Going to Heaven by the power of the Holy Trinity

Holy Trinity Sunday | June 2020
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The Sunday after Pentecost we celebrate as Holy Trinity Sunday. In the past I thought it was strange that Holy Trinity Sunday should fall during Ordinary Time rather than the Easter season. The Easter Season ends with Pentecost Sunday. After all with the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity is celebrated to express the fullness of Revelation. The relations between Father and Son, 1st ,2nd, and 3rd Persons of the Trinity are already present in the readings leading up to the Ascension and Pentecost. We could extend the Easter season by one week and so Trinity Sunday would fall within the Easter season, rather than Ordinary Time. But Holy Trinity Sunday is the fruit of the reflection of the Church at work guided by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity is what makes our faith distinctly Christian.

We are not Jews or Muslims or Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses. We are Christians. To be a Christian means to believe in the Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are baptised in the name of the Trinitarian God, and each time we make the sign of the Cross, we do so, in the name of the Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We are a Trinitarian people. What does that even mean? I have been told many times “this” or “that” is not stated in the Bible. And it’s the same list. Some gullable Catholics fall for the “it’s not in the Bible” tactic. Unfortunately, people either do not know Church history or the development of Church doctrine, and so, they do not have a proper understanding of the Scriptures. Maybe they should read the Church Fathers. Or perhaps St. John Henry Newman, the convert form Calvinism, Anglicanism and to Catholicism who synthesises Church teachings in his Development of Christian Doctrine. One of these, “Where does it say in the Bible?” includes the Holy Trinity. So much of what we take for granted as Christians including including -- Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists, and the numerous offshoots that mushroomed after the Reformation, are indebted to the Roman Catholic Church for Christian doctrine as we know it today, including the Holy Trinity, precisely because these beliefs are not explicitly stated in the Scriptures.

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