A story has it that the fifth century Augustine of Hippo was taking his summer holiday along the North African seashore. Walking along the water’s edge on a delightful day, he was pondering the mystery of the Trinity. All this genius was getting for his efforts was a severe headache. Finally he thought he was coming close to breaking the code of the mystery. He was about to shout, “Eureka!” Suddenly at his feet was a boy of five The bishop asked him what he was doing. The youngster replied, “I am pouring the whole ocean into this small hole.” Augustine said, “That’s nonsense. No one can do that.” Unintimidated by the towering giant above him, the child replied, “Well, neither can you, Bishop Augustine, unravel the mystery of the Trinity.” Then he disappeared. Whether this account is apocryphal or not, I leave to your good judgment. But I think we all get the point. The Trinity will remain a mystery forever and then some. This morning over instant decaffinated coffee and a toasted raisin muffin, I read a highly favorable review of a book by Jack Miles in The New York Times. Miles calls his tome God: a Biography. The review opens with this paragraph, “You cannot plumb the depths of the human heart,” reads a passage in the Apocrypha, “nor find out what a man is thinking. How do you expect to search out God, who made all these things, and find out His mind or comprehend His thoughts?”
The youngster of the St Augustine story would shake his head in approval of these lines. Now you better understand I think what we are up against on this feast in honor of three Persons in one God. The early seventeenth century poet John Donne wrote breathlessly, “Batter my heart, three person’d God; for you as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.” Having just as breathlessly repeated that prayer, should we attempt to turn our backs on the Trinity and get on with our lives? Inasmuch as the Teacher spoke of God as Father an awesome forty-five times at the Last Supper, we would be most unwise to do so. Recall this famous line from John 17,11, “Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name…” Nor can you disregard or neglect the Holy Spirit. John 14,16 says, “I shall ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate…that Spirit of truth.” Forget the Trinity and we do so at our own peril and also serious loss. There is much spiritual richness to be wrestled from a devotion to the Trinity. Eg, we can know we are told a lot about Jesus but only through the Spirit can we know Jesus. Would you want to pass that opportunity up? I like the spin the Benedictine Daniel Durken puts on the triune God. He quotes a poem by Sister Mary Ignatius that closes, “That God is not up, but in!” Durken then argues we must remember the Father, Son, and the Spirit are not up there somewhere in the heavens but rather in each of our honorable selves. The much-quoted Matthew 28,20 has the Master instructing His people to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” So Durken advises the Sacrament of Baptism drops us not only into water but also into the Trinity. The Trinity in turn is delighted to take up residence in us.
So, just as the triune God is in us, so too are we in the triune God. Or, as Durken puts it, “We have an `in’ with the Trinity.” People say of my hometown New York City, “It’s sure a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” Happily the Trinity does not say the same of us. Rather, Pere Durken says the Trinity with all appropriate flourishes announces, “We’re not just visiting. We’re staying.” The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have pitched a four season tent in each of us. They are in our spirits to be cultivated, called upon, prayed to, messaged, you name it. If one understands that, then the sky is literally the limit. The fourteenth century German Dominican, Meister Eckhart, concluded our subject best with amusing langauge. “God laughed and the Son was born. Together they laughed and the Holy Spirit was born. From the laughter of all three the universe was born.”