The Holy Trinity

30-05-2021, 07:41Godhead, mystery, spirit, TrinityPermalink

Photo by Thaï Ch. Hamelin / ChokdiDesign on Unsplash

Sunday 30 May (B) (Solemnity) The Holy Trinity. Matthew 28:16-20

In today's reading Jesus confirms that there are three Persons in one God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. We are sent out as evangelisers, as apostles and witnesses of Christ because we are baptised into the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Some protest that they can't get their mind around the Trinity. Thank God, we never will! As St Augustine once said: If you can fathom it – it's not God. Having said that, we can, the essence of faith, the heart of with the help of the Holy Spirit, get our minds into the Trinity and penetrate the mystery, light and wisdom of the Godhead.

Paul encouraged the believers at Ephesus to do just this – perhaps we could adopt the prayer he gave them as our Trinity Sunday prayer:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:14-19). “

What a powerful and utterly wonderful prayer! God wants us to enter into the mystery of who he is. The essence of being a Christian is knowing God; when we know God, we want to love and serve others. The Trinity is not a dry, unreachable, ancient dogma – no, on the contrary, it is belief. God wants us to get excited today about the mystery that God is Three-in-One.

In a profound and moving hymn of praise Dionysius the Areopagite wrote:

Trinity! Higher than any being, any divinity, any goodness! Guide of Christians in the wisdom of heaven!

Lead us up beyond unknowing and light, up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic scripture, where the mysteries of God's Word lie simple, absolute and unchangeable in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence. Amid the deepest shadow they pour overwhelming light on what is most manifest. Amid the wholly unsensed and unseen they completely fill our sightless minds with treasures beyond all beauty.

Chris

from Bible Alive

Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40 • Psalm 32(33):4-6, 9, 18-20 • Romans 8:14-17 • Matthew 28:16-20

St Peter's Parish, Biggleswade

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The Holy Trinity

06-06-2020, 17:51Blessed, Holy Spirit, mystery, TrinityPermalink

John 3:16–18

Depiction of Father, Son and Holy Spirit

It is common today for commentators to point out that the three major world faiths are very similar in that they all share a belief in one God. Althoug it is true that Christians believe in one God, our faith departs radically from Islam and Judaism in its belief that in the one God there are three Persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, God the Son entered time and space and lived as one of us.

Belief in the Trinity is a central mystery of the Christian faith. We are baptised “in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19), and we are invited to develop a relationship with each Person of the Blessed Trinity. Jesus’s life, work, ministry, preaching and teaching all testify to this fundamental truth of Christian revelation. In fact, the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity could be described as the central mystery of the Christian faith and life; and it is this mystery that we are celebrating and rejoicing in today, Trinity Sunday.

For many Christians the ‘mystery’ of the Trinity remains just that: a mystery. But the word in this sense is not used to mean a conundrum or a puzzle impossible to solve, but a sacred truth which we wil be able to penetrate more deeply only if we ask the Holy Spirit to shed his light and truth on our minds and spirits.

Instead of saying, “I can’t get my head around the Trinity,” we should say, “I need God’s help to get my head into the Trinity.” In other words, we need to pray, “Lord, teach me, show me, guide me, lead me into the beauty, glory and majesty of your Blessed Trinity."

Here’s a prayer that could help:

"O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me to forget myself entirely so as to establish myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity." (Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity)

Chris

From Bible Alive

St Peter's Parish, Biggleswade

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The Holy Trinity

16-06-2019, 07:17Trinity, WitnessPermalink

The greatest mystery of Christian truth is that in the Godhead there are three Persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Faith allows us to accept this revelation; faith allows us to rejoice in it and enter into it.

A famous icon by Rublev depicts the Trinity as three angels around a table with space reserved for another guest. We are that guest, because by the grace of baptism we are invited to immerse ourselves in the mystery and glory of the triune life of God.

"O Eternal Trinity, God, you are an abyss, a deep sea; you have given yourself to me – what greater good could you give? By your light you enlighten our minds, as by your light you have brought me to know you." Saint Catherine of Siena

Chris

(from Bible Alive)

St Peter's Parish, Biggleswade

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Christ the High Priest

13-06-2019, 07:02Trinity, unityPermalink

John 17:1-2, 9, 14-26

Jesus’s high-priestly prayer brings us into the very heart of the Trinity. The Blessed Trinity is a unity of the union of three divine Persons in one divine God, a divine unity joined for eternity in a communion of profound love.

Our Lord and Master focused not on himself but on pleasing his Father and protecting us by his prayer. He united himself to his Father’s will: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34). He submitted entirely to it: “not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42).

As we keep Jesus’s word, we shall experience the love of the Father and the Son: “he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him” (John 4:21).

The Father and the Son dwell in the hearts of all those who believe and obey Jesus’s word and they dwell in the Father and the Son. This divine indwelling is given to us by the Spirit at our Baptism.

Chris

(from Bible Alive)

St Peter's Parish, Biggleswade

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