THERE is a famous story about the complex and sublime doctrine of the Holy Trinity — One God, in three Persons — recounted by Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger:

Saint Augustine “while occupied in searching into the mystery of the Holy Trinity, took a walk on the seashore, where he found a boy, who having made a small hole in the sand, poured water from the sea into it with a spoon. After watching the boy for a long time, the Saint asked him what he was doing. “I wish,” replied the boy, “to pour the sea into this hole.” “O my child!” said the Saint: “that is a useless attempt. So small a hole cannot contain the immense sea.” “And you,” replied the boy, ” will be still less able to contain and comprehend, with your human understanding, the stupendous mystery of the Holy Trinity!” After these words, the child, who doubtless was an angel, vanished. [Recounted by Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger]

If man is the measure of all things, the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity doesn’t matter.

If man is the measure of all things, we should honor man. We should hold sacred his happiness. We should make his desires come true. We should surrender to his will as long as it does not infringe on the happiness of others. If man is the measure of all things then whatever soothes man, whatever celebrates his chosen path, whatever makes him a success in the world must be good and worthy of our full attention.

But if man is a creature made in the image of this Triune God, and meant to share in His divine life, then there is nothing more important than this.

A supernatural mystery makes us feel both small and enlarged. And that is true of the idea of God loving God.

[T]he mystery of the Trinity cannot be comprehended by the human intellect, no one however eloquent of tongue could exhaust it; if entire books were written about it, so that the whole world were filled with them, yet the unspeakable wisdom of God would not be expressed. God who is indescribable, can in no way be described. When the human mind ceases to speak of Him, then it but begins to speak.

[From Leonard Goffine’s “Instructions of the Feast of the Blessed Trinity.”

To say that knowledge cannot be perfect is no to say thee is nothing to understand:

We cannot fix our thoughts upon the divine judgments and ways, without feeling a sort of bewilderment. The eternal and the infinite dazzle our weak reason; and yet this same reason of ours acknowledges and confesses them. Now if even the ways of God with His creatures surpass our understanding, how can we pretend to discover, of ourselves, the inmost nature of this sovereign Being? And, yet, in this uncreated Essence, we do distinguish the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost from each other, and we glorify them. This comes from the Father’s having revealed Himself, by sending us His Son, the object of His eternal delight; it comes from the Son’s showing us His own Personality, by taking our Flesh, which the Father and the Holy Ghost did not; it comes from the Holy Ghost’s being sent by the Father and the Son, and fulfilling the mission He received from Them. Our mortal eye respectfully gazes upon these divine depths of truth, and our heart is touched at the thought, that it is through God’s benefits to us the He has given us to know Him, and that our knowledge of what He is came though what He gave us. [Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, Volume X, Loreto Publications, 2013; p. 106]

Today is Trinity Sunday, the feast of a dogma which has been assailed and defended for so many centuries now. From the St. Andrew’s Missal of 1945:

Almighty God, in making known to us that His one divine Nature is possessed by three distinct Persons reveals to us something of His own interior life.

Thus the Son possesses this life because the Father gives it to Him by an act of knowledge which proceeds from the divine Intelligence and the Holy Spirit, because it is communicated to Him by the Father and the Son, by an act of love having its origin in their Will.

And the divine mercy shines forth in the fact that we are called to share this happiness, which is proper to God alone, by knowing and loving Him and He knows and loves Himself.

It takes effort to understand what we cannot understand about the Holy Trinity. Fr. Weninger continues:

In regard to men, we say that there are as many separate and distinct natures as there are persons; but in God, as St. Augustine teaches, we find a most perfect Unity in the Trinity, and a most perfect Trinity in the Unity: this means, there is only one God, but there are three Divine Persons.

The Father is the first Person, the Son, the second, the Holy Ghost, the third. The Father has no beginning nor origin from either of the other Persons. The Son is born from all eternity, in an incomprehensible manner, of the Father, and the Holy Ghost, in an equally incomprehensible manner, proceeds from the Father and Son at the same time. And yet the Father is neither older nor higher than the Son, the Son not younger nor less than the Father, and the Holy Ghost not younger nor less than either the Father or the Son. It is true, Christ has said in the Gospel: “The Father is greater than I am:” but these words must be understood as spoken by Him in His human nature. The Father is greater than Christ as Son of man; for as such, He is not from Eternity: as He took upon Himself human nature in time, that is at His Incarnation, nearly 2000 years ago. As far, however, as His divine nature is concerned, He is equally great and eternal as the Father; and as the Father is from all eternity, so the Son by His divine nature has no beginning. The same we believe and confess of the Holy Ghost: He exists equally from all eternity.

What we believe of the eternal existence of these three divine Persons we must also believe of their other perfections, namely, of the omnipotence, omniscience, infinity and the other attributes of God. Omnipotent is the Father; omnipotent is the Son; omnipotent is the Holy Ghost. Omniscient is the Father; omniscient the Son ; omniscient the Holy Ghost Infinite is the Father; infinite the Son; infinite the Holy Ghost. Not one of these three Persons is above the other in might, wisdom, infinity, or any other perfection. One is immeasurably perfect as the other. But although each of the three Persons possesses the above named attributes, there are, nevertheless not three Gods thus perfect; as although each Person is true God, there are not three Gods, but only one ; because the three Persons possess but one divine nature. The Son of God, the second Person, possesses, besides the divine nature, also the human nature, which He took upon Himself in the virginal body of Mary, and in which He suffered and died for us. He is true God and Man. This is what the true faith teaches us of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.

Blessed Trinity Sunday!

As fades the glowing orb of day,
to Thee, great source of light, we pray;
blest Three in One, to every heart
Thy beams of live and love impart.

At early dawn, at close of day,
to Thee our vows we humbly pay;
may we, mid joys that never end,
with Thy bright Saints in homage bend.

To God the Father, and the Son,
and Holy Spirit, Three in One,
be endless glory, as before
the world began, so evermore.

Translation from the hymn O Lux Beata Trinitas, ascribed to St. Ambrose (340-397)

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