The Feast of the Holy Trinity
31 May A. D. 2026

Readings
Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
+ Matthew 28:16-20

Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Homily
This is Trinity Sunday, so I’d like to offer a disclaimer to all the practical minded folks that nothing I’m about to say is going to make any sense. So let me give you something to hold on to before we dive into the notion of the Holy Trinity. First: that God is Trinity is implied by the life of Jesus. We’ll take that up again later, but in short: if you read the stories in the Gospel, the Trinity is there. The Trinity is not a doctrine but a story. Second: we know that the Divine Being is a Trinity of mutually flourishing self-expressions, because that’s how we are at our best. A person who is able to feel joy and wholeness in the midst of pain is a person whose mind and body are integrated with their soul to form their essence: the core of who they are. We know God as Holy and Undivided Trinity because that’s who Jesus is, and that’s who we are when we imitate him.

Let us pray:
Most gracious God, out of all the words that will now be spoken and heard, may it be the Living Word who stays in our hearts. Give us the Grace to receive you, and give us the charity to let all the other words slip away. We ask this in the Name of Jesus. Amen.

Madeleine L’Engle is most famous for her works of fiction, like A Wind in the Door and A Wrinkle in Time. And justly so: L’Engle’s stories have spurred the imaginations of generations of readers. Her non-fiction turns out to be just as good. I’ve been reading the journals she wrote while at home in New England, the Crosswicks ]ournal Volume One is called “A Circle of Quiet,” and her musings point to a striking truth: amidst the variables of work, family, hopes, disappointments, and our irresistible urge to wonder where we stand in comparison with others, the absolute constant in human life is our spirituality. L’Engle shows this in many ways, but she reflects particularly on the way the experience of beauty integrates the mind and heart. That this stream or that tree should exist is a matter of so many atoms in time. But that human beings should call them beautiful-that is to say: for human beings to undergo in an indelible emotional event in response to the sound of water bending over rocks, the fall of light through rustling trees, and the heavy sweetness of the silence in between… that this should happen to us is spirituality, and without it, life isn’t worth living. Spirituality is primary to the human creature, coming before and long out-lasting the intellect. L’Engle writes about this in “A Circle of Quiet” with arresting eloquence. Here’s a little snippet:

“…no teacher can hope to give the child a self unless the teacher knows what a self is, unless the teacher is a self. Here we are, living in a world of “identity crises,” and most of us have no idea what an identity is. Half the problem is that an identity is something which must be understood intuitively, rather than in terms of provable fact. An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers.

With my naked intellect I cannot believe in God, particularly a loving God. My intellect is convinced that any idea of the person’s continuing and growing after death is absurd; logic goes no further than dust to dust. Images, in the literary sense of the word, take me much further. Without my glasses I can see nothing but a vague blur. When I put them on, I become functional. But who is doing the seeing? The lenses of the spectacles are not. I am. There is an essential…me-that part of me which is not consumed in the burning-[this essential me] is…that which I was created to be, the imaginative Adam and Eve as they were in the pre-history days of the Garden. Some of our children talk about going back to the garden; we can’t do that; but we can travel in the direction which will lead us to that place where we may find out who we really are.[1]“

Dear friends, let L’Engle’s vital realization sink down and come to rest on the bottom of your minds: our essential self is our spiritual self. We are not what we do or how much we earn. We are not our successes or our failures. We are not our vices or our talents. We are not merely a body with a mind, or merely a mind with a body: our essence is our soul, which is infinitely more than the sum of the parts. Your soul is what makes you aware of the fact that you are alive. And this… this, dear friends, is also what it means for the Divine Being to be a Trinity of Persons:

God exists in all the ways it is possible to exist,
and all of those self-expressions of Divine Being
are United in the Divine Essence,
for which the only word we have is:
LOVE.

The words Love, and Soul, and Self, and Essence, are all synonyms. It is why St. Paul says to the Corinthians, “If I have no love, I am nothing… Love never ends.” (1 Cor. 13:2, 8) Strikingly, the reverse of Paul’s theology is also true: to the degree to which I express love, I am something… Love never begins! because it is the eternal essence of God! Love is what makes it possible for us to sit by a stream, like Madeleine, in the quiet of the summer evening and weep for the beauty of that which we perceive. This weeping is the Divine Image in us: our weeping with joy for that which is beautiful. When our souls trickle down our cheeks in the experience of beauty, we are shedding the same tears which were spilled in the deep beginnings of time when the Divine Being beheld the human creature and said, “Yes…very good!”

The Divine Being, the One we often call “God,” is a complete Being. The divine love is therefore by necessity also complete. This love is made manifest to all creatures in the correspondence between the outward experience of beauty united to the inward witness of joy. Responding to that joy leads us on the path toward wholeness. The Holy Trinity, you see, is not a doctrine of the Church. The Trinity is the story of the joy of Jesus amidst the agony of his world: his power over wind and water and body and mind; the miraculous humility of his Holy Cross and the victorious miracle of his Glorious Resurrection; his multi-dimensional Ascension so that we might take up our great purpose; and his Indwelling of the human heart that we might not be bereaved. All these instances of Divine Self-Disclosure imply that God’s essential mode of existence is social. God must be Trinity: because so are we. And God engages us and calls to us through all the ways we exist.

Listen, then, once more to the Gospel, the words of eternal life: “Go therefore. Disciple all the people, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you. And look, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Teach everyone that they are the beloved; work and live with them until they understand. Help them respond with their whole true self by anointing them with water and oil; use all the names for my love. Look within yourself; you will always find me: in this way, all creation will come to completion.

The Father/Mother, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer
Author, Friend, and Guide

I can’t tell you what any of these words mean. But I can tell you who they are: These are the One who, from before the first pronouncement of light, have suffered and rejoiced out of love for you. In the midst of all the cares of this world, if you will look within yourself for a circle of quiet—for the place where you come to an end—they will meet you there.

They’ve been expecting you.

[1] Madeleine L’Engle. The Crosswicks Journal, Volume One: A Circle of Quiet (Harper Collins, 1972), page

          41.