Homily: Most Holy Trinity

May 31, 2026

My dear brothers and sisters, today we celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. The solemnity that we celebrate today is one of the deepest mysteries of our faith, a mystery that is hidden in God, a defining doctrine of our faith. We profess that there are Three Persons in One God. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in Three Persons. The Three Persons in One God are not just names designating the different modes of existence of One God, no, they are Three distinct Persons but one God. This mystery is not a puzzle to be solved but a mystery to be adored.

In the Old Testament, starting from the creation account, we see mainly patches and traces of the existence of Three Persons in One God. It is only in the New Testament that we see a lot of explicit references to these Three Persons. In Jn 10:30 for instance, Jesus said, The Father and I are One. In Mt 28:19, after His resurrection, Jesus gave the mission mandate to His disciples to go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. From the second reading of today, we see that greeting with the Trinitarian formula was already popular among the early Christians. St Paul writing to the Corinthians said: “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

The solemnity of today reminds us of a lot of things. The Holy Trinity is not just a dogma of our faith, or a formula to be recited in our liturgy, but the heart of our Christian way of life. First, it is an opportunity for us to remember that with our baptism, we are sealed to the Holy Trinity. We became Christians through the invocation of these Three Persons in the Trinity. We begin the Holy Mass, our formal and informal prayers with the invocation of the Holy Trinity. Some biblical commentators emphasize the Trinitarian cooperation at the very beginning of creation in Gen. 1:1 and when God created human being in Gen 1:26; let us create man in our own image and likeness. In essence, our nature as human beings is Trinitarian because we are created to be like God. We are baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity so that forever, the Trinitarian life would be our life.

There was this very stubborn high school student in one country where corporal punishment is legal. His high school teacher asked him to kneel down as a punishment, but this boy adamantly said no that he can never do that. So, the class teacher contacted the head teacher who called the security and they forced the boy to get down on his knees. This student when he saw that He has been overpowered by these security agents exclaimed: “even though I seem to be kneeling down physically but inside my mind, I am quite convinced that I am standing up, I can never kneel down for anybody, it is not in my nature to kneel down.” Even as he was overpowered, he insisted that he can never depart from his nature. Brothers and sisters, our essential nature is like that of the Holy Trinity. When the evil one struggles to lure us into evil, we must resist his machinations, we must courageously insist that our nature is not satanic, that our nature is like that of the Holy Trinity and we can never depart from it. In Trinity we see love, in Trinity we see intimacy, in Trinity we see oneness. This is us too; these attributes are what makes us Christians, these are our Christian DNA.

It is very striking that this Trinitarian intimate love and oneness is always for others. The intimate love the Father has for the Son resulted in sending His Son to suffer for the salvation of humanity. Jn 3:16, “for God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.” The Father and the Son love each other so deeply that their love was poured out in the person of the Holy Spirit on all those who believed. Some commentators suggest that the Trinitarian cooperation in the first book of Genesis brought about the perfect world and made human beings to be like God. We are urged to live in intimate love like these Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. Like them, our love for God should also be for the good of others. Our cooperation and unity should make the world the best place to live in and even make other human beings to be God-like and closer to God.