Trinity Sunday

There is a story about Saint Augustine walking along the beach lost in thoughts of the Trinity. On his walk Saint Augustine encounters a boy with a bucket who is running back and forth filling his bucket with water from the ocean and emptying it into a hole that he has dug in the sand. In this encounter St. Augustine comes to realize that just as the boy could never empty the entire ocean into a hole, so too can a human never understand the infinite mystery that is the Holy Trinity.

This story teaches a valuable lesson that we humans are too often inclined to forget. We cannot know everything. We can know and discover a lot but some things are simply beyond our finite minds. Why would we make such an audacious assumption anyway? Most of us haven’t even explored all the features on our cell phone, why would we think we could understand the inner workings of the Creator?

The Holy Spirit helps us, in his wonderful Wisdom, to see more than we might have seen by ourselves. The Spirit's vision allows us wonderful options for expansion and new possibilities. It is the Spirit's Wisdom that reveals the Word to us. It is the Wisdom of the Spirit which shows us our sin, which guides us, which instructs us, which leads us in the way everlasting.

We need the Spirit active in the world to stir faith within us. To call us to task each day to live the faith we affirm. Throughout scripture the Spirit is the agent of God’s creative and salvific activity. The Spirit swept like a wind over the waters at the onset of creation, the Spirit was the breath of life breathed into Adam and the Spirit compelled the prophets to fulfill missions that they had almost unanimously rejected. The Spirit stirred in the womb of Mary and descended upon Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan. And days after Christ had given up his Spirit on the cross, the Spirit was poured out upon the apostles like fire and fortified them to preach the word, to travel to distant lands and to found the church.

The Spirit is the voice of God that calls us to worship. Without the Spirit we are left with a scene that is too common in this part of the world, churches with worshipers who are willing to affirm doctrine but unwilling to let their faith transform their lives. When we look to a spiritless Godhead our faith suffers because the action, the life and the passion are removed. We may come to know Christ, but we still need guidance. We need a Spirit of Life to show us the possibilities that lie ahead.

On this Trinity Sunday let us confess our neglect of all that God is. Let us open our hearts to the movements of the Spirit that we may come to know a loving God who is deeply concerned with our hopes and fears. And let us be open to the chance that the Spirit of Life may call us to action so that we may discover a life of faith, a life of abundance.