We celebrate Trinity Sunday this weekend. Unlike most other Sundays this is neither a liturgical season Sunday nor one based upon following a particular Gospel narrative as we do in Ordinary time. This is a Theological Feast where we worship our God for simply being God. The Trinity is a mystery and we are still growing in our understanding of it more and more and we will never fully grasp it…until we enter our share in the glory of God in heaven, then we’ll know!
However mystery is not something to give up on, rather, it is something tantalizing and to explore. Indeed our relationship with God should be an adventure in faith, into truth and finding love. Every time we come to think about the Trinity we have to use language with all its limitations to describe and understand mystery. We have to rely on analogy. The very titles we use, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are analogous. It is the best way so far by which we start to comprehend the nature of this mystery in human terms.
Another analogous way comes from the world of Physics. If you take the three primary colors red, green and blue, and project them onto a screen as three separate pools of colored light and then superimpose them onto each other, they eventually make white; white being all the colors of the visible spectrum. So we can use the analogy that God is white made up of the three persons (colors) of the Trinity. Those of us with Irish antecedents know of the shamrock analogy of the Trinity. How about exploring other analogies in your prayers this week. Every time we try to find one, and in the process probably discard several, we are going deeper into the adventure of exploring the mystery of God.
May God bless you, your families, and the week ahead,
Fr Aidan Peter