Trinity Sunday

Sunday, June 7th, 2020

The Trinity is important because it shapes the way we think about everything.

For example the fact the Trinity was always there and will always be there gives us authentic unshakeable security in a world which is a forest of insecurities. Everything we know begins - and ends. Everyone is going to die. Every marriage will end - through death. My health will ultimately fail. And so on. Not the Trinity, which does not simply endure, which does not simply last forever: the Trinity, unaltered by any of these things, is also the seat within which they take place - and take an infinitely small place. Reality is real. And if I’m united with the Trinity, my future is secure.

Which brings us to a second point. God’s nature as triune reveals the very communal nature of being. The Trinity is three distinct persons in continuing seamless relationship with each other. The Trinity’s act of creation is revelatory of the nature of creation - everything is connected and everything is meant to work together, and it is when it doesn’t that we have problems. This idea is still a novel one for us - and show us to what extent modernity, and more deeply The Fall and sin, have harmed our intelligence and our own communion with all beings. The best example of this of course is how we are related to each other: what a poor life we still live when the idea of doing all things in communion with the others is something which repulses or bores me, when taking the time the other needs is too hard, when I rebel against the idea of giving up my self sufficiency to work with and rely on the others. Clearly, we need to convert, humble ourselves and be renewed by God bigtime.

A third importance the Trinity unfolds to open to us is the nature of love. In all eternity each of the persons of the Trinity is ceaselessly making a total gift of themselves to the other. Our initial reaction might be that having utterly denuded themselves, that leaves each person with nothing. Yet of course the reality is the contrary: gift of self is oftself fruitfulness. The generous are never alone. And love is not taking or getting but a giving and begetting - for wherever I have given myself, something new is there where nothing has ever been: and it is immensely satisfying.

During this week, let us take time to look at the Trinity, and learn how to exist and how to be fully human.