The Holy Trinity

Today is Trinity Sunday. While a three person in one God is impossible for us to truly comprehend, I like what I've read in recent years about the relational aspect of God this reveals to us and how we are invited to enter into the love relationship among the Godhead--Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Often metaphors help us to understand spiritual truths like the Trinity. St. Patrick used the shamrock to illustrate the three-in-oneness of the Trinity, the shamrock being like a clover with three distinct lobes on one leaf. One day last September, a metaphor came to me about the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is like a tree with roots, trunk and leaves. The Holy Spirit is the roots supplying water. The Father is the trunk supplying support and tying all together. Jesus is the leaves, the most noticeable part of the tree, which fall to earth for a time then appear anew. The tree is all the parts together. They don't exist as separate entities yet each is distinct and has a distinct function in their integral union as does the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Distinct yet undivided
One in essence, three in Being
Mystery of Trinity.

Another significance for me of the Holy Trinity is related to the name I took when I was clothed in the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites, Elizabeth of the Sacred Heart. This name has much significance for me, but I'll only share the Trinity-related one now. One of the Discalced Carmelite nuns I admire is Elizabeth of the Trinity who was a French Carmelite nun with a strong devotion to the Trinity. One of my favorite quotes from her is,

"I have found heaven on earth,
Because heaven is God
and God is in my soul. ...
Seeing that He is always with me,
prayer, heart-to-heart communication,
can never have an end."

My third Trinitarian thought is from Henry Nouwen on the Holy Trinity icon written by the Russian icon painter Andrew Rublev (http://tars.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/trinity.html) which portrays the Holy Trinity as the three guests who visit Abraham in Genesis 18. In his book, Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons, Nouwen points out the invitation in this icon to enter the loving fellowship of the Trinity and to find our home within this House of Love.

"How lovely is thy dwelling place, O LORD of hosts!"
My soul longs, yea, faints for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God
Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young, at thy altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God."
Psalm 84:1-3 Revised Standard Version