Trinity: Source and Summit
“Ever since the world began, your throne has been established; you are from everlasting.”
Here is Eric Gill’s remarkable engraving Trinity and Chalice (1914). The figure of the Father is visible, but his face is hidden: he is accessible only through the Son, whom the Father willingly upholds on the Cross. The Spirit, likewise, is cruciform, at once revealing the contours of the Father’s face, and concealing his features. Meanwhile, the hand of Christ is extended in blessing, even as it is nailed to the Cross: and the flow of this gentle and dynamic stability moves through the riven side of Christ, as the wine of the Chalice. The Eucharistic Host-cum-nimbus hovering above the Chalice — meanwhile — corresponds to the symbol at the center of the Cross and surrounding the head of the Spirit, and signifies that this sacramental offering is at once the full and authentic communication of divinity — God truly giving us his flesh to feast on, and his blood to drink — and yet, it is also extrinsic to God, and does not impugn or diminish his transcendent essence.
The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.
—Exodus 3:2
Trinity Sunday
Texts for This Week
Prayer
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.
O Trinity of Blessed Light!
Here is the contemporary Slovenian composer Andrej Makor’s setting of St. Ambrose’s classic vesperal hymn to the Holy Trinity, O Lux Beata Trinitas. Ambrose’s simple genius in this hymn projects the Trinity’s character of encompassing all of Creation into time, to be encompassing of all the day. Makor’s setting, meanwhile, invites dwelling within this mystery: following the shimmering choral lines along their gentle swells. Admittedly, the video production of the song is more than a little melodramatic, starting with its claim to be “the most beautiful hymn from heaven,” and moving through a dramatization of the composer being moved and inspired to write the hymn by transcendent beauty of classical ecclesiastical architecture.
With the infinite depth and mystery that is the Holy Trinity, it is worth including a paean from a completely different aesthetic tradition. Here is the Shai Linne’s Triune Praise, from his iconic album of Gospel rap, suitably titled The Atonement. Linne’s theology here is impeccable, and gestures to the rather extraordinary possibilities of rap as a theological artform.
