Celebrating Trinity Sunday

Explaining the Trinity is not an easy task!

I take some consolation in the fact that the great Doctor of the Church St. Augustine of Hippo spent over 30 years working on his treatise De Trinitate [about the Holy Trinity], endeavouring to conceive an intelligible explanation for the mystery of the Trinity. There is a story told that Augustine was walking by the seashore one day contemplating and trying to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity when he saw a small boy running back and forth from the water to a spot on the seashore. The boy was using a sea shell to carry the water from the ocean and place it into a small hole in the sand.  The Bishop of Hippo approached him and asked, “My boy, what are doing? ”

“I am trying to bring all the sea into this hole,” the boy replied with a sweet smile.

“But that is impossible, my dear child, the hole cannot contain all that water” said Augustine.

The boy paused in his work, stood up, looked into the eyes of the Saint, and replied, “It is no more impossible than what you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence.”

The Saint was absorbed by such a keen response from that child, and turned his eyes from him for a short while. When he glanced down to ask him something else, the boy had vanished. 

On Trinity Sunday in 2011, I professed Perpetual Vows of chastity, poverty and obedience as a Disciple of the Divine Master in my home parish Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Athlone. At certain moments of the ceremony I remember thinking of the immensity of what was happening and my inadequacy to be a spouse of Christ. It was such a generous gift that I had received and my response felt so inadequate. Yet, God who loved me before I was even born had a project for my life which came to another level of its fruition on that day of total consecration. I felt loved and embraced by the Trinity, a mystery which I struggled to put words on.

Each of the persons of the Trinity lives completely for the others; each is a complete gift of self to the others. The complete self-giving not only constitutes the individual persons of the Trinity, but also their inseparable oneness. By vowing my life to the Lord in community life, I too was committing myself to live completely for others, not for myself. I was vowing to live in community in communion with my sisters, as an individual with all my unique quirkiness, gifts, talents and weaknesses and as a communion of sisters striving to be the Face of Christ for those to whom our mission brings us. This is Trinitarian life. 

Today's Gospel invites us into the mystery of that Trinitarian life and love: "God so loved the world that He sent his only Son."  God's love impelled him to take action to help his creatures gone astray so when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman (Gal 4:4).  Jesus is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, who was sent for love of mankind, that is, for each one of us. The Spirit of Truth which the Father sent to bring us to the fullness of the truth. This truth was the truth which Jesus tirelessly proclaimed during the last three years of his life. He taught the truth behind the Jewish law (cf. Mt 5:17): the fullness of the truth about man and his place in creation, teachings which reveal who man is, and by accepting the truth about oneself, one becomes truly free. This is why Jesus himself proclaimed, "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.'' (Jn 8:32).God has revealed himself to the world through the person of Jesus Christ, whose entire life, but especially his passion and death, stand as the archetype of complete self-gift. The Trinity is a mirror of complete self-gift.

At the Angelus last year, Pope Francis shared this thought that ‘the Holy Trinity is not the product of human reasoning, but the face with which God has revealed himself, walking with humanity.’ Every day when we look into the eyes of our brothers and sisters, especially those who suffer, we see Christ and yet we are Christ to them. If we were even a fraction aware of the love that God has for us, how different would our life be. If we were aware that we live in the constant embrace of the Trinity, which has no beginning and no end, how would we view both ourselves and others?  So today, on this Day of the Lord, take a few  moments for yourself to be with God and experience all that He has created just for you, let your breath be taken away by the unique invitation which He has just for you to come into that communion of the Trinity and experience the pure gift of love there.