Sitting with the Sacred

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

2 Corinthians 13:13

Today, 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 the post, is insightful and helpful. But my plan from here on out is not simply to repost or to link to other posts.

This year, I feel prompted to sit with the Trinity by reflecting on 2 Corinthians 13:13. As I revisit this verse, it’s tempting to put dividers that are too solid between the Persons of the Trinity, to get the impression that the Lord Jesus Christ offers grace, God offers love, and the Holy Spirit offers fellowship, as if each of the Persons has a separate role. Yet I trust that my Creator, my Redeemer, and my sanctifier, a.k.a. my Father, my Brother, and the “love between them” extend grace, sacrificial love, and fellowship (Rohr). This one God in three Persons always has. The redemption began as soon as sin did. I trust that no part of God’s nature has ever not existed, and that the very nature of the Divine Being is grace, love, and fellowship. The theology of the Trinity reminds me that God is so intimate with me as to abide in my soul and body. At the same time, it reminds me that God’s nature and ways are above mine because God is the source and sustainer of all that lives and/or provides, all that is good. God is the ultimate intimacy and the ultimate transcendence. I’d say the way these qualities are entwined with each other like the strands of a braid is expressed as the Trinity.

What can this entwinning of seemingly opposite qualities, this Trinity, mean for my life and yours? As I’ve been mulling over this post the last couple of weeks, John 17 has been among the Gospel readings for each day. In this chapter, Jesus prays and teaches us what the Trinity can do and mean in our lives because of what it does and means in His. It means there’s no distance between Him and His father. is in His father and His father is in him. ( John 14:11). This abiding allows him to draw as near to other people as they will allow. If they don’t put up walls between themselves and him, and thus between themselves and the Father, they will be one with each other and will do God’s work. Their reflection of God and doing of God’s work will glorify the Father, and through the reflection and work the Father will glorify them.

Such glorification will result in those who allow the oneness standing out from whatever isn’t compatible with the life-giving, growth-supporting nature of the oneness. Whatever and whoever embraces and is embraced by this oneness opposes what is not embraced by it and is opposed by whatever or whoever doesn’t welcome the Divine Embrace that is the Trinity. Because Jesus knows the world needs the ones the Father has given to him and that they will face opposition both inside and outside themselves, He asks the Father not “to take [the ones He has given to the Son] out of the world but to keep them “from the evil one” because “[t]hey do not belong to the world anymore than [the Son] belong[s] to the world (John 17:9, 15).

The Son opened the Way to eternal life, and He leads us to it by his life, death, and resurrection. Thanks to his life, death, and resurrection, we are invited into the same embrace of the Trinity in which He lives. I invite this Love of the Trinity into my heart as I join my prayer to the one Jesus offers in John 17.

As another closing prayer, I’m looking to what is sometimes called “St. Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer” because, according to the version of this prayer that’s included with the Hallow app, it is prayed in Ireland not only on St. Patrick’s Day but on Trinity Sunday.

Deliver us deliver us from evil, Lord and protect us in times of temptation. Amen.

The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.

Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday July, 2 2023: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.179, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 26 Feb. 2023, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm

Slanz, Julianne, “Lorica of St. Patrick.” Hallow, 17 March 2023, https://hallow.com/prayers/1016394.