Understanding the Mystery of the Trinity

TRINITY

… stop counting, come into the circle of love and be counted!

Understanding The mystery of the

I. Approaching A Mystery

II. Can We Really Understand The Trinity?

III. Three Paths• Deduced Salvation History• Belief in Christ• Personal Revelations

IV. So, What?• Personal Meaning of the Trinity• Practical Meaning of the Trinity• Eternal Meaning of the TrinityRCIA

Get the wrong starting point, get confused!

Two wrong starting points:1. I don’t understand it,

therefore it cannot be so.

The frog's eyes… information access every 3 seconds.

Why don’t we see the lines in between film strips?

How many black dots are there?

What is turning the gears?

Two wrong starting points:1. I don’t understand it,

therefore it cannot be so.2. No man can understand it,

therefore it cannot be so.

MYSTERY?

• Forty years ago, we all believed in Virginal birth of Jesus as a matter of faith.

• And the non-Christian world laughed it off as ridiculous if not outright crazy.

Today, the 2nd person technically of virgin birth is 40 yrs old.

July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world's first successful "test-tube"

baby was born in Great Britain.

Two right starting points:

1. Have the faith of a child.

Stop counting! Have the faith of a child instead!

“Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

whatreally

happenedto

Two right starting points:

1. Have the faith of a child.

2. Be humble and recognize our limitations.

To me how mysterious your thoughtsThe sum of them not to be numbered.If I count them they are more than the sandTo finish, I must be eternal like you.

PSALM 139

As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:9

So, can we really understand the

Trinity?

One day as he was walking along the sea shore and reflecting on this, he suddenly saw a little child all alone on the shore. The child made a whole in the sand, ran to the sea with a little cup, filled her cup, came and poured it into the hole she had made in the sand. Back and forth she went to the sea, filled her cup and came and poured it into the hole. Augustine went up to her and said, "Little child, what are doing?" and she replied, "I am trying to empty the sea into this hole." "How do you think," Augustine asked her, "that you can empty this immense sea into this tiny hole and with this tiny cup?" To which she replied, " And you, how do you suppose that with this your small head you can comprehend the immensity of God?"

St. Augustine of Hippo(345-430 AD)

In the end, he wrote a whole Doctrinal Treatise

on the Holy Trinity.

3 Paths

Deduction fromSalvation History

1

“The trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless revealed by God. To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation thoughout the Old Testament.”

ccc 237

The Trinitarian Lifeas Revealed by esusJ

2

“But His inmost being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.”

CCC 237

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. (John 14:16-17)

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. (John 14:26)

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”

3Understanding the Trinity through

Personal Revelation

“Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the Gospel preached by me is not of human origin. For I did not receive it from a human being, nor was I taught it,but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”

(Gal 1:11-12)

The Trinity also reveals Himself to us in our ‘vibrational ascent.’

S O W H A T ?Trinity

The Personal Meaning of the Mystery of theTrinity

That God loved me, as His own, from the beginning of time.

In the fullness of time, He manifested that love in Christ who exhibited to me how to reciprocate and live in that eternal love.

Christ is with me Sacramentally and in the Spirit who makes me a son and heir to all that the Father is.

The Practical Meaning of the Mystery of theTrinity

At every moment I can commune with the Father by surrendering my will to Him.”

When I am moved to do something, then the best question to ask myself is WWJD?

I will know if my direction is right by the fruits that it bears.

The Eternal Meaning of the Mystery of the Trinity

Benedicts XVI "God has created all things for existence and what he wills is always and only life." The central understanding of the Trinitarian life is "eternal life." The term "death" thus does not mean that the dead disappear into nothingness. As the Pope explains in Spe Salvi the terms heaven, hell, purgatory, and death relate to our final condition with respect to the inner Trinitarian life of God. Once God creates us, we remain created. How we stand to God lies within our choice, which God cannot overcome except at the cost of denying to us the kind of free being that we are.

SUMMARY POINTS

Understanding the Trinity Helps Us Live…

With ourselves in the midst of our brokenness…

With others and grow in the appreciation of their uniqueness, yet also oneness with us…

BREAK

Question for Discussion…

1. How might we get a more intense sense of the Trinity in our day to day lives?

2. How might we get a deeper sense of the presence of the Trinity in others?

Father, I adore YouLay my life before YouHow I love You

Jesus, I adore YouLay my life before YouHow I love You

Spirit I adore YouLay my life before YouHow I love You(repeat from the top)

How I love You!

May our Trinitarian God Bless You!May our Trinitarian God Bless You!