30 May 2021
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
I once heard a theologian comment that probably most people would not blink an eye if a “fourth person” was discovered to belong to the Trinity. A popular conception of the Trinity working as a committee and agreeing to collective action could easily take another person to further its work. To be clear, he was not arguing that there was a fourth person of the Trinity. Nor was his point to criticize a commonly held notion about the Trinity with a more erudite, technical description of the Trinity. The “committee” model of the Trinity contains a sliver of truth towards describing the life of the Trinity. Still, even this manner of speaking about the Trinity fails to grasp completely the transcendent depth which belongs to God.
This theologian suggested that as people of faith we longer see the world with the eyes of faith. The Trinity is not only a dogmatic formulation of Christian faith for those who believe but also is inseparable from the way we envision the foundation of all creation. The core of the universe is the one triune God with the love relations between the three divine persons. God’s love spills forth since it is so bountiful that God wants nothing else but to share it with others. If a loving, Triune God is at the heart of creation, what other things, or idols more appropriately, does God displace? Power. A little ego. A sense of hopelessness.
I do not think anyone has the definitive answer to the question, what is the relevance of the Trinity for us today in our path of discipleship? No exhaustive answer is possible since it is a well that never dries up no matter the number of times we drink from it. The Trinity is at the center of the universe, but how often is the Triune God the center of my world? My attention? Let us Trinity Sunday come back to the well that has been prepared for us by generations of teachers, parents, theologians, preachers, and all members of the faithful to drink again from the well of the mystery of the Trinity that has no end.