We often hear about the Trinity, but what does the Trinity mean? In “The Mystery of the Trinity,” Father Richard Rohr explains it like this:
“Christians believe that God is formlessness (the Father), God is form (the Son), and God is the very living and loving energy between those two (the Holy Spirit). The three do not cancel one another out. Instead, they do exactly the opposite.”
In “Images of the Trinity,” he adds,
“[T]he three Persons of the Trinity empty themselves and pour themselves out into each other. Each knows they can empty themselves because they will forever be refilled To understand this mystery of love fully, we need to “stand under” the flow and participate in it. It’s infinite outpouring and infinite infilling without end. It can only be experienced as a flow, as a community, as a relationship, as an inherent connection.”
All of creation reveals this relationship—”from atoms, to ecosystems, to galaxies,” The shape of God, Father Richard writes in “The Mystery of the Trinity,” is the shape of everything in the universe! Everything is in relationship and nothing stands alone.”
“Everything is in relationship and nothing stands alone.”
Father RICHARD ROHR
I’d say the first reading (Proverbs 8:22-31) and the psalm (Psalm 8:4-9) from this past weekend reflect this understanding, especially Proverbs 8:27-31 and Psalm 8:4-9. The psalm excerpt begins with:
When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers,
Psalm 8:4-5
the moon and the stars which you set in place—
What is man that you should be mindful of him,
or the son of man that you should care for him?
The psalmist marvels at all the wonder his senses can take in, and he’s in awe of his experience that despite being reflected in all that grandeur, God also cares about the smallest components of the natural world and every single human being, too.
I love the way Proverbs assures us that God does, indeed, care about aspects of our lives that may seem to us to be insignificant. In that book, wisdom speaks about itself, saying:
I was his delight day by day,
Proverbs 8:30-31
playing before him all the while,
Playing over the whole of his earth,
having my delight with human beings.
Works cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Rohr, Richard. “Images of the Trinity.” Center for Action and Contemplation, 12 Jan. 2022, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/images-of-the-trinity-2022-01-12/. Accessed 17 June 2022.
—. “The Mystery of the Trinity.” Center for Action and Contemplation, 9 Jan. 2022, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-mystery-of-the-trinity-2022-01-09/. Accessed 17 June 2022.
Sitting with the Sacred 
Lisa, thank you for integrating these scriptures with your comments. Like Psalms 1:1 says a person who meditates daily on God’s Word is like a tree planted by streams of water… everything he does, he prospers.
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[…] The dependency of the disciples would present an opportunity to the people whose houses they entered, the opportunity to be the means of God’s providence. This opportunity would open the disciples to trusting God, thanks to the kindness of their fellow human beings. I’d say God’s will is to work through us is to provide for each other because, as I’ve written before, God’s very nature is relationship. […]
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[…] we arrive again at Trinity Sunday. Here’s what I posted in honor of Trinity Sunday last year. I wanted to link to it because Richard Rohr’s reflection on the Trinity, which I included in […]
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