from Exodus, then Jesus is mercy. If God is love, then Jesus reveals that love. And the Holy Spirit continues that love and mercy in our lives even now.

We do not worship three different gods doing different jobs. We worship one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—whose love reaches us and draws us into communion.

And then the prayer ends by lifting our eyes to heaven. It says that Angels and Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim never stop crying out: “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

Even heaven responds to this mystery with worship.

And maybe that is the invitation for us today—not to walk away saying, “I finally figured out the Trinity,” but to walk away remembering this: I am loved by the Father, saved by the Son, and never abandoned by the Holy Spirit.

And every time we make the Sign of the Cross, we are reminding ourselves whose we are—that our lives belong to God.