Holy Trinity Sunday
(Sunday 22nd May 2016)
Trust in God and allow His grace to work in our lives – (John 16: 12-15)
This coming Sunday we celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday. It seems very appropriate that we celebrate this on the Sunday after Pentecost. The Trinity is the ultimate mystery which we can only approach through the revelation of Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is that which we cannot understand so much by reason as by faith and a deeper journey and communion with the mystery of God. This is made possible only through the coming of the Spirit.
The Trinity is and remains always a mystery. Saint Augustine tells us that he was walking on the beach, deep in thought, trying to unravel the mystery of the Trinity. He saw a small boy using a seashell to carry water from the sea to pour it into a hole he had made on the beach. When Augustine asked what to the boy was doing the boy said that he was going to empty the ocean into that hole. When Augustine pointed out the futility of the attempt the boy told him that the attempt of Augustine to unravel the mystery of the trinity was even more futile. Then the boy disappeared, meaning that he was an angel.
The mystery of the Holy Trinity is something that we will never fully understand in this life. To fully comprehend God is impossible. We can know some things about the Trinity through reason and faith, but only in inadequate terms because we always need to use analogies of our own world to describe something which is completely out of this world. It is only through the coming of Jesus and the Holy Spirit that God has revealed His love for us and has invited us to the eternal destiny of becoming part of this community of Love which God is. God’s self revelation is an invitation to come into communion with Him, providing a glimpse or teaser of the future that is to come. Through this communion Grace works in our lives and a new supernatural reality opens up for us. Through faith, then, we start to better understand who God is through the real communion we can have with Him.
So this Sunday is an invitation into a deeper communion into the Trinity. To allow ourselves to be submerged into the mystery and open our hearts, trust in God and to allow God’s grace to work in our lives. This journey, then, can give some experience of God in His gifts like love and peace. However, experiences are very different for different people, and some don’t seem to experience much at all even though they have a strong faith. Each one of us has to find out how God is communicating in our own lives through our own time spent in prayer.
Ultimately we might never be able to fully comprehend God in this life, but we can continue to accept the invitation of communion to draw deeper and deeper into the mystery of who God is and the reality into which He invites us to partake.
Fr. Luuk Jansen O.P.