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Tomorrow is what's known as Trinity Sunday, probably the most confusing festival of the church year. We celebrate a God who is one Person and at the same time three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's an idea that became codified pretty early on in the history of Christianity, but theologians have struggled down the years to explain it to lay people. For an exhaustive (and exhausting) exploration of the subject, you can check out the Creed of Athanasius, which includes such riveting prose as:

"...we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost."

He goes on in that vein for several pages.

The concept even appears in my work-in-progress, Book 2 of the Feathers of a Lion series, in which 18 year-old Oriela is preparing for Baptism (for the reason it's only happening now, see Book 1, Zani.) A Dominican friar has the unenviable job of explaining basic dogma to this uninitiated teenager, and after he gives her some of the Athanasian treatment,

“Oh! Is it like this?” said Oriela. “God is an actor, and He wears three Masks. Like the way sometimes Silvio is Salvan Mandragora the jester, sometimes Zani the servant, and sometimes Alichin--whatever he is--but it’s always Silvio in the Mask. Is that what you mean?”

Fra Tomaso cocked his head. “Not exactly, but it will do as a start. It’s no worse than San Patrizio’s shamrock leaf.”

Saint Patrick famously attempted to illustrate the concept to the heathen Irish by holding up a shamrock, a plant where three leaves are attached to the same stem, begging the question whether, when you pick one, you have plucked one leaf or three. 

 


I like the Russian icon pictured up top, painted by Andrei Rublev, which depicts at the same time the three angels who visited Abraham and the Holy Trinity. Father MacFarlane of St. Barnabas' Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, said he favored this depiction because it shows that "the life at the heart of the universe is a shared life." 

As an Eastern Orthodox image, it doesn't try to explain the whole thing in detail but lets the mystery be a mystery. There are some things about the universe that we can't codify, and we don't have to. It's okay not to have all the answers.

That's all I've got this week. If you have any more coherent thoughts on this subject, I'd love to read them. That's what the comments section is for.

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