Trinity Sunday Today’s feast presents God as mystery. Presenting God as Mystery, God as Trinity, means that we can never fully know God – at least not in this life

The greatest temptation for people of all religions is to seek to domesticate God, to reduce God to “our” image and likeness, or simply to what we want God to be for us.  This enables us to control God, a subtle way of ensuring that God does not challenge us.  God is perceived as on “our” side.  Whether we are rich or poor, Irish or American, Christian or Muslim – God conveniently supports “our” cause or politics.

The mystery of the Trinity reminds us that we cannot control God, because we do not fully know God.  God is always beyond out imagination.  We need to respect God’s otherness.  Like Moses at the burning bush we need to take our shoes off and acknowledge mystery.  On Mount Sinai Moses encounters both the nearness and the otherness of God – “A God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithfulness.   And yet God has chosen to make us in God’s image and likeness and has given us the faculty to yearn for God.  ……

There is only one God, but there is more than one way of understanding God.  The Trinity gives us various perspectives on the Divine nature.  In the bible we encounter God as Father, Mother, Creator  – who calls; In the bible we encounter the beloved Son, the Word made flesh, who saves, and the life giving Spirit who renews.

We get a sense of how God acts through human history in the OT and what God’s concerns are through the teaching and preaching and ministry of Jesus.

In the cross we are presented with an image of a God who love to the point of being willing to suffer for us – “God loved the world so much, that he gave his only Son

What matter’s is not so much that we understand everything about God.  Far better that we own our ignorance, for then we are open to learning something new about God, acknowledging that new insight might well come from another faith tradition such as another Christian Church, or Judaism, (Islam, or Buddhism)

The mystery of the Trinity invites us to be always willing to expand our understanding of God, to let go false images we have acquired along the way and which we may have allowed to become idols.

Even more important than understanding God, is to be like God

The Trinity is always creating, always redeeming, always renewing and reconciling.

(Much of this text taken from the Furrow-written by Fr Richard Sheehy)