Our Trinitarian Faith

And I tell you, Ask and it will be given you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.What father among you, if his son asks for a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” – Luke 11:9-13

We have heard this passage countless times in our lives.More often, i not always, we quote this passage to show God’s generosity — we only need to ask, to seek, to find, in order for us to receive what we have asked, find what we have sought, and for doors to be opened to our knocking.And yet, do we really grasp the profound generosity, or should I say magnanimity of God in this passage?The Father would not only give us whatever we ask, for majority of the time, the things that we asked are usually temporal things, which also come from him; rather, there is something more magnanimous and greater than the things we ask him that the Father is willing to give — the Holy Spirit.The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, or in simple yet often-neglected terms, God himself.

As Christians, we were taught since we were young that there is “one God who is three equal and distinct persons” – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (CFC1326).Personally, I accepted this truth, this reality as fact when I was young because I am a Catholic and as such I am supposed to believe it.I also learned to accept that God is a mystery that is why I did not anymore try inquiring how we can have one God in three persons.It was more convenient to just accept it than to seek understanding of this great mystery.I thought I was doing God a favor, I thought I was being a good Catholic, a good Christian by believing “blindly”.I’m sure most of you can resonate with me on this. Yet now I realized that for thirty years, I was missing so much!I regret having wasted so much time not fully living my Trinitarian faith. I acknowledge that for me to truly follow God and love God and serve God, I should first know him.Him in his Reality.Him in his Mystery.Him in his Trinity.

Now, I would like to invite you to just, for a moment, recall your last conversation with God.How did you address him? Were you thinking of God the Father? Or were you talking to Jesus Christ as channel to the Father?Did you address him, “Almighty Father”? “Jesus”? Did you imagine him as an old man with long hair and beard? As Jesus on the Cross? As the Risen Jesus? As Jesus in “blue jeans”?Or were you just addressing an empty space? A vacuum? A concept that of God?I am pretty sure, whatever it is, you have never thought of addressing God as the Holy Spirit.

Our Trinitarian faith consists of believing in just ONE God in THREE persons.But why is it that until now, it is still difficult for us to regard the Holy Spirit as equal to the Father and the Son?Definitely there is nothing wrong with our image of God right now as the Father or as Jesus Christ. There is nothing wrong except that it is incomplete.We have to give the Holy Spirit his rightful place as the third person in the Trinity.We will have no full experience and encounter of God if we do not have the Holy Spirit. That is, if we don’t regard him as God.We need to understand the Trinity as a relationship. “It is a communion of love, an eternal giving, receiving and exchanging of love among the inseparable persons of the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” (CCC 221) And the only way for us to understand this relationship is to put the Holy Spirit in the table with the Father and the Son.

Again, this discourse is not to “glorify” the Holy Spirit apart from the Father and the Son.And I believe if we glorify the Holy Spirit, it is also glorifying the Father and the Son because “with the Father and the Son, He is worshipped and glorified.” (cf. Nicene Creed).This discourse is to emphasize the significance of asking for the Holy Spirit.The importance of understanding the Holy Spirit NOT as an agent of God but as God himself, distinct from, yet one with the Father and the Son.

Distinct from the Father and the Son

The Holy Spirit is the third person in the Trinity.It is easy for us to acknowledge the Father as God, Jesus as God, and yet when it comes to the Holy Spirit, it is like accepting him as God based on our profession of faith only; yet somehow, we tend to relate with him as less greater than the Father and the Son, or sometimes just an agent of the Father or the Son.True, he is another paraclete, an advocate (cf. John 14:16) but we tend to understand these terms as a helper, in an inferior, subordinate sense to the Father and the Son. It is like understanding it or treating it like how one usually treats one’s household help.The world can never perceive one’s helper as equal to the master.Maybe this is one reason we subconsciously relate to the Holy Spirit as less than the Father and the Son. But the action of the Holy Spirit is distinct from the action of the Father and the Son.Although, of course, we need to qualify that the action of one is also the action of the other because they are inseparable.But similarly, if we designate creation to the work of the Father, and the redemption to the work of the Son, definitely, the Holy Spirit as a distinct person in the Trinity, also has a work that is specially designated to him.And that would be to teach us everything and remind as of what Jesus had taught his apostles (cf. Jn 14:26), and guide us and bring us to the fullness of truth (cf. Jn 16:13). Truth of whom? Of God himself.

We can say that if the Old Testament time was visibly the Father’s time, and the New Testament as the Son’s time, the time in between the commissioning, when Jesus breathe upon the apostles the Holy Spirit, and the final glory, or what is commonly known as the eschaton, is definitely the time of the Holy Spirit. Our time now, the time we are in, is the time of the Spirit.

One with the Father and the Son

Here we will see that the Holy Spirit is one with the Father and the Son as the three persons are but ONE God.Being one, it would definitely mean that no one is greater than the other.They are all equal and they are all inseparable. Where the Father is, there is the Son and the Holy Spirit, where the Son is, there is the Father and the Holy Spirit, and where the Holy Spirit is, there is the Father and the Son.A unity of three persons.An equality among three persons.We can best understand this if we reflect on God as a relationship.A relationship is not a relationship unless there are persons.One person does not make up a relationship.It has to consist of at least two persons, or more.A marriage is a relationship, a father and a son, a mother and a granddaughter are examples of relationships.And when we think of relationships as these, especially those which are founded on love, no one comes first, every one is equal, and every one is special. Each can be distinct and yet each is loved without measure. That is the simplest analogy we can compare to the one-ness and unity of the Trinity as a relationship.

So what now?

So far, what we have been establishing is the “Godness” of the Holy Spirit. He has a rightful place in the table of communion with the Father and of the Son. And yet, so what? One might ask.What is the relevance of this reality in my life? Is it not enough that I believe in God? That I believe in Christ?Precisely because we are Christians and that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God who became fully human that we should NEVER forget the action of the Spirit in the story of incarnation.We profess in the creed, “…I believe in Jesus Christ…who was conceived by the Holy Spirit.”It was the Holy Spirit who conceived Jesus Christ.It was the Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised his disciples (cf. Jn 14:16), the Spirit of Truth who will guide us into all the truth (cf. Jn 16:13).The Holy Spirit is the help promised to us.The presence that speaks of God’s fidelity to us, that he is STILL with us.He is the proof that God continues to perpetuate his presence in our midst.He is faithful to his promise.There is no reason for us to despair that God has abandoned us or neglected us.In the midst of chaos and sufferings, injustice and calamities around us, the presence of the Holy Spirit within us and in the Church is the presence of God in our midst.We may have gone tired and weary of hoping for a better world, of seeing a world where there is no hunger, no poor people, no violence, no victims, we might even have given up going to Church as we feel that anyway nothing will ever change. People are resorting to greed, selfish actions, indifference. It is as if the face of Christ could not be seen anymore in our neighbor. And yet, the reality still stands that the Holy Spirit is in our midst.God is still with us.He is very much alive and present.It is this reality that there is a need to heed Jesus’ call to ask for the Holy Spirit from the Father.Asking the Holy Spirit is asking for God.A God not in abstract terms but of a God who is the third person in the Trinity, distinct from the Father and the Son. A God who can help us.A God who loves us. A God who is with us, for us.And this should be a source of hope for all of us that we have a God who never and will NOT EVER abandon us.

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