Fr Robert Hendrickson
Dear Friends in Christ,
Today is Trinity Sunday and it is one of those days in which much preaching is devoted to trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. The deeper meaning is not the Trinity as a doctrine but the Trinity as a relationship. Within the Trinity we see modeled three distinct persons who have their own identity and are part of who God is in their diversity.
This God is present from the foundations of Creation. The Spirit moves over the waters as God speaks the water and the firmament into being. We hear in the prologue to John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word. In the Prologue, John identifies Jesus as the logos - λóγος, the Word or reason, the philosophical concept of God's unifying principle for all of creation.
The Prologue begins and ends in eternity, which effectively emphasizes the Word entering time and history through the Incarnation in verse fourteen. We who are the Body of Christ and reborn by the Spirit in Baptism are welcomed into the interplay, the divine exchange of love, that is the Trinity. We are welcomed into the sweep of eternity to spend eternity with God.
The beauty of this is that we are welcomed not to cognitively conceive of God in a certain way but to know ourselves adopted by love into this mystery. It is easy to get caught up in the stuff of our every day — in the anxieties and anger and fear and busy distraction — but ultimately what we are reminded of in Trinity Sunday is that eternity is ours. The Kingdom of God is our true and eternal home not by our will or our action or our merit but by the grace and love of God.
In the beginning God created everything that is and through him all things have their being. And it was good. It was made for love’s sake and so are we. This is our charge now — to show forth that glory to all the world offering a vision of divine love that welcomes all the diversity of creation, with all its distinctions, into the holy and redeeming love of God in whom we are all one.
Yours in God’s Love,
Fr Robert