Trinity Sunday, 2023

Dear Sisters and Associates,

Whenever I think about the Trinity, it feels like I’m involved in a mathematical problem from the old “Progress in Arithmetic” book. Math, like the Trinity, was often a mystery to me. God bless my math teachers and their patience with me over the years. Give me an essay to write, but keep me away from figuring out anything about the thought problems in that book!

There are two things I remember learning about the Trinity in a theology class taught by Fr. Anthony Padavano at Seattle University.   First, the Trinity is a great mystery about God, and perhaps understanding this mystery is less important than asking why this mystery is so important to our faith.   What does it mean to us that God is three in one?  This point was addressed in a quote from the philosopher Martin Buber who wrote: “In the beginning was relationship.”  Fr. Padavano went on to say that the single word “relationship” is at the heart of what the Trinity means and that early church theologians described the Trinity as a dynamic dance of love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It is a mystery that discloses something very simple about God – that God, in the very depths of his being, is relationship.  God is love.  There is nothing more simple or basic than love.  And love doesn’t exist in isolation.  God is not an isolated, contained being.  God’s nature is to be communal.   The one being of God is the interrelationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  And God wants to be in relationship with us!  We are meant to be a community of love.

Because God is relationship, love is not an optional extra for believers, and certainly not for us as people of Providence.  Today we also celebrate Divine Providence Sunday.  As Sisters and Associates of Divine Providence, this feast has local and global expectations for each of us.  The Trinity demands of us real relationship, availability, responsibility, care, compassion, and a heart of love that permeates all that we are and all that we do.  Providence invites us to be a loving and life-enhancing gift to those God puts in our path.  To stand with them in their pain, weep with them in their grief, rejoice with them in their good news, stand up with them against oppressive systems, shine the light of justice on those who misuse power, speak out about our groaning earth, and speak for those whose voices are silenced.  Aren’t these the very things we wrote about in our Congregational Chapter Directional Statement? 

In John’s Gospel, we hear about the magnitude of God’s love: that God so loved the world that God became one of us to save us from sin and death.  We are so loved that God, as the Creator, made us in His own image.  God loves us so much that God the Son became one of us and died for us to conquer sin and death.  God loves us so much that God the Holy Spirit remains with us to help us to become holy, as God is holy.  All of this speaks of the loving relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:  God as Trinity, lives in a community of love, three persons, one God. 

No image, no metaphor, no experience can exhaust the meaning of God.  God is three and God is one.  God is all and in all.  God is not alone.  God is love.  Maybe the math equation, 1+1+1=1, isn’t so difficult to understand after all! 

On this feast of the Holy Trinity and Divine Providence Sunday, may we rejoice at the gift of life and love that has been so freely offered us.

In God’s loving Providence,

Sr. Barbara

Sister Barbara McMullen

Congregational Leader