Trinity Sunday

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40; Psalm 33; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20

We all have happened to look up out a window or have been sitting on a beach, maybe around a campfire or making a turn while driving and encountered and experienced the sun rising or setting. What thoughts came to your mind in those moments?

Something like: Ah, yes! Planet earth is rotating so I can see the Sun—the heart of our solar system. Our own yellow dwarf star of hot glowing gases. Its gravity holding everything I see and know together in their orbits from the biggest planets to the smallest particles of debris. Ah, I can feel those electric currents, that magnetic field carried by solar winds blowing outward through the solar system in all directions.

Romantic, huh? Try such a description on your first date guys and you will be alone for the rest of your lives.

Basking in the light of a sunrise or sunset… Isn’t it interesting that we still use the archaic and unscientific language of setting and rising? Basking in the light of the sun, are we not drawn into silent wonder as we watch yellow, peach and pick colours make their mark against the azure blue of the sky? We might hold more tightly the person we are with as we share the experience. As Christians, might we not recall from Genesis that light was the first thing God? What memories arise? Who is missing? Other sunsets and sunrises? What occasions? Or is it just awe?

The technicalities of astronomy may be true but they do not move the heart. The same is true of many of our Christian beliefs. Words like “hypostatic union” to describe that Jesus is both God and human leave us cold. Do we not rather desire to contemplate an image of the Virgin Mother and Child? The words of the Creed that Jesus Christ is“consubstantial with the Father,” to express the intimate unity between the Father and the Son. We can barely pronounce ‘consubstantial.’ Would we not rather read and reflect on the poetry of the Song of Songs that express divine love? And so today, on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity we will proclaim, “a Trinity of one substance.” The word “substance” sounds like you are talking about putty.

Though these theological terms are trying to accurately express the mysteries of our faith, they can leave us cold, unmoved and wondering what it is all about rather than lead us into wonder and awe before our God.

Since the concept of a Trinity is not in the scriptures but arose out of Greek Christian scriptural, theological and philosophical reflection, the readings chosen for this feast strain and crack under the pressure to reflect Trinity.

Scripture may strain but Saint Augustine taught that there is another book, the book of created nature through which people may recognize God.

Consider the order and beauty of nature. Does this not give us a glimpse into the mystery of the Holy Spirit, who hovered over the waters of chaos in Genesis and brought forth order?

Consider the vastness of an evening sky. How many of us have seen the Milky Way strewn like diamonds cast against the black velvet of a jeweler’s display? Does this not offer us a glimpse into the infinite life of the Father? The power and upward movement of mountains, the depths of oceans and the fierceness of volcanoes and hurricanes. Do they not give an indication of the power of Almighty God?

Early Christian authors believed all creatures are words in the book of nature; but the book’s preeminent Word is, the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ. Through Jesus all things came to be and so the church father, Maximus the Confessor taught that when we read the book of nature, what we are really reading is “the words of the Word.”

Creation reflects in its harmony and order the Oneness of God and in its power, beauty and creatures the divine Trinity. Our belief in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit is not so much to be understood as to be experienced.

Spend time in God’s self-revelation – the book of nature. Look. Wonder. Deeply breathe in. Experience beauty. And in doing so experience a hint of divinity and trinity.