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Trinity Sunday
May 30, 2010

When teaching Catholic Doctrine I presented the Trinity as an object of belief, an article of faith. Can distinctly remember telling the students that we don't have to understand it because it is a mystery.

Then, I realized that I could not teach it because I understood it so little. I would just point to it and say we celebrate God and liturgy says it all. I always thought calling God 3-ness was a little rude. Does God want us to call him/her a number?

Some years later I actually had a glimpse of understanding and caught the logic that we are human. Jesus is human and God. Through Him we are related to God as in all other relationships, it was mutual. I also caught that Jesus pointed to the Father and so we can know God, too, the way Jesus as human did. The Holy Spirit was the dynamism that created the whole relationship to be holy.

I never minded calling God, Father. If Jesus called him Abba, Father, then it is my link to do likewise.

Now, it has all shifted. I can't say I understand more, but I enjoy just living in the three-ness.

Three texts mediate this Trinity over and over again, deeper and deeper:

1. The Icon of the Holy Trinity

2. St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer

3. A very subtle, but real connection with "dwelling" that threads through Orthodox literature.

Very early in the morning before stillness yields to light and life when we breathe with all nature awaiting that call into being. What seems like emptiness is what Trinity Celebrates.