The various feasts we celebrate every year commemorate something in the life of Christ or his mother or the lives of the apostles or saints. Except Trinity Sunday, when we celebrate a doctrine. And when we try to explain the doctrine, two things usually happen. The preacher will almost always say something that is a heresy, and the congregation will wonder what the big deal is. Someone once said that most Catholics are Unitarians in practical terms. Saint Patrick was said to compare the Trinity to a shamrock -- three leaves, one plant. But that’s a heresy. The Trinity has been compared to water -- can exist as steam, liquid, or ice. But that’s a heresy. Thomas Aquinas said that God knows everything completely, including himself, and because God exists, the knowledge he has of himself exists and because God is completely loving and loveable, the love itself is a person. But even Thomas sails near heretical shores, because we can’t help but see the Father as giving rise to the Son and both bringing about the Holy Spirit. But that’s not the case; there was never a time when only the Father existed. Saint Augustine said that “The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. The Son is not the Father or the Spirit; the Spirit is not the Father or the Son; and there is only one God''. I’m not sure that helps me.
But maybe instead of trying to explain how the Trinity works, we could look at what it means to believe in God but not in the Trinity. First, there are a lot of people who have a vague appreciation for a God who is the creator and sustainer of the universe. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin believed along those lines. But such a God made no difference whatsoever in their lives. For them, God sets everything in motion and then stands back to watch. And there are numerous other examples of this line of thinking among philosophers and scientists.
There are other people -- people like Martin Luther King who said “The arc of history is long, but bends towards justice”. There are people who devote their lives to a cause. One of the reasons Marxism caught on was that there was a spiritual quality to it. Marx preached that it was inevitable that the human race was going to reach the ideal where ``from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” would be a reality. There are people who find meaning in associating with a movement. And there are many people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. My grandfather who practiced no religion felt close to God when he was fishing.. What all of these have in common, even if they don’t admit it, is that they recognize a power outside of themselves -- maybe not a God, but certainly something to which they can relate, something that can satisfy a craving in our hearts for relationship.
And finally we have people that set out to change themselves for what they think is better. There are people that obsessively work out developing muscles on top of muscles. There are others who work long days and nights to gain a doctorate, or to build a business, or to change themselves in some other way that they envision will be an improvement over their present. Sometimes this is good and sometimes it’s misguided, but it’s probably never entirely satisfying, and after you’ve achieved your goal you are looking around for another.
In the Trinity, though, we speak of the Father who is the creator and sustainer of the universe who is God; and the Son who is God in relationship, the one we encounter when we have a personal experience of the divine, who is God. And when we allow God to live in us and move us toward his idea of perfection, not ours, that is the Spirit, who is God. And the doctrine of the Trinity is a reflection of how man relates to the infinite and the infinite to man.
Saint Seraphim of Sarov, a saint beloved by Eastern Christians, Said “God is above us, God walks beside us, God is within us” the Father, Son and Spirit, three persons, one God.
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