By Leela Ramdeen, Chair of the Catholic Commission for Social Justice
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the most Holy Trinity. We are baptised “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Each time we pray the sign of the Cross; each time we say the “Creed” or the doxology: “Glory be to the Father…,” we profess our belief in the Trinitarian nature of God, our Creator.
It is important to remind ourselves of what our Catechism teaches us about the Holy Trinity: “The faith of all Christians rests on the Trinity. Christians are baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: not in their names…The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself.
“It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the hierarchy of the truths of faith…The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God” (Catechism 232-234, 237).
In the dogma of the Holy Trinity (Catechism 253 – 256), we learn that “The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons.” While “the divine persons are really distinct from one another,” they are “relative to one another”. ChurchYear.net states:
“Don’t let the word ‘person’ fool you. The Greek word for person means ‘that which stands on its own,’ or ‘individual reality’, and does not mean the persons of the Trinity are three human persons. Therefore we believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are somehow distinct from one another (not divided though), yet completely united in will and essence…
“The Son is said to be eternally begotten of the Father, while the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father through the Son…Ultimately, Trinitarianism posits a dynamic God, whose ultimate nature is beyond human conception, yet who voluntarily operates within the created world. Trinitarianism also shows a loving God that is willing to become as we are so that we may become like Him.”
When God made us he had a plan for us. We are made in His image and likeness – to love Him and to love our neighbour; to live holy, virtuous lives; to build his Kingdom of love, peace, justice, truth and freedom here on earth.
Our Church will flourish if we live as God wants us to live; if we become the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Unity among ourselves as Catholics and among all of humankind will be strengthened if we have uppermost in our minds the “unity” that exists in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Our human minds will never be able to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity, but by the theological virtue of faith, we freely believe the truth that God has revealed (Catechism 126, 142). On Trinity Sunday, let us remember that God made all creation as a “gift” to us, and that we journey in TT with people from various ethnic backgrounds and different religious beliefs.
Today we also celebrate the 165th Anniversary of Indian Arrival Day. Two hundred and twenty-five East Indians arrived in T&T on the Fatel Razack in 1845 to work as indentured labourers in T&T’s sugarcane plantations. Between 1845 and 1917, various ships made 319 voyages from India to TT, bringing 147,592 Indians to work in sugar, cocoa, and coconut estates. My father’s family (Dials) was among those who worked in cocoa estates in Sangre Chiquito. They later owned their own estates there.
The descendants of all those who were brought here or who came to T&T of their own free will continue to contribute to build our nation. Our lives have been enriched by the presence of the various ethnic and religious groups that make up our twin islands. Let celebrate the wealth of our diversity, thank God for this gift, and seek to promote unity, respect and love among our people.
As our new Government gets to work, I remind them of the words of Pope Benedict XVI:
“Development is impossible without upright men and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely attuned to the requirements of the common good.”
