The difficulty with God, so to speak, is that there’s no-one like him. Analogies stutter, falter and fail. There are lots of “gods” around, but only one God is Trinity. How are we to make sense of something unique? You can’t even say “like” the Trinity, there is nothing like it.
Perhaps a good first move is to get out of the abstract mode, not speaking of “it”, or “the Trinity”, but rather recognising our Trinity as Three Persons, not abstractions, not impersonal.
We relate to persons, try to come to know them. If we don’t know someone, we try to find out more about them, and the best way to do that, is to ask their friends, see what they have to say about them, see how they relate to them, how they can help us to come to know someone we want to become our mutual friend.
We call those who are intimate with the Three Divine Persons “saints”. They are people who are holy, and their communication with those Persons, is by prayer. Let us see something of what some of them said in their prayers.
St. Maximilian Kolbe has a prayer to the Trinity in which the keynote is adoration. “ I adore you heavenly Father, I adore you O Son of God, I adore you O Holy Spirit, and his reason for adoring is the incarnation of the Son in Mary. I will never cease to adore you each day, flat on the ground, humbly saying the “Glory be to the Father” three times.” And if for whatever reason, physical or otherwise, we can’t get flat on the ground, we can still do so in our hearts.
“Power of the Eternal Father,” says Catherine of Siena, “help me! Wisdom of the Son, enlighten the gaze of my mind. Sweet Holy Spirit, set me on fire and unite my heart to you.” She calls the Trinity “a fathomless ocean, undying fire of love which consumes all self-love, by the light of which we know God’s truth. Good above all goods, incomprehensible, inestimable good, beauty above all beauty. The garment which covers all nakedness, the food which gives joy to the hungry.”
Symeon the New Theologian is swept up and away as he contemplates the Trinity, “you have seduced me by your beauty, wounded me by your love, completely transformed me, your beauty has laid hold of me and I am stupefied… May my eyes see your glory which I daily proclaim.”
Gregory Nazianzen gives glory to each of the Persons and to the Trinity and goes on to contemplate the works of God in creation and to invite us and all creation to sing praise to God always and everywhere, asking that he himself may offer a pure praise, through his spirit, his soul, his tongue, his thoughts.
Moving westwards and nearer to our own time, St. John Eudes recognises his own limitations, and so asks the Father to love his Son Jesus Christ on his behalf, making us sharers in that love, he asks Jesus that at the sight of the infinite love and glory bestowed on the Son by Father and Spirit, he may rejoice. The Spirit of Jesus, who is all love, all charity, he asks to love Father and Son on his behalf, to transform his heart into love for them. “Draw me to you, live and reign in me, make my whole being, my whole life, be completely given over to your glory.
There is a quasi-proverbial Ghanaian saying, “Casa nipa hɔ,” treat me like a human being, or, more literally, speak to me, engage with me. The Holy Trinity made us to know, love, seek and serve the Three Persons in One God, so that we might be happy with them forever.
Today, then, let us engage with them as persons, commit ourselves to letting them love us, that we may love in return, let us, as St. Benedict exhorts, truly seek God, so that, as St. Elizabeth of the Trinity prays, “every minute may draw us deeper into your mystery.”
DGC