The Prayer over the Offerings for today’s solemnity is: “Sanctify by the invocation of your name, we pray, O Lord, our God, this oblation of our service, and by it make of us an eternal offering to you.”  The unused 1998 translation rendered it in this more intelligible way: “Lord our God, sanctify the gifts of your servants as we call upon your holy name and by their power make us an everlasting gift to you.”
 
A common way that we divide ourselves is by asking the simple question, “Do you believe in God.”  And we end up in three camps… yes, no, don’t know.  A better question may be though, what or who is God?  Our answer to the first question is rather dependent on the second one.  Our celebration today of the Most Holy Trinity gives us some help in answering the question of who or what God is, and even further, where God is.

 
Let’s face it, thinking about these things isn’t easy, and a little scary.  We have generally not been formed well in our western society to confront these deeply philosophical, ethical, and moral questions.  They don’t lend themselves to finite answers, and we are generally uncomfortable with the ambiguity of moving between certainty and uncertainty.  Some days it’s easy to see God working in the world, but others, it’s awfully hard.
 
We tend to think of God as a one-dimensional being, but today’s feast reminds us of the different faces or manifestations of God.  We have this idea of God as creator in the Father, God incarnate teacher (with us) in the Son, and God as presence in everything in the Holy Spirit (to greatly reduce all of these to little blurbs).  In our current culture, and really most of history, we experience things as either this or that, with us or against us, left/right, conservative/liberal.  God is not like that, God is found in the bond of love between these three manifestations and how they interact.
 
If, as it says in Genesis, human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, then we are made to be like this to, not flat characters, but people of depth.  We are called to search for truth, not easy, one-dimensional answers to the biggest questions.
 
Sometimes on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity our first inclination is to shut down to this rather complex view of God.  Let’s resolve not to shy away from the conflicts, the nuance, the ambiguity, but rather walk away from the easy way out of defining God in one small way, defining another person by an either/or category, or thinking that we have all the answers.  Let’s lean into God’s challenging reality of truth, and rid ourselves of the easy-answer, dualistic fantasy world that seems so tempting.
 
Submit your liturgical questions or comments to Jeff at liturgyandmusic@saintraphael.org
– Jeff Rice, Pastoral Associate of Liturgy & Music