Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve
Br. Randy Greve
The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2026
The first rule of preaching on Trinity Sunday is no analogies. The Holy Trinity is not to be compared to a three-leaf clover, water, or, alas, an egg. This is not a problem-solving occasion. The Trinity is not a math equation on how God can be three and one at the same time. The Trinitarian formula of the early church, summarized in the Nicene Creed, emerged after a long struggle that perplexed the first theologians as much as it might perplex us. It required pushing language to the edge of what language can do - naming the reality, yet not going too far in seeking to explain the how of the reality. They sought to faithfully apprehend the nature of God as revealed in Jesus Christ - a revelation in the world which changed reality. Yes, we speak of one Being in three Persons, not separate, subordinate, or hidden, but language, as necessary as it is, can at best create a rhetorical guard against outright heresy, not define the essence of the mystery.
In The Roots of Christian Mysticism, Olivier Clement writes,
“In their expositions of the Trinity, St Basil and St Maximus the Confessor emphasize that the Three is not a number (St Basil spoke in this respect of ‘meta-mathematics’). The divine Persons are not added to one another, they exist in one another: the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father, the Spirit is united to the Father together with the Son and ‘completes the blessed Trinity’ as if he were ensuring the circulation of love within it.”
The scripture readings for today all speak of the human community participating in the communion of God whose life is relational and sharing. The divine image mentioned in Genesis chapter one is relationality and identity in and through connection and union with God and one another.
We are not observers of a narrative today. We are on the inside of the mystery. This is the one feast (with the possible addition of All Saints Day) of the year not referenced to a historical event. As a highly sense-oriented person who loves the concrete symbols of liturgy, today is notable for the absence of a visual. Today there is no manger or mountain or cross or empty tomb. Some aspects of reality are just simply beyond the categories of the physical world. The Holy Trinity points us beyond history, beyond time and space to celebrate an eternal and cosmic reality revealed to us as mystery.
Christian formation too often prioritizes the intellect at the expense of other modes of perception. Most of us have grown up with the expectation that assenting and conforming to doctrine took priority over the inner experience of the presence of God. In our enlightened and scientific age when learning is reduced to data and information exists more to be possessed than appreciated, we are in danger of flattening the human experience into heads on sticks, mere data processing centers who evaluate right and wrong, good and bad, in and out, with no larger vision of a story, a mystery beyond what can be grasped, that is not meant to be understood with the brain but delighted in with the spirit. Jesus is less dogmatic in that way than we tend to be. He more often walked around and observed and asked questions than insisted on a set theology or yet more rules. In our tendency to explain and possess, we descend into a mechanization of faith and disenchant the universe. Trinity Sunday is the call to re-enchant the world with the practices of wonder, adoration, exultation, and sheer delight. Those are as important to our growth as information and theology.
It is good and right to believe in the Trinity as the truth about God, but that belief must be more than “it is true” - check the box and move on. The mystery of the Trinity calls forth questions about how we relate to Christian truths and whether our intellect is the best or only way of relating. Our imagination is a better tool than our intellect.
While visual analogies are inadequate, perhaps there is a sensory way to enter into the mystery. Jeremy Begbie, a priest and musician who has dedicated his vocation to the theology of music, has been a helpful voice in approaching and appreciating the mystery of threeness in oneness. Our eyes cannot perceive three colors in one as separate. Mix colors together and they mush into something that loses their individual differences. But we can hear three in one. Perhaps, says Begbie, part of the spiritual power of music is that more than one sound can be fully distinct in our ears at a time and the very relationships of sounds create something new. The Trinity, he says, is musical sympathetic resonance, the closest thing our senses can experience to three in one. Music is a beautiful expression of how theology transcends the limiting categories of control, certainty, and protection and ushers us into the joyful freedom of uniqueness within difference, structure and spontaneity that unfold mystery, wonder, and trust. Liturgy is musical, whether we are singing or not, because it is participatory - it is the incarnation of being creatures made in the image and likeness of God. And because the Christian life is liturgy, perhaps we can discover ways to play our way into God’s delight with the instruments of our lives as a reflection of the Trinity.
Blessing and honor, thanksgiving and praise, more than we can utter be to you, O glorious Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by all angels, all mortals, the whole creation, for ever and ever. Amen.
In The Roots of Christian Mysticism, Olivier Clement writes,
“In their expositions of the Trinity, St Basil and St Maximus the Confessor emphasize that the Three is not a number (St Basil spoke in this respect of ‘meta-mathematics’). The divine Persons are not added to one another, they exist in one another: the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father, the Spirit is united to the Father together with the Son and ‘completes the blessed Trinity’ as if he were ensuring the circulation of love within it.”
The scripture readings for today all speak of the human community participating in the communion of God whose life is relational and sharing. The divine image mentioned in Genesis chapter one is relationality and identity in and through connection and union with God and one another.
We are not observers of a narrative today. We are on the inside of the mystery. This is the one feast (with the possible addition of All Saints Day) of the year not referenced to a historical event. As a highly sense-oriented person who loves the concrete symbols of liturgy, today is notable for the absence of a visual. Today there is no manger or mountain or cross or empty tomb. Some aspects of reality are just simply beyond the categories of the physical world. The Holy Trinity points us beyond history, beyond time and space to celebrate an eternal and cosmic reality revealed to us as mystery.
Christian formation too often prioritizes the intellect at the expense of other modes of perception. Most of us have grown up with the expectation that assenting and conforming to doctrine took priority over the inner experience of the presence of God. In our enlightened and scientific age when learning is reduced to data and information exists more to be possessed than appreciated, we are in danger of flattening the human experience into heads on sticks, mere data processing centers who evaluate right and wrong, good and bad, in and out, with no larger vision of a story, a mystery beyond what can be grasped, that is not meant to be understood with the brain but delighted in with the spirit. Jesus is less dogmatic in that way than we tend to be. He more often walked around and observed and asked questions than insisted on a set theology or yet more rules. In our tendency to explain and possess, we descend into a mechanization of faith and disenchant the universe. Trinity Sunday is the call to re-enchant the world with the practices of wonder, adoration, exultation, and sheer delight. Those are as important to our growth as information and theology.
It is good and right to believe in the Trinity as the truth about God, but that belief must be more than “it is true” - check the box and move on. The mystery of the Trinity calls forth questions about how we relate to Christian truths and whether our intellect is the best or only way of relating. Our imagination is a better tool than our intellect.
While visual analogies are inadequate, perhaps there is a sensory way to enter into the mystery. Jeremy Begbie, a priest and musician who has dedicated his vocation to the theology of music, has been a helpful voice in approaching and appreciating the mystery of threeness in oneness. Our eyes cannot perceive three colors in one as separate. Mix colors together and they mush into something that loses their individual differences. But we can hear three in one. Perhaps, says Begbie, part of the spiritual power of music is that more than one sound can be fully distinct in our ears at a time and the very relationships of sounds create something new. The Trinity, he says, is musical sympathetic resonance, the closest thing our senses can experience to three in one. Music is a beautiful expression of how theology transcends the limiting categories of control, certainty, and protection and ushers us into the joyful freedom of uniqueness within difference, structure and spontaneity that unfold mystery, wonder, and trust. Liturgy is musical, whether we are singing or not, because it is participatory - it is the incarnation of being creatures made in the image and likeness of God. And because the Christian life is liturgy, perhaps we can discover ways to play our way into God’s delight with the instruments of our lives as a reflection of the Trinity.
Blessing and honor, thanksgiving and praise, more than we can utter be to you, O glorious Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by all angels, all mortals, the whole creation, for ever and ever. Amen.
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