Trinity Sunday
May 26
Understand
by Father Greg Friedman, OFM
We’re told that the great Saint Augustine was once walking along the seashore trying to figure out the mystery of the Trinity. He came upon a child filling a hole with bucket after bucket of water from the ocean.“You can’t empty the whole ocean into that hole,” the saint laughed. Looking at the learned Augustine the child replied, “And neither can you ever completely understand the mystery of the Trinity.”
Today’s feast invites us to reflect on one of the most profound truths of our faith — that God is three — and one. Three equal persons, one God. If even Saint Augustine couldn’t exhaust that mystery in thousands of words, what can I hope to do in just 90 seconds?
Perhaps we can allow our Sunday Gospel to instruct us: Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will teach us what we need to know. The Spirit, Jesus says, works in union with Jesus and with the Father. These words come from Jesus’ discourse at the Last Supper, when the disciples were troubled about their future. The Lord wanted to console them, that he and the Father would remain present to them through the working of the Spirit. There is consolation in those words for us as well, as we face the fears and questions of our time in the Church and in the world.
