Trinity

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Matthew 28:19

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The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, God in Holy Trinity, Three Persons in One Nature, united in will, for the inception, manifestation and fulfillment of all things - this is the foundation of all Christian doctrine. Between the Persons of the Holy Trinity, there is the constant movement of love in perfect offering, reciprocation and fulfillment for all eternity. The Trinity not only exemplifies for us what it means to be in communion with God (as the Persons of the Trinity commune perfectly with one another), but by grace draws us into that communion so we can partake in the life of the Trinity.

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The Trinity remains a mystery of God that is incomprehensible, regardless of how clearly it can be articulated, yet it is the joy of the saints, the lifeblood of the Church and the fount out of which all existence flows. The early fathers determined to express this as "Three Persons in One Essence", an almost paradoxical statement in it's dissimilarity to the personhood of humanity, but entirely consistent with the revelation of God.

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For the saints however, this doctrine wasn't simply a philosophical argument to quell heresy, but the celebration of the truth of God in mystery. Trinitarian Reality permeated their lives in every way; in prayer, in thought, even in how they perceived the tangible world. As St Gregory Nazianzen writes: 

‘No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three, I think of Him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.’

This is the language of wonder. It is the movement of thought and heart; the glimpsing of reality always on the periphery of understanding; the words of a man confounded by the glory of the unfathomable God.