TRINITY SUNDAY - JUNE 15, 2025

TRINITY SUNDAY

In the fullness of Spring, after celebrating the firstfruits of Christ’s Resurrection and its fulfillment with the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we immediately commemorate the most complex aspect of Christian theology in this solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. The trees have regrown their leaves, most of the snow has melted on the mountains which are now covered in green, and flowers are in full bloom. At the time of Easter, though, those same flowers were mere buds, and within their closed outer petals, their full beauty was shrouded until now. The Holy Trinity works in much the same way: we might initially understand the relationship of the Three Persons as a hierarchy (Father over Son, Son over Spirit), but their relationship is more like a flower in bloom, not one petal unfolding before the next, but opening outward all at once. The Three Persons never revealed themselves or loved us in sequence, but mutually and simultaneously, together from the beginning.

READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

The late Spring and early Summer is a wonderful time to appreciate and admire the beauty of God’s Creation. And though this Solemnity usually forces us to wrestle with the impossible task of trying to understand and explain the nature of the Trinity, we ought to instead reflect on the role of the Trinity within our lives; after all, the intimate relationship between the Persons is not ours to know, but their interactions particularly affect Creation. In this Sunday’s first reading from the book of Proverbs, we hear directly from an interesting character found throughout Wisdom literature–the personification of Wisdom itself. In both original languages of Scripture, the word for Wisdom is not necessarily intelligence or learned experience as we understand it today; instead, it is synonymous with artistry and craftsmanship (chokmah in Hebrew and sophia in Greek). Wisdom tells us in this passage that it was there from the beginning. The Lord used Wisdom to be poured out onto the earth, and Wisdom was the craftsman of the Lord, forming and crafting all aspects of the Creation in which we participate. When we focus on this imagery, we are incapable of separating these words from the words of John at the beginning of his Gospel, how God used the Logos for creation, and we know and understand the Logos to be Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Further, Wisdom describes itself in a way that a child might describe himself, being the delight of His Father, and playing before God on the surface of the earth as Creation comes into being. Creation, then, is an act of love, and acts of love offered in their purest form are done with joy and lightheartedness, like a child who plays. All of Creation, from the smallest of blooming flowers to the human person, is an act of love, artistry, and craftsmanship, implemented harmoniously by all Three Persons.