Richard Rohr reminds us that the Cappadocian Fathers (Greg of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, Greg Nazianzen and others) said: “Don’t start with the One and try to make it into Three but start with the Three and see that this is the deepest nature of the One.” But unfortunately, multiple early Church councils instead gave us doctrinal language about Trinity’s oneness, using complex and abstract Greek metaphysical terms. That language is pretty unteachable, I’ve found. More importantly, it does not seem to match the way we encounter God in everyday spiritual life, nor is it very compatible with today’s awareness of change and evolution. Better (I think) is to focus on Trinity as three divine ways of loving us. Today’s feast day readings present us with a God of multiple love activities. God (Father) does mighty works, the first of which is loving by creating. The Spirit joins us both to the Father through “adoption” and with Christ as heirs with him. The Risen Christ empowers us and accompanies us “until the end of the age.” But let’s express it in perhaps even more accessible language. We have a God who loves us in many ways. God loves us with a “fatherly” love of creating. But then, we are not left on our own. God also loves us with Christ’s saving love of healing and repairing and inspiring and divinizing our inner selves (our souls); God also loves humanity with a sustaining love that keeps us being truth seekers and life givers as we and those who came before and after us complete our life journeys. Perhaps considering an analogy of how a man or woman can love in different ways may help. They love their parents and friends; they have another kind of love for their spouse, and still another for their children. Somehow it is all “their love,” bound up in one human person we speak of as a “loving person.” We can’t know how God holds together God’s different love energies in one unity — God’s “inner self.” What we do know is that God is love. Today’s feast of the Holy Trinity gives us a chance to see the depth and scope of this Divine Love as we meditate on the words we use to describe it: Father, Son, Spirit. Can you see in your own spiritual life where you have experienced these loves?
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia