Worship of the Trinity, and in the Trinity

God is one. Worship Him.

God is three. Worship within Him.

Trinity Sunday

Last year on Trinity Sunday I reflected on how worldwide this day leads to either a great blossoming trinitarian heresies 

or preachers giving almost incomprehensible homilies as they work hard to be theological perfect but fly over everybody’s heads. 

These two mistakes, and a third option—just declaring it a mystery and saying we can’t say much of anything—

all make the common root mistake of thinking this Sunday—this feast day—was about trying to explain the trinity in the first place. 

Ok, well then, what should Catholics do if we aren't going to try to explain how God is one and how God is three?

3 things to try instead:

Confess the Trinity

Worship the Trinity

Love the Trinity

Let’s focus a little this year on the worship part

But first, in order to do that, let’s realize that the word “trinity” doesn’t just mean “the three persons as revealed in the NT”. 

It’s a single word, a single concept, which is shorthand way of saying “all that has been revealed about God in the Old Testament and New Testament.”

And of course, what is the main point that God is trying to convey as he reveals himself in the Old Testament?

It’s that there is only one God, and that is he himself,

And that all the gods and goddesses and forces and elements that humankind had taken to worshipping over the centuries were lies and idols and cheap knock-offs of the living and eternal God. 

So the takeaway from the whole OT is:

Let go of your false gods and cheap idols

Love the lord your God with all you heart, soul, and strength 

(Deut 6)

Worship God and him alone

And follow after his ways

The New Testament takes none of that away

But, by the Father sending first the Son and then the Spirit, he reveals to us the inner life of God, 

the hidden life of the Trinity, 

We learn of the relations between them. 

We learn that while they are of one substance, consubstantial, the Son and Spirit still direct us to the father

The son glorified and honors the father

The spirit teaches us how to pray, 

Empowers us

Even prayers in us, in our groanings (Romans 8) 

2nd letter today 

It’s interesting:

We can worship them all as one God

And we do: we worship and adore the son and the spirit with the Father

But, interestingly, the Son and the Spirit, point us—and our worship—on to the Father 

And this makes sense of our worship at Mass 

We talked about this earlier this year:

What is Mass? It’s us getting in on the work and worship done by the Son

His work in his passion, death and resurrection 

His worship and glorification of the father 

At Mass, the spirit, who always teaches us how to pray, scoops us up and puts us in the Son and his acts of worship 

We worship the Father through the actions and powers of the Son and spirit—in their worship

Great thing to know: we don’t even have to create our own worship

We are allowed into the the Love and honor that lives within the trinity 

(Mirrors baptism)

So don’t worry that we can’t explain the trinity

Don’t worry even if you're confused by words like begotten and processing.

Realize that every time we come Mass we are worshiping God and we are worshiping the Father the Son and the Spirit, giving the worship God was seeking all along.