SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY - Deuteronomy 4:32-34,39-40
It is always difficult to speak of God. He is the Most High, the one who is always far beyond what we may think or imagine. Whenever we try to approach Him and to reason about Him, we are faced with the mystery. There is a Bemba proverb that says: Apasamikila umutali, umwipi teti asamune (where the tall guy put something, the short one cannot take it out). In spite of that, we do not stop trying and searching. Even the psalms speak of this search: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Ps 63:1).
It is God himself - he who called us to life - who makes that search possible. And he is ready to reveal himself to us. In the Scriptures, we find the long journey of God who reveals himself in the history of his people. That’s why the first reading invites us to look back and to remember the history of the people. Yahweh - the God of Israel - is a God who reveals himself by his interventions in human history, transforming it into the history of salvation.
The first reading makes clear the statement that God is one and that there are no gods but God. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are part of the group of three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Since Abraham, God has revealed himself as being concerned and committed to humanity. To Moses, he revealed his name: YHWH (Yahweh), presenting himself as the God of the Covenant, who wants to live in a constant love relationship with human beings. The God who loves and saves us is not a lonely and distant God. In the deepest of himself, He is love and love implies relationship. That’s why in Jesus Christ, God revealed Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or revealed Himself as a relational God, a God who is communion. It is this reality of the God that is communion that we call Trinity. By the Holy Trinity, we do not mean three gods, but one God, who, by relating to people and by calling them to communion with him, revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
For Islam, Allah (God) is a solitary God, absolutely and eternally alone, closed in on himself and incapable of entering into a love relationship with whom he created. And so Muslims accuse Christians of giving god partners, thus committing the biggest sin (shirk), the only sin that cannot be forgiven, as it is clearly stated in the Quran: “God does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives anything less than that to whomever He wills. Whoever associates anything with God has devised a monstrous sin” (Sura 4:48). For Islam, God is Almighty and the creation manifests God’s power, not his love.
However, Christians totally reject any hint of polytheism. We start the creed by saying: “I believe in one God”. The oneness of God and the Trinity may sound like a contradiction in terms, but Trinity expresses the complexity of this one God, who is love. And love implies relationship and communion. The Trinity means that God, being love and communion, is a continual and eternal giving out of himself, without ever being exhausted, always offering himself in total self-giving. Creation is the fruit of this love of God that spills over and overflows, a love that is given and shared. And the human being, created in the image of God, is called to enter into this communion.
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