The Holy Trinity –
summed up theologically as:
three persons, one God.
When we baptise,
and when we make the sign of the cross, we say:
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Biblically,
'name' doesn't just suggest 'what something is called':
it goes much deeper than that.
It suggests the identity, the power, the essence.
Thus, it is important that we say 'in the name of',
not 'in the names of',
for, in the biblical sense,
God has only one name.
In a similar vein,
the Preface (just before the Holy Holy) for today's Mass speaks of
a Trinity of one substance.
Here 'substance' is a specialist theological term.
There is one common usage that helps understanding.
We speak of 'the substance of an argument',
and we mean
the essence of the argument, its essentials, its key elements –
as distinct from the exact way it is put.
This is the right track.
'Substance' might be called the essence of something,
its essentials, what makes it what it is.
So here it means everything that God is, in being God:
one, holy, eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving.
This theological usage of 'substance' of God
includes that God is 'one'.
To put it roughly,
there is just one substance 'God':
God cannot be divided up.
So, in the creed when we say of our Lord Jesus Christ
that he is consubstantial with,
that is 'of one substance with', the Father,
we are expressing their full unity as God.
Both are wholly and fully God.
This is theology.
Theology, thinking about God,
developed through the Old Testament.
It built up to the realizations:
that there is one God,
– there really were no other gods;
that God was wholly other,
– outside everything that can be seen, heard and touched;
and that God could not be domesticated or manipulated.
Israel's religious thinkers recognised that
the nation was privileged to have been chosen to know this,
chosen to have a special relationship with God
– special enough that the metaphor of
parent and child is used in several places.
That theology is the backdrop both
to the New Testament
and to our opening prayer today, which started:
God, our Father,
who by sending into the world
the Word of truth
and the Spirit of sanctification
made know to the human race your wondrous mystery
We are introduced to the mystery of the Trinity
through the sending to humanity–
through the mission–
of the Word and the Spirit.
In Jesus:
Word became flesh, became human,
and his humanity was filled with the Holy Spirit,
so that his human nature was wholly devoted to 'Abba, Father!'
The Holy Spirit comes to Jesus' followers
breathing life into them,
so that they share in
Jesus' knowledge of,
and devotion to,
'Abba, Father!'
Liturgically, we have been paying special attention
to all this through Lent and Eastertide.
Lent asks us to pay close attention to our need for a Saviour
to recognise that Jesus, Word made flesh, is that Saviour
and that the truth is that the horrifying events of Good Friday
bring forgiveness and reconciliation.
Eastertide, which finished last Sunday with the feast of Pentecost,
asks us to pay attention to the new life
that pours forth at the Resurrection–
a new life that is with us here and now, making us holy,
a new life that is The Holy Spirit within us, sanctifying us.
Our faith is that,
in the Word made flesh,
and in Holy Spirit given to his followers,
we are not just speaking of some work of God,
or some aspect of God,
we are speaking of God,
one God –
one God we worship and adore.