A Homily for Trinity Sunday

​+ At a time when the world is committed to the propagation of the doctrines of relativism and syncretism, with each of us able to worship “my truth” whatever it may be, and—at least in theory—where others are able simultaneously to worship “their truth”, and in which, if one’s ‘truth’ includes any concept of a deity or of a god, each and every such belief is of absolutely equal value, how are we to celebrate the Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity? Are we to console ourselves as might some fringe sect in our own peculiar belief that ‘for us’ God is One, and that He has revealed Himself in human history in three equal and distinct divine persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit? Or should we assert that this is the absolute and objective truth about God in which all people find the answer to every question that can be grouped under the heading of “the meaning of life;” indeed, in which we can find salvation from our sins and life without end?
 
Are we to be embarrassed by the words sung at the Office of Prime this morning in the Athanasian Creed: “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith. Which faith unless everyone keeps it whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity…” Are we to abolish these words, and conform our thinking and teaching (and the liturgy and catechesis) to the prevailing doctrines of relativism and syncretism?
 
What does it matter? Why make a fuss?
 
The answer is given clearly and succinctly at the end of the Athanasian Creed, distilling the missionary command of Our Lord given in the Holy Gospel of this Mass, which, with repeated insistence, the Sacred Liturgy has been contemplating since the feast of the Ascension of the Lord throughout the Octave of Pentecost. The Athanasian Creed ends: “This is the Catholic faith; which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved.”
 
The fuss, the trouble, the insistence of the Catholic Church on the absolute truth that God is one being and that God is at the same time three persons, is a matter of eternal salvation and damnation for every human. That is why over the centuries countless men and women have dedicated their lives as missionaries in foreign lands—and today do so even in their own countries: so that more people may be saved (and not damned for eternity).
 
Yes, the Church certainly teaches that Almighty God can, in His mercy, grant salvation to those who truly seek the good and who through no fault of their own do not know the Holy Trinity, but we cannot sit back on our couches and presume that He shall do so. No: he commands us to be missionaries of His revealed truth.
 
And yes, we must respect the sincerity of those who hold other religious beliefs and even rejoice in the good that they may contain, but some religious beliefs are not true—that is to say, they are false—and we must never cease to seek to convert those who hold such incomplete or erroneous views to explicit faith in the fulness of truth revealed by God in His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, without which explicit faith we may never presume that anyone will find salvation.
 
And this is precisely why, when this question was disputed in the early Church, at the Council of Nicea in 325 when the priest Arius denied the divinity of Christ, asserting that He was created by God and not coeternal with Him, St Nicholas of Myra – the cuddly Santa Claus of popular folklore – according to legend got up and slapped Arius in the face. Despite Arius’ later dramatic death — regarded as a divine judgement on his views — the heresy of Arianism to which he gave his name would deeply divide the Church, bishop from bishop, for decades to come. In God’s Providence it befell a young deacon present at the Council of Nicea, St Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, who would be exiled no fewer than five times for holding steadfastly to Catholic Truth, to become the champion of true doctrine—the very same doctrine of which we shall sing once again in the Creed of this Holy Mass.
 
My brothers and sisters, the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is no mere matter for academic speculation. It is a divine mystery revealed to us by God Himself in human history for our salvation. In a world that boasts of its enlightenment and rationalism, in which the cancer of relativism relentlessly devours the last vestiges of objective truth, and in which, where it is permitted to appear, no religious belief is permitted to claim any objective truth or value, this doctrine is in grave danger. There are even those in authority in the Church who, infected with the pervading virus of syncretism, seek to forbid efforts to convert people to the truth.
 
We must resolutely slap this heresy in the face—not out of some form of gnostic pride or any sort of vain triumphalism, but in humble fidelity to Our Lord’s command 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.” In so doing lies nothing less than our salvation and the salvation of others. For the courage necessary so to do, each of us according to our particular vocation, let us beg Almighty God before His altar in this Holy Mass. +