I am with you always!

The liturgical Easter season comes to a conclusion today with the celebration of the feast of the Holy Trinity, a mystery explicitly revealed to us by Jesus in his last words before he ascended into heaven.

He said these words to the disciples gathered around him: "You must therefore go out, making disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." We become disciples of Christ by being baptised; baptism means that we now belong to the 'family' of God; and this entitles us to embrace Christ's teachings.

While the mystery of the Trinity had already been foreshadowed in the Old Testament, its full revelation was reserved to Jesus Christ. He is the Son of God the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the personification of their mutual, infinite love. This revelation of what God really is, has been recorded in the Gospels as having taken place on three different occasions.

The first time we hear about the Trinity is at the Annunciation: an angel appeared to Mary, told her that she would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that her child would be the Son of God. In the light of what followed, we can say that here we have the first inkling of the Triune Mystery.

Secondly, we all know what happened at the time when Jesus was being baptised by John. We read this in Matthew's Gospel: "Suddenly heaven was opened, and Jesus saw the Spirit of God coming down like a Dove, and with that a voice was heard from heaven saying: 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased'."

The third theophany, the clearest of them all, is the one we have in today's Gospel, concluding all other teachings of Christ. Thus the belief in the Holy Trinity, as one God in three persons, must be the distinguishing mark of every true Christian. This faith is the badge of every true follower of Christ: an invisible one, but for that no less real, especially if its presence is witnessed by the way we behave and by the rays of love that should shine from our entire behaviour.

We Christians are thus called to be living witnesses of the Holy Trinity. The creative power of the Father, the redeeming grace of the Son, and the saving love of the Holy Spirit should always remain alive within us and transpire from our entire behaviour. When one thinks that there is such a 'divine' dynamism within us, one should remain surprised at the spiritual inactivity of so many of us. "You can change the world!" is the clarion call of the well-known Christopher Movement.

There is an entire world around us waiting to be fertilised by the seed of our Christian faith and to be set ablaze by the heat of our Christian love. When we consider that so many still have not yet even heard of the Trinity, let alone adored it, we cannot help being urged to ensure that our faith in the Triune God should shine more brilliantly and make a difference in the midst of today's frightful spiritual darkness.

There exists a custom among us Christians, perhaps now not so common as in the past, that we bless ourselves with the Sign of the Cross before we begin doing something important. Let us not allow this beautiful habit to disappear altogether from our daily life.