Trinity Sunday
Ordinary Time – Season of Stability
The Irish may not have invented the Trinity, yet from the way they pray you might think so. Celtic spirituality is Trinitarian in its essence. The Irish love triads, arrangements of three statements that summed up a person, quality, mood or simply linked incompatible objects. They especially loved it when used in a pun.
Their days were filled with threes, three splashes of water in the morning, banking three pieces of peat at night in the hearth in order to rebuild the fire the next morning. They would pray in threes while doing simple labors, such as weaving a cloth. The rhythm of the loom lent itself to simple prayers in threes. They prayed constantly using three in one prayers and blessing prayers in the name of the Trinity. Is it any wonder that Patrick is known for his teaching about the Trinity using a shamrock?
The Trinity isn’t a mathematical problem or a puzzle to be solved. It is a mystery to live. At the heart of the Trinity is a community of three, a community of love. It reminds us that we are to be one as Jesus and the Father are one. That as God’s children, we are more alike than we are different, and yet so often we focus on our differences rather than what we share.
Perhaps if we focused more on the ways that we are alike and less on our differences then we could achieve the oneness that Jesus prayed for. Then we could truly enter into the mystery of the Trinity.
“I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you.” John 17:20-21a
This post is part of a series of reflections on the church year. Click here to follow blog
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