The Church celebrates significant events throughout the Liturgical Year. With Pentecost Sunday, the Church concluded the celebration of the Easter season. Other examples of celebrated events are the Immaculate Conception, Advent, Christmas, and Lent.
On the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, the Church is not celebrating an event, but a doctrine. It is a celebration of the central doctrine of our Christian faith: the Holy Trinity—One God in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, affirmed in the Nicene Creed. The early Church suffered a period of theological turmoil when a 4th-century priest named Arius began teaching that Jesus Christ was not truly divine but rather a created being. This idea challenged the fundamental understanding of Christ’s nature and his relationship with God the Father. Arius’ teachings quickly spread, causing significant division within the Church.
In response to this crisis, Emperor Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to profess Christianity and change the Empire into a Christian state, assembled the first ecumenical council in the city of Nicaea in 325 AD. Bishops from all over the Roman Empire gathered to discuss and clarify the Church’s teaching on the nature of Christ. The primary goal was to address the controversy and establish a unified statement of faith. This is the origin of the Nicene Creed, which declares that Jesus Christ is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” This phrase refuted Arius’ teachings and affirmed the equality of the Son with the Father. The Creed also detailed other essential beliefs, but it did not immediately resolve all theological debates.
In response, the Council of Constantinople was convened in 381 AD, which expanded and refined the Nicene Creed, retaining the core affirmations of the original Nicene Creed but adding more details, particularly concerning the Holy Spirit and the formal articulation of our Trinitarian faith. It affirmed that the Holy Spirit is “the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.” This clarified the Church’s teaching on the Trinity, asserting the divinity and distinct personhood of the Holy Spirit.
The Nicene Creed encapsulates the essential tenets and beliefs of the Christian faith and is deeply connected to the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Here’s what it means to us in the words of Pope John Paul II, “A great mystery, a mystery of love, an ineffable mystery, before which words must give way to the silence of wonder and worship. A divine mystery that challenges and involves us, because a share in the Trinitarian life was given to us through grace, through the redemptive Incarnation of the Word and the gift of the Holy Spirit: “Anyone who loves me will be true to my word, and my Father will love him…”
Go in Peace to Love and Serve the Lord.
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