The Holy Trinity, three persons, one God… how is this possible? The mystery of the Holy Trinity has long occupied the thoughts of Christianity. How is it possible to understand this? The first thing we must do is go to the scriptures to find out why we say that God is one but in three persons. The first clue is in the first commandment “I am the Lord your God… You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:1-3) God himself is declaring that there is only one God, let us now turn to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets… For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law…” (Matthew 5:17-18), Jesus did not come to change God’s law but to enforce it. After his resurrection Jesus sends the apostles on a mission saying: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19), He does not just mentions God the Father or himself as God the Son, but names directly the three persons of the Holy Trinity. If Jesus did not come to change the law in the slightest, the first commandment stands even with the declaration of the Divine Trinity.
If we go deeper into the Scriptures, we don’t have to go any further than the first verse of the first book of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) If we take the original Hebrew in which this passage is written, the name of God used here is “Elohim”, in Hebrew the ending “-im” is indicative of a plural noun; but in this passage it is followed by a verb used in its singular conjugation, indicating that the three persons of the Trinity make up one God, not three separate ones. If we continue, in the creation of the human being we find the following: “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26) here God is using the plural to refer to himself.
The Old Testament has many passages that point to the Trinity, but let’s go back to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ addressing the apostles: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:21-22), here again Jesus reveals to us the persons of the Trinity.
Let us joyfully declare this dogma of the faith every time we make the sign of the cross, saying “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”, thus attesting that the name of God is one and God is expressed in the three persons of the Holy Trinity.